Sep 4, 2009 - Current statistics on school dropout and the negative consequences ... system, such as college, technical school, advanced job training,.
Preventing School Dropout:
The Eco-Interactional Developmental Model of School Success By Gary L. Bowen, Ph.D.
“This nation’s success at graduating more young people will depend…on the full engagement of all segments of American society; educators cannot meet this challenge alone.“
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In President Barack Obama’s address to the Joint Session of Congress on February 24, 2009, he declared that there is an “urgent need to expand the promise of education in America” citing education as being critical to this nation’s economic recovery and its ability to compete successfully in the world’s marketplace. He described current rates of high school dropout as “a prescription for economic decline” and noted that “dropping out of high school is no longer an option.” He asked every American “to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training,” and he set the goal that by 2020 “America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world” (Obama, 2009). Current statistics on school dropout and the negative consequences of dropping out for the individual and the nation demonstrate the importance of President Obama’s clarion call for educational reform. A recent report by Amos (2008) documents the dropout crisis in America and the economic drag that this crisis is creating in the context of economic globalization: No longer is the United States the world leader in graduating students from high school and college. This fall, more than four million students across the country will enter the ninth grade. Over the next four years, a third of these students will drop out before attaining a diploma; another third will graduate without having gained the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in work or postsecondary education. (p. 1) Students who drop out of school have lower earnings and productivity, greater need of welfare benefits, more health www.TPRonline.org
problems, higher mortality rates, greater involvement with the criminal justice system, and increased likelihood of becoming parents of children who themselves fail to complete high school (Amos, 2008; Richman, Bowen, & Woolley, 2004). Such a loss in human capital not only places a heavy weight on the U.S. economy but also limits the ability of young people to transition into competent adult role performance and to become full participants in a free and democratic society. The statistics above on high school dropout rates suggest the significant challenge this nation faces in achieving President Obama’s goal. This nation’s success at graduating more young people will depend, as President Obama encourages, on the full engagement of all segments of American society; educators cannot meet this challenge alone. Theoretical models, assessment tools, and practice resources consistent with President Obama’s call for partnership and cooperation are needed. This article presents the Eco-Interactional Developmental (EID) model of school success as a model for understanding the synergetic role that neighborhoods, schools, families, and peers can play in increasing the proportion of students who successfully complete high school, which is a precursor to students pursuing higher education, advanced career training, or moving into employment opportunities that have the potential to pay a living wage. The article begins with a brief review of the nature of the challenge: graduating high school students who meet the educational requirements for success in the twenty-first-century economy given current graduation rates and levels of achievement. In the context of the EID model, which focuses attention on the The Prevention Researcher
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achievement of desired and positive results, the review shifts from dropping out of school, specifically, to the broader concept of school success. The article concludes with a description of the School Success Profile (SSP), which is a strength-based assessment tool that is informed by the EID model of school success. SCHOOL DROPOUT
Even a cursory review of the literature reveals significant challenges that this country faces in graduating students from high school. These statistics reveal two problems: (a) the high number of students who fail to complete high school; and (b) the high number of students who complete high school without the requisite knowledge and skills to move to the next step in the system, such as college, technical school, advanced job training, or some form of apprenticeship. Although a great deal of attention is directed to the first problem (graduation rates), President Obama must also target the second problem if increasing post-secondary training and education is the goal. The focus needs to be on both quantity (producing more graduates) and quality (producing graduates with the requisite knowledge and skills to take the next step). Statistics about both of these problems will be reviewed. The subsequent section will present a logical typology of school success as a framework for discussing school dropout in the context of theory and current research. Cohort Graduation Rate At present, fewer than 3 in 4 students finish high school in 4 years or less (Amos, 2008). Males, students of color, students from low-income families, students with limited English proficiency, and students with learning and psychological disabilities fare even worse (Amos, 2008; KewalRamani et al., 2007; Orfield et al., 2004). For example, fewer than 2 in 3 black and Hispanic students, and only about 1 in 2 Native American students, finish high school on time. In the context of an increasing proportion of students of color entering the nation’s schools, Amos (2008) concludes that, without significant intervention, national graduation rates are on a trajectory of further decline.
