'Cascading Effect' Of Childhood Experiences May Explain Serious Teen Violence

Adverse experiences early in life can lead to minor childhood behavior problems, which can grow into serious acts of teen violence, according to new research. This "cascading effect" of repeated negative incidents and behaviors is the focus of an article in the journal Child Development. . . .

The researchers tracked 754 children from preschool through adulthood and documented that children who have social and academic problems in elementary school are more likely to have parents who withdraw from them over time. That opens the door for them to make friends with adolescents exhibiting deviant behaviors and, ultimately, leads them to engage in serious and sometimes costly acts of violence.

The developmental path toward violent outcomes was largely the same for boys and girls . . . .

Dodge and his colleagues in the Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group also found that the cascade could be traced back to children born with biological risks or born into economically disadvantaged environments, both of which make consistent parenting a challenge. They determined biological risk by assessing the temperaments of the children in infancy, based on mothers' reports; those at risk were irritable, easily startled and difficult to calm. These children are more likely to exhibit minor social and cognitive problems upon entering school. From there, the behavior problems begin to "cascade," he said.

"The findings indicate that these trajectories are not inevitable, but can be deflected at each subsequent era in development, through interactions with peers, school, and parents along the way," said Dodge, who is the William McDougall Professor of Public Policy and a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke. "Successful early intervention could redirect paths of antisocial development to prevent serious violent behavior in adolescence," Dodge said.

A �Crisis Point� for Service Learning?

Peter Levine, director of CIRCLE, blogged the other day about the recently released report �Community Service and Service-Learning in America�s Schools� by the Corporation for National & Community Service. The report shows, among other things, the decline in the practice of service-learning in K-12 schools from 32% in 1999 to 24% today. Peter commented that:

It's my sense that the movement for service-learning has reached a crisis point. It isn't included in federal education law; it isn't a priority in an era of concern about reading and math; the federal funding has been cut (in real terms) since 2001; and the quality of programs is so uneven that outsiders could be reasonably skeptical about its value. On the other hand, the best programs are superb; they fit the outlook of the incoming administration; and there is strong support for service-learning in the Kennedy-Hatch Serve-America bill that both Senators McCain and Obama promised to sign. That bill would direct most resources to poor districts, which today are much less likely to offer service-learning. So we could be poised for improvements in quality, quantity, and equality. Or else service-learning could falter if Kennedy-Hatch isn't fully funded and the grassroots movement continues to shrink.

In one respect I think Peter is missing more prosaic reasons for the decline: NCLB pressures. It�s not just the focus on �reading and math.� Schools have curtailed and narrowed curricular offerings, focused on the so-called �bubble kids� who, if passing, help a school reach AYP, expanded test prep, and, especially in urban schools, fixated on instrumental models of teaching and learning that marginalize more wholistic notions of the educated child. In such an age of standardized accountability, of course service-learning offerings would be minimized and marginalized. And especially when a reform effort at the K-12 level is not rooted deeply, it becomes a casualty of another innovative pedagogical and curricular offering left behind in an age of all too many things left behind.

But what really caught my eye was Peter�s sense of a �crisis point.� I am much more in tune with service-learning in higher education, where service-learning is riding the wave of �engagement�: a scholarship of engagement; community engagement; civic engagement; pedagogies of engagement. Peter has his ear much closer to the ground of K-12 education, and if he feels this way, it says much about how a national movement (which is how I would describe the service-learning field) has been shunted, if not derailed, by the accountability and standards movement. Perhaps it is just his way to put pressure on stakeholders to prioritize the �Serve America� bill currently in Congress; or perhaps it is a simple descriptive detailing of the state of affairs in service-learning circles around K-12 education. If in fact it is the latter, then I can only point once again to the worry of any pedagogical innovation to the dust bin of �faddism� ($). The report, of course, points out the positives, especially the continued increase in �service� across K-12 education. But the decline of academic linkages bodes ill for �engagement� in higher education as accountability (through such testing as the Collegiate Learning Assessment) makes its way into the academy.

New student-led program aims at dropouts

Faced with nearly half of Chicago Public Schools freshmen dropping out before they graduate, education leaders plan to announce Thursday a student-led program to help struggling students at eight high schools.

