April 2008

Letter from the Editor

Yes, this newsletter *is* late, isn’t it? I offer my humble apologies. This month’s edition… or is it really last month’s edition? Now I’m confused... At any rate, this edition offers a description of a program designed to help impulsive youngsters think before they act. The Ability to Reason, described by program designer Dorothy Halla-Poe in our feature article, was designed for a county probation department for criminally involved youth, but is now being extended to non-criminal students in public schools. The strategy of the month reviews the increasingly popular idea of paying students for their performance, either on tests, grades or attendance. Read on!

Jodi Heilbrunn, Editor

Invitation for Letters to the Editor

Do you have feedback regarding our feature article or strategy of the month? Would you like to submit a feature article on a topic of your choice? Send your commentary or ideas to info@schoolengagement.org for possible publication in our next issue. Please make the subject of your message “Newsletter commentary.” I would love to hear from you!


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The Ability to Reason
by
Dorothy Halla-Poe, PhD.
Taproot, Inc.
Bay City, WI

Now, children can hone their reasoning skills in an art-based class called "The Ability to Reason." The class is currently being taught for county probation in Goodhue County, MN as an innovative approach for early offenders in the criminal justice system. After two years, we have a 79% non-recidivism rate. It has been adapted for use by social workers and is now being taught to special education teachers and those who work with emotionally and behaviorally disordered students. It is also excellent for parents and teachers of middle school students. Our approach is effective because it is based on developmental and experiential learning.

The young people who take our class range from gifted to learning disabled. What they all have in common, however, are similar responses to the question; “What was the reason for your behavior?” The responses include, “I don’t know,” “I felt like it”, or, “I wasn’t thinking”.

As children make the transition from elementary school to middle school, many parents and kids have concerns about their ability to adapt to a new environment. This is a perfect time for students to learn the ability to reason as a skill that they can actively use in the new situations they will encounter. Reason is defined by Webster’s College Dictionary as the use of the cognitive mental powers needed to form conclusions, judgments and inferences. Students who reason well will be better able to cope with new situations and challenges, will experience fewer social and academic set-backs, and will feel more at home and engaged in their schooling.

In class we use clay (or Play-doh) and colored pencils (or crayons) as the learning medium. The class is divided into two segments during which five abstract concepts – think, reflect, make decisions, work, and apply choice – are learned. We also teach basic information about how our brains work.

To THINK requires paying attention to our environment, evaluating a situation, and deciding our course of action

To REFLECT means to look back upon something in order to learn from our mistakes and successes. Thinking ‘backwards’ teaches the developmental skill of understanding past, present, and future and allows us to learn from experience.

To MAKE DECISIONS means to make up one’s mind. This is an action word: Think – then Do. To make decisions we must have options, or be able to imagine different possibilities and their potential outcomes. When we act only on our emotions, we are not making decisions, we’re re-acting. Imagining different possibilities and their possible outcomes allows us to expand our horizons, develop new neural pathways, and learn self-awareness and self-control.

WORK is the amount of energy one has to exert to do something. It’s important to understand the amount of work, or energy, we need to pursue a dream, interest or goal. We need to determine how much work we’re willing to put into a goal, and whether we have the skills necessary to achieve that goal. This requires an honest self-assessment. Our future is our own choice, but the bigger the dream or the goal, the more work it will require.

CHOICE is the act of making a selection. We must have a minimum of three options before we truly have choice. When we can see only one way to do, experience or think, we are acting with a habitual mindset that can turn compulsive, possibly addictive. When it’s “this” or “that”, we simply go back and forth. True choice must involve a third possibility to get us outside the box. Three options can be mixed and matched to create other options, just like the three primary colors can be mixed and matched to create more.

Once students have complied with the instructions, created the words and definitions out of clay, and written a simple sentence to define the concepts, they have learned the foundation of the Ability to Reason. It is up to students to use free will and make their own decisions. However, decisions can now be based on reason rather than emotion.

Human beings have an incredible capacity to think, plan, create and learn from mistakes, but these skills must be taught, developed and used. That is what this class teaches.

Questions, references and a more detailed article are available by calling Dorothy Halla-Poe at 952-233-8826 or email taprootchaska@msn.com. Training and Ability to Reason lesson plans are available at: www.taprootinc.com.

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Cashing In: Paying Students for Performance

Economists really would like to take over the world – just ask any other social scientist. They have a leg up, when you think about it; I’d be hard-pressed to find someone who feels money doesn’t matter much. So it shouldn’t come as any great surprise that the idea of paying kids for academic performance is catching on. Chelsea, MA students can earn money for perfect attendance; in Dallas, TX, some school children can earn $2 for each book they read. Baltimore, MD high school students can receive $25 for improving standardized test scores by 5%. Since students take multiple tests, they can earn up to $100. New York City public high school students can earn $150 for aceing AP exams, and the top scorer will take home $1,000. The district is considering another program developed by a Harvard economist to pay younger students smaller amounts for improved standardized test scores. In England, 16 and 17-year-old low and middle income students earn up to 30 pounds a week just for staying in school, with bonuses for high achievement. In the US, most, but not all, cash-for-performance programs have been funded by private donations rather than regular school or district budgets.