At present, fewer that 3 in 4 students finish high school in 4 years or less. Graduation rates and the racial/ethnic education divide also vary by region and by state, and within state by district and location including central city, suburb, town, or rural (Orfield et al., 2004). Analysis conducted by the Center for Social Organization of Schools at Johns Hopkins University (as cited in Amos, 2008) identified nine states in which at least 1 in 4 high schools were deemed “dropout factories.” In these schools, fewer than 3 in 5 students who enter the ninth grade graduate from high school 4 years later. Although fewer than 1 in 7 high schools across the nation received the dropout factory designation, these schools accounted for nearly half of the dropouts. These findings underscore that interventions to address school dropout must focus on both students and schools as organizations (G.L. Bowen, Ware, Rose, & Powers, 2007). Achievement However, the challenge is more than encouraging high school graduation; the challenge is to generate high school graduates with the requisite knowledge and skills to secure a job with some degree of future promise or to move to the next step on the educational ladder and eventually succeed in work and life (see Amos, 2008). Many secondary school students lack the basic skills for success in either the workforce or postsecondary education as indicated by a wide range of academic indicators
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The challenge is more than encouraging high school graduation; the challenge is to generate high school graduates with the requisite knowledge and skills to secure a job with some degree of future promise or to move to the next step on the educational ladder and eventually succeed in work and life. (KewalRamani et al., 2007). In addition, significant and persistent gaps exist in academic achievement across racial/ethnic groups. For example, on the National Assessment of Educational Progress reading and math assessments a significantly higher percentage of fourth-, eighth-, and twelfth-grade Asian/Pacific Islander and white students scored at or above proficiency, compared to their black and Hispanic counterparts (KewalRamani et al., 2007). Such gaps lower the probability of future educational and economic success for black and Hispanic students. SCHOOL SUCCESS: SHIFTING THE FOCUS FROM SCHOOL FAILURE
A typology of school success that reflects two dimensions of engagement, physical and psychological, has been created by Richman and colleagues (2004). This typology shifts the focus from school failure to school success, which is consistent with the strengths-based orientation of the EID model and the research and practice of positive youth development (Damon, 2004). Physical engagement reflects whether the student is enrolled in school. Psychological engagement is a multifaceted dimension that reflects the extent to which the student is invested in the educational process. Indicators of psychological engagement include positive attitudes toward school and learning, attendance, trouble avoidance, extracurricular participation in school, completion of homework assignments, and satisfactory grades and achievement. On each dimension students can be scored as either engaged or withdrawn creating four distinct groups of students. The first group includes those who are both physically and psychologically withdrawn. In most cases, the physical withdrawal of these students follows from a psychological withdrawal from school that has increased over time. For these students, physically dropping out may seem like a logical course of action when they reach the legal dropout age. The second group involves students who physically drop out of school but who were psychologically engaged in school while they attended. These students may leave school because of situational constraints (such as being placed in a juvenile detention center) or life events or challenges (such as needing to work to support their family, or becoming pregnant). If given an opportunity or if constraints or barriers to their attendance are removed, www.TPRonline.org
moving students from the other three groups in the typology to this fourth group. The next section presents a model for thinking about students in this group, which effectively moves the focus from school dropout to school success—the desired result.
these students are likely to return to school or to complete an alternative program. The next group evidences physical engagement in school but psychological withdrawal. Martz (1992) referred to such students as “interior dropouts.” In some cases, these students are just biding time until they reach the legal age to drop out of school. In other cases, these students may actually graduate but finish school with inadequate preparation and poor prospects for the future. Students in this category may require a significant level of resources and, in the context of high-stakes testing, may be pressured in subtle ways to leave school—what Orfield and colleagues (2004) called the push-out syndrome. Without intervention, these students are highly likely to join students in the first group described above.
