Customer Reviews

Beyond the Classroom: Why School Reform Has Failed and What Parents Need to Do

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Steinberg's book is a splash of cold water making readers face the real state of student achievement in America by focusing on what is influencing our high school students. Through this 10 year longitudinal study, interviewing more than 20,000 students and their parents, and comparing these findings with other prominent studies, Steinberg uncovers the root causes for low student achievement in America as compared to students in other countries and therefore why school reform initiatives have failed.

With an emphasis on student engagement in learning, the study looks at factors such as parenting strategies, the influence of peers and extracurricular activities. Steinberg looks primarily at issues beyond the school walls as the data shows these influences (large scale) are greater indicators of student success or failure than teacher's classroom practice or organization of the school system. Each factor is analyzed through the lens of socio-economic status, ethnicity, peer relationships and length of time since immigration to this country. As a result, the reader is forced to question the American culture; the attitudes, beliefs and values we perpetuate.

The good news is working hard in school is a strong predictor of academic achievement. Friends and group identity at school make a difference as do parenting techniques. The issues that we need to face are the rampant disengagement of parents in their children's lives, a peer culture that demeans academic success and scorns students who work hard and the negative impact on excessive extracurricular activity on student's achievement.

Steinberg makes 10 recommendations to begin refocusing the