The initiative is the brainchild of a group of students that looked at the problem during the last year and calls for setting up individual plans to keep students in school, setting up retreats to help them stay focused on graduating and having students review curriculum to make it more meaningful.

It comes after more than 52 Chicago high school students spent the last year surveying more than 1,325 students and hundreds of parents and teachers about the district's dropout problem.

The group found that students blamed themselves for dropping out of school. Nearly one-quarter said a lack of motivation or laziness by students was the main reason for the high dropout rate. Many others said teenage pregnancy was another issue.

But when pressed by the student researchers, the survey found that students said they were not being engaged or motivated by teachers or the curriculum. They also cited safety concerns, said Hennessy Williams, a Kenwood Academy junior who helped conduct the surveys.

"When you encourage somebody, they can go a long way. When we were doing our interviews that's what was mostly coming up --that they wanted some support," said Williams, 18.

Williams and the other students worked as part of Voices of Youth in Chicago Education, a coalition of youth leaders from community organizations and high schools throughout the city.

The program, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the non-profit Communities for Public Education Reform, took students to districts in five other states. The high schools taking part in the test program are Dyett, Gage Park, Kelly, Kelvyn Park, Kenwood, Perspectives, Roosevelt and Senn.

Among the initiatives, the program asks schools to develop leadership teams made of students working with adults to offer student input on issues. They will conduct focus groups to review curriculum and textbooks to make them more relevant, officials said.

The schools will offer retreats three times a year to struggling freshmen who have been identified by teachers, principals or other students. Students will get one-on-one counseling from teachers, counselors and upperclassmen to help develop four-year plans with the goal of graduating high school.

Number of U.S. Hungry Kids Jumped 50% Last Year

Some 691,000 children went hungry in America sometime in 2007, while close to one in eight Americans struggled to feed themselves adequately even before this year�s sharp economic downturn, the Agriculture Department reported Monday.

The department�s annual report on food security showed that during 2007 the number of children who suffered a substantial disruption in the amount of food they typically eat was more than double the 430,000 in 2006 and the largest figure since 716,000 in 1998.

Non-Election Edition: The Death of a School

Via Progressive Historians, "Open Campus"

Jane Cooper Elementary sits gutted in one of the worst parts of one of the most impoverished and dangerous cities in the richest nation in the world. In the late 1990s, Mayor Dennis Archer's office identified this neighborhood as having "more children, more people living in poverty, a greater proportion of high school dropouts, and a larger percentage of violent juvenile offenses than the city as a whole." Which, in Detroit, is saying quite a bit.

They Can't See the Page: More Basic Reasons Poor Kids Struggle to Learn

One in twenty students has trouble focusing well enough to read without trouble. How are kids supposed to learn if they can't see the page?

This isn't new information. We've known about the "vision problem" for years.

In fact, not surprisingly, for poor children this problem, is much worse.

Research indicates that:

50% of low-income kids have untreated vision problems

In some underserved areas, the number of children who fall through the cracks is staggering. Optometrists volunteering through the Lions Club found that 47 percent of children had vision problems in schools in West Los Angeles.

And you can't catch these problems with the cursory exams usually done in schools:

Many lay people confuse a vision screening with a vision exam, although the former is but a procedure that's supposed to identify those children who may need further examination. However, the screenings many schools administer even fall short of that. Vision screenings that test only acuity detect 30 percent of children who would fail a professional exam

In fact, cursory exams may actually exacerbate the problem, indicating that a child can see fine and reducing the chance that she will get a comprehensive exam. In other words, poor exams may actually ensure that the problem is never corrected.

How much of the challenge that poor kids face in learning results from incredibly basic causes that have nothing to do with pedaogy (or even with more subtle issues like cultural mismatch, etc.).

How about the relationship between vision and "delinquent" kids?

A key finding was that almost all of the 132 delinquents in the study had learning related vision problems, but only a few had nearsightedness, farsightedness or astigmatism. Common in teens, these refractive problems are a sign that the person has made adaptations to deal with the stress of close work in the classroom. . . .

The lack of such problems in these delinquents indicates that, at any early age, they chose not to deal with close work, Dr. Harris said. Other study findings show the reason why. They simply lacked the vision skills to do close work.

How much of the achievement gap could be eliminated with comprehensive health care, breakfast, and nutrition?

What an incredible tragedy. Even on these most basic levels we find it impossible to support these children.