THE ECO-INTERACTIONAL DEVELOPMENTAL MODEL OF SCHOOL SUCCESS
The Eco-Interactional Developmental (EID) model of school success draws attention to the reciprocal process between students and their social environments over time, including the neighborhood, the school, the family, and the peer group (Richman et al., 2004). As primary social contexts, the neighborhood, the school, the family, and the peer group overlap and are nested within each other and are encompassed and influenced by a larger structural, social and cultural context (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Strong, positive, and complementary connections both within (e.g., family) and between (e.g., family and school) these social environments increase the probability that students will experience positive The EID model provides a framework for outcomes over time. understanding school success in the broader The concept of “goodness of fit,” which reflects a broader personcontexts in which students’ lives take place. in-environment perspective, is used to describe this dynamic and evolving interaction between students and the primary social environments in which they inhabit and participate (see Figure 1.1). The final group has the best chance to graduate from high school Two types of fit are conceptualized (see Caplan, 1987). The first and successfully transition to employment, including military fit is between students’ needs and the opportunities, resources, service, or further education. These students are both physically and supports available in the environment to address these needs and psychologically engaged in school. In the context of President (for example, the fit between students’ instructional needs and the presence of competent and caring teachers). The second fit is Obama’s goal to combat high school dropout and increase the between the demands and requirements of the environment and proportion of high school graduates who pursue post-secondary students’ competencies, capacities, and skills for meeting these training and education, the challenge is to find strategies for demands (for example, the fit between the school’s demand for successful Figure 1.1 completion of an end of grade math test, The Eco-Interactional Developmental Model of School Success and students’ understanding of the math concepts required for achieving a passing score). Both types of fit range from low to high.
Past Experiences Developmental Trajectory Future Orientation
PAST Neighborhood
FUTURE
PRESENT Skills & Competencies
Family
Needs & Interests
Adolescent
Peers
Developmental Personal Status Characteristics
School
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Situations of higher fit promote school success while situations of lower fit activate students’ coping, which may range from greater engagement in the task at hand to withdrawal from the situation. Importantly, environments may be both overdemanding and underdemanding in the context of students’ abilities. For example, Boyd and Shouse (1997) described the motto of schools with low academic press and high sense of community as “No one fails who shows up” (p. 149). In addition, the two types of fit are not necessarily independent. Reducing environmental demands to fit better with students’ abilities or situation may reduce the capacity of the environment to address students’ needs (Kulik, Oldham, & Hackman, 1987). For example, providing students with more free electives to increase their engagement in school may preclude the offering of subjects more central to their future success. Drawing on Bronfenbrenner’s (2005) bioecological theory of human development, the EID model directs primary attention to proximal processes in the social environment. Bronfenbrenner defined proximal processes as “progressively
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more complex reciprocal interaction[s] between an active, evolving biopsychosocial human organism and the persons, objects, and symbols in [the child’s] immediate environment… over extended periods of time” (p. 6). These processes may either promote or constrain students’ goodness of fit and their ability to achieve desired results. These may include people, in the form of interpersonal relationships and social support, or places, in the form of safety, satisfaction, and opportunity. At any one time, students both influence and are influenced by multiple proximal processes within and between social environments. Proximal processes are assumed to operate on a continuum from risk to asset, which is consistent with Sameroff and Guttman’s (2004) concept of “promotive factors”—factors that exert positive effects on outcomes, independent of risk status. Gilgun (1996) refers to such proximal processes as “assets,” to distinguish them from protective factors that operate in the context of risk. However, the EID model does not assume a one-to-one correspondence between proximal processes, in the form of people and places, and specified outcomes. Upper and lower threshold points may be present where the relationship between the proximal process and the specified outcome shifts more dramatically (Crane, 1991). For example, above a certain level of school safety, further
