The State of the Student
August 29th, 2010
Last week we looked at the state of public schools, as viewed by the American public. Today we’ll look at the state of the American student, as viewed by students themselves.
In creating the recent report Youth Readiness for the Future, Gallup polled students age 10-18 on their hope, engagement and well-being. Why those variables? A number of reasons, including that they are indicators of future success, with links to attendance, grades, achievement scores, retention and employment. And they are malleable—so even if a student is not hopeful now, he or she might be in the future.
The results? Over half of students—53%—are hopeful about the future, while 31% are “stuck” and 16% are discouraged. Over two-thirds of students—70%—are thriving, with about 30% struggling or suffering. And nearly two-thirds—63%—are engaged, while 23% are not engaged (just going through the motions) and 14% are actively disengaged (likely undermining the teaching and learning process for themselves and others). Engagement peaks during elementary school, then decreases through middle school and early high school before rising again.
All in all, 34% of students are what the researchers termed “Ready for the Future”—hopeful, engaged and thriving. Why is that important? “Ready” students are more likely to succeed. For example, students who were “ready” going into their freshman year of high school went on to complete 20% more credits and have GPAs that were one-letter grade higher than peers who were not ready.
Those are national results. And they illustrate some important trends. For example, I think it’s a bit sad that nearly half of kids aren’t hopeful about the future. We as a nation need to talk about that. And 14% of students are actively disengaged? So on average, in every class of 30 students, more than four are undermining teaching and learning for all others. How can we improve that? Educators, policymakers and parents need to work together to address some of the underlying issues revealed here.
But while this national level data is interesting, researchers recognized that it may be more useful to reform efforts if it were local. So they created a system in which schools and districts can get their own results. An individual school can learn whether its students are hopeful, engaged and thriving. It can go deeper into the data and learn, for example, whether its students feel safe at school. Or whether its teachers make students feel schoolwork is important. Or whether its students believe they will find a good job after they graduate.
Once a school or district has that information, they can really use it to drive reform efforts. They can target professional development at engaging students. Or develop a jobs-focus that gets kids hopeful they’ll find good work. Whatever it is their school needs.
The information provided by this poll is important for other reasons as well. It has become glaringly obvious to most education stakeholders that focusing on basic math and reading skills is not preparing our students for the next step—or getting students excited about it. This poll offers an opportunity for conversations to move beyond those skills to what some would consider “softer” concerns–things we suspect are important to learning, but that we do not have a great way to measure. Of course this survey isn’t perfect, but it is a good starting point.
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