Happily, a few districts are conducting evaluations of their incentive programs. In Fulton County, GA, students participated in a 15-week cash-for-tutoring program. Elementary and middle school classes were randomly selected for program participation, while other classes provided a control group. Students were offered four hours of after-school tutoring in math and science per week for the fifteen weeks. Each student who attended was paid $8 per hour of tutoring attended, plus a bonus for raising a grade to a B and meeting state standards. Preliminary results of the evaluation conducted by EMSTAR Research, Inc. suggest that the program did have a positive effect on test scores. In Coshocton, OH, elementary and middle school children earn $15 (or $20) for each proficient (or better) score on state exams. The maximum earning is $100. Results of the evaluation conducted by Case Western professor Eric Bettinger show the program significantly boosted math scores, and slightly improved science and social studies scores, but not reading scores. Although the program is generally viewed as a success, the largest gains were seen by students who had previously earned advanced or accelerated math scores, raising questions about the ability of the program to target low-performing students.


Despite initial positive results, the public and many educators remain deeply ambivalent about paying students. Opponents of such programs tend to feel they undermine the intrinsic value of learning, and they have some research to cite in their favor. Parent and community bloggers are mixed in their views, but opponents tend to refer to the programs as “bribery” rather than “incentives”. On the other hand, when employees of three Washington, DC public schools were rewarded $500,000 in bonuses due to 20% improvements in their students’ test scores, most people applauded a job well done. It would seem likely that complaints would be dampened when money comes from outside grant-makers. Arguably, however, broadening the use of incentives might require diverting state school funding from other educational programs, complicating the evaluation. Redirecting regular per pupil funding to incentives would change the evaluation question from “Do incentives improve grades, test scores, or attendance?” to “Do incentives improve grades, test scores, or attendance more than the initiatives that were cut to pay for the incentives?” The only sure thing is that the debate over student incentives is only just beginning.




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Sign up for education-related e-mail alerts from Grantsalert. The website also includes grant-seeking tips, a special page for sources of classroom funding for teachers (called GSFT), and a directory of grant writers to help you. Registering for funding alerts is free, but the grant writers, of course, are not.

Teachers, go to Doners Choose to make requests for classroom supplies!

Find and apply online for competitive grant opportunities from all Federal grant-making agencies.

RGK Foundation - The Foundation's programmatic areas of interest include Health, Education, Human Services, and Community Affairs. The Foundation's primary interests within education include formal K-12 education, literacy, and higher education.

The Dollar General offers annual or bi-annual grants in five literacy areas:
· Adult Literacy Grants
· Back-To-School Grants
· Beyond Words: The Dollar General School Library Relief Program
· Family Literacy Grants
· Youth Literacy Initiatives (February 5 application submission deadline)

Here’s a wonderful webpage that lists endless grant opportunities for K-12 schools, and has a page on grant writing tips! They also offer a subscription to Schoolgrants Biweekly Newsletter for $45 a year.


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Snoop around the Yahoo Education Directory for lots of education-related information including conference listings, academic competitions and much more.

Beckett, Megan K. (2008.) Current-Generation Youth Programs: What Works, What Doesn’t, and at What Cost? Santa Monica, CA: RAND. This study synthesizes the evaluations of a number of after-school programs that include information on program costs. It concludes that the current generation of youth programs can provide modest positive impacts on academic achievement, academic attainment, and social behaviors, such as pregnancy, and most of the benefits of youth programs are concentrated in programs that are more resource-intensive. The summary document and the full report are available on line.

The Journal of Youth Development, published by the National Association of Extension 4-H Agents, is now available online. The field of youth development research is multidisciplinary by nature, drawing researchers from the fields of psychology, family and consumer sciences, education, sociology, public health and nutrition, agricultural education and other disciplines. This peer-reviewed, semi-annual journal is multidisciplinary, applied, and focused to the development of school-aged youth through the transition to adulthood (ages 6-22).

The Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement maintains a School Reform and Improvement Database. Search on “School Engagement” in the keyword field, limit your search to 2000 through 2007, and you will find 65 articles, many of which are available online.


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How to Evaluate Your Truancy Reduction Program

National Center for School Engagement

May 19-20, 2008
Denver, Colorado
NCSE was pleased to offer its evaluation training for the third time in April, but it filled up so fast that we decided to do it again in May! The training is perfect for those with little evaluation experience. It will help you think about how to strengthen your program by using process and outcome evaluations. On day two, you will learn how to use our on-line database, TRAIN, to record the progress of students in your program. Spots are still available, but sign up quickly!
Click here to register.

OJJDP National Youth Gang Symposium
June 23-26
Atlanta, Georgia
This event will offer innovative and successful gang-related programs and strategies, as well as provide the latest information on youth gang activities and trends from top national experts.

College Summit Institute 2008
Baltimore, MD
July 9-12, 2008
Formerly called the Educators' Institute, the College Summit Institute is a professional development experience that unites passionate counselors, teachers, and administrators from across the country who are dedicated to the belief that all young people must plan for education beyond high school.

16th Annual Model Schools Conference

Orlando, Florida

June 22 – 25, 2008

Showcases, among other topics, student engagement strategies used by high performing schools

American School Counselor Association Annual Conference

“Setting New Standards"

June 28–July 1

Atlanta, GA

20th Annual National Dropout Prevention Network Conference
Atlanta, GA
November 16-19, 2008
Conference registration

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NCSE is an initiative of the
Colorado Foundation for
Families and Children

www.schoolengagement.org




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