increases in safety may yield few additional benefits in student performance. On the other hand, once school safety declines below a certain level, student performance may drop precipitously. The operation and impact of proximal processes are assumed to vary by the students’ developmental status (such as their age), their personal characteristics (such as their race/ethnicity), and their intra-personal attributes, needs and interests, skills, and competencies (e.g., self-confidence). For example, peers become increasingly important as students move from elementary school to middle school (Brown, 2004), and consequently may play a greater role in the performance of students at school. In the context of cultural differences, the influence of the family also may loom larger in the life of Hispanic students than in the lives of their counterparts (Woolley, Kol, & Bowen, 2009). Finally, youth who lack self-confidence may find it difficult to cope with environmental challenges and to take advantage of opportunities from interpersonal social contexts that support growth and development (Garbarino, 1995). As seen in Figure 1.1, the EID model of school success focuses attention not only on the present but also on students’ past experiences and their anticipated futures. Students have a
Table 1.1
School Success Profile Dimensions SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT PROFILE
INDIVIDUAL ADAPTATION PROFILE
School
Family
Personal Beliefs and Well-Being
Learning Climate: Youth attend a school where students get a good education, where student needs come first, where the adults at school affirm and care about students, and where every student is valued. School Satisfaction: Youth enjoy going to their school, get along well with teachers and other students, and report that they are getting a good education. Teacher Support: Youth perceive teachers at their school as supportive, as caring about them and their academic success, and as expecting them to do their best. School Safety: Youth attend a school with a low level of crime, problem behavior, and bullying behavior.
Family Togetherness: Youth report that the people in their home feel a sense of emotional closeness and bonding with one another, do things together, and work together to solve problems. Parent Support: Youth feel that the adults in their home provide them with loving support and encouragement and spend free time with them. Home Academic Environment: Youth discuss their courses or programs at school, their schoolrelated activities, current events and politics, and their plans for the future with the adults who live in their home. Parent Education Support: Youth report that the adults in their home encourage and support them in their school work and activities, help them get needed books or supplies, and offer help with homework or special assignments. School Behavior Expectations: Youth perceive the adults in their home as expecting them to do their school work, to attend classes, and to follow school rules.
Social Support: Youth indicate that there are people they can turn to for various types of social support and assistance. Physical Health: Youth evidence good health, as indicated by an absence of symptoms or physical illness over the past seven days. Self-Confidence: Youth have a sense of confidence in themselves and positive self-regard. Adjustment: Youth do not feel a sense of sadness, confusion, aloneness, or general despair about the future.
Neighborhood
Friends
School Attitudes & Behavior
Neighbor Support: Youth perceive their neighbors as trustworthy and supportive of young people, interested in their welfare, and willing to help them if they have a problem. Neighborhood Youth Behavior: Youth live in a neighborhood where young people engage in constructive behavior, graduate from high school, and are unlikely to break the law and get in trouble with the police. Neighborhood Safety: Youth live in a neighbor hood with a low incidence of crime and violence.
Friend Support: Youth perceive their friends as trustworthy and supportive and as responsive to their needs and feelings. Peer Group Acceptance: Youth feel accepted by their peers, able to be themselves, and able to resist peer pressure. Friend Behavior: Youth have friends who are unlikely to break the law or get in trouble with the police, who stay out of trouble and perform well at school, and who are likely to graduate from high school.
School Engagement: Youth find school fun and exciting, look forward to learning new things at school, and look forward to going to school. Trouble Avoidance: Youth report that they have avoided problem behaviors in the past 30 days that reflect getting into trouble at school.
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Academic Performance Grades: Youth received at least B’s or C’s or better and no D’s or F’s on their most recent report card. They describe their grades as better or much better than the grades received by other students in their classes. www.TPRonline.org
The Eco-Interactional Developmental model of school success draws attention to the reciprocal process between students and their social environments over time, including the neighborhood, the school, the family, and the peer group. developmental past that informs and constrains their present situation. For example, prior grade retention has been associated with lower self-reported school engagement among middle school students (Woolley & Bowen, 2007). Students also have a future orientation, which includes their views and images about themselves in future roles. Recent results from an intervention with eighth grade students in three low-income middle schools demonstrated that efforts to promote students’ school-focused and future adult self-images resulted in higher grades and greater school engagement (Oyserman, Brickman, & Rhodes, 2007). Importantly, the effects of the intervention also buffered the negative influence of low parent school involvement (i.e., a proximal process as described above) on both grade point average and teacher-rated behavior. In summary, the EID model provides a framework for under standing school success in the broader contexts in which students’ lives take place. The concepts of nested social environments, reciprocity, goodness of fit, coping, proximal processes, and time (past, present, and future) provide a blueprint for informing assessment, basic and applied research, and intervention and prevention planning. In the next section, the application of the EID model to student assessment is reviewed. APPLICATION OF THE EID MODEL TO ASSESSMENT
A careful assessment of students and their situations, strengths, and needs is the beginning of the evidence-based practice planning sequence in schools. One such assessment is the School Success Profile (see www.schoolsuccessprofile.org), which uses the EID model as a theoretical foundation. The SSP is an online survey for informing, monitoring, and evaluating interventions to promote school success among middle and high school students. This survey assesses students within the context of their broader social environment and yields individual and summary group student profiles from the data, informing both micro- and macro-level practice interventions. (See G.L. Bowen, Rose, & N.K. Bowen, 2005, for a comprehensive review of the history and development of the SSP.) Consistent with a central tenet from the EID model that emphasizes the importance of multiple perspectives and multiple sources of www.TPRonline.org
information in understanding students’ lives (N.K. Bowen & Powers, 2005), the SSP is designed to augment other ways of knowing about students and their presenting situations. Practitioners are strongly encouraged to discuss SSP results with student respondents, allowing students to give meaning and interpretation to the quantitative results. Policy and practice decisions should not be based on SSP results alone. The current version of the SSP, available in both English and Spanish, includes 195 multiple-choice items. Framed and informed by the EID model, these items address students’ beliefs about their social environment—neighborhoods, schools, friends, and families—and about their own physical and psychological health and school performance (individual adaptation). The SSP currently assesses 22 core dimensions related to the student’s social environment and individual adaptation, which are all labeled and defined as assets that students need for healthy development and school success (see Table 1.1). Organizing the 22 core dimensions from the SSP into a logic model led to three levels of results: • Distal results (academic performance), • Intermediate results (personal beliefs and well-being, and school attitudes and behavior), and • Proximal results (neighborhood, school, friends, and family dimensions). Distal and intermediate results are considered student results because they are viewed as the consequence of addressing the physical, psychological, and support needs of students. As longer term results, no single agency, organization, or group can either take full credit for these results when students meet expectations or assume total responsibility when students fall short of expectations—they are the product of multiple contextual influences in the lives of students. Proximal results are considered program results because they are the targets of intervention and prevention activities. Unlike student results, results related to the neighborhood, school, peer, and family environment can be directly linked to the efforts of individuals and agencies working to help youth.
The probability of school success increases when students are able to live and learn in safe places and when supportive adults are available in the form of neighbors, teachers, and parents. These three levels of results have been compared to hands on a clock to both distinguish, as well as to represent, the chain of influence among them (G.L. Bowen, Rose, & N.K. Bowen, 2005). From this perspective, distal results (academic performance) are on the hour hand, intermediate results (personal beliefs/well being and school attitudes/behavior) are on the minute hand, and proximal results (neighborhood, school, family and peers) are on the second hand. Results on the hour hand turn slowest of all and depend on the movement of the second and minute hands. Results from the SSP-related research reveal the important role that neighborhoods, schools, families, and friends play in the school success of middle and high school students. Perhaps the two most consistent findings across SSP-related studies are the positive influence of safe neighborhoods and schools, and of supportive and caring adults, especially teachers, on student success at school (see G.L. Bowen, Rose, Powers, & Glennie, 2008; N.K. Bowen & G.L. Bowen, 1999; N.K. Bowen, G.L. Bowen, & Ware, 2002; Woolley et al., 2009; Woolley & Bowen, 2007; The Prevention Researcher
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