Our School Focus Is All Wrong — Believe It Or Not, It’s Not the Teachers

I’ve been digging through a number of articles doing research on achievement based education, trying to tie down the independent variables that affect school achievement success. It’s not been easy to get a clear picture regarding this extremely complex issue. The conventional wisdom has everyone looking at the schools’ performance and in particular teacher performance; placing the lack of academic success squarely on the institutions and staff.  But, there are some things that don’t make sense. Chief among these is the fact that if an underperforming student is moved from a “failing school” to one that is not, then the student’s performance should automatically improve. However, this is not the case. For the most part, the student continues to underperform. We have twenty years of voucher schools and school choice, and the program has not produced any significant differences in the overall school achievement performance amongst the children who are at educational risk. Therefore, successful school achievement has to be dependent on something else.

For the most part, teachers know how to teach. Given reasonably motivated students of average intelligence and reasonable resources; teachers utilizing good teaching methods can teach. The whole idea, that discounting the teachers for being unable to precipitate change because of things out of their control; reflects unrealistic expectations. Too many people are using the underachievement of students as motivation to rake public teachers and schools over the coals for non educational issues. What is obvious to many is that these actions are being done to facilitate a change from public school over to private school education. But, this is not what this post is about.

Social scientists have long speculated that family SES (Social Economic Status) of the family was critical to educational achievement. But, they were unable to tie down the variables that led to higher achievement. It wasn’t until they started looking into specifics of the SES elements that important variables began to be revealed. It has always been fairly obvious that family income has had an impact, but that is only a minor consideration when looking at the data. Immigrant groups belie the causality of income when looking at their lack of economic resources, yet have high educational achievement.  In a paper written for the Journal of Family Psychology, 2005, by Pamela E. Davis-Kean of the University of Michigan, titled: The Influence of Parent Education and Family Income on Child Achievement: The Indirect Role of Parental Expectorations and the Home Environment ; she revealed data that finally makes sense.

Taking data from longitudinal studies, it turns out that the primary critical variables are to be found in the home. The primary motivators for achievement can be traced back to parental educational achievement, maternal expectations, parenting style and to a lesser degree income.

The studies showed that the higher the education level of parents, in particular mothers; the higher the educational achievement of the children. Although this is an indirect factor, it doesn’t accommodate the phenomena of educational achievement of children who have parents of low or limited educational achievement. What seems to be more of a factor, and perhaps the greatest factor, is maternal expectations.

The maternal role turns out to exert a powerful influence on educational achievement and overall successful outcomes for children. If the maternal parent provides a “warm and safe” environment and relationship, communicates positive high expectations and employs moderate discipline, this appears to be a recipe for success. There seems to be a great deal of truth to the tactics of the Tiger Mom although sometimes they appear to be over the top. Davis-Kean suggests that influencing the environment of the home is what must be investigated in further studies.

Something else that has been problematic is all of the children who have been diagnosed with ADHD. As it turns out, the home environment may hold the key to this phenomenon. It may not be ADHD after all but a condition identified as Reactive Attachment Disorder. Where children and parents fail to bond properly, the behaviors can closely manifest symptoms that appear very close or the same as ADHD. This also needs to be more closely investigated. If there is widespread misdiagnosis, then there are a number of children who are being needlessly medicated.

The force of the home cannot be underestimated in creating the kind of success that we are all seeking. Rather than spinning our wheels pursuing witch hunts focused on teachers and schools, we should be finding ways to positively influence the home environments. I know for many it will be hard to admit that they have been wrong, but if we really do claim to be concerned for children and their success, then we must put aside our false beliefs and redirect our efforts to where it will truly do some good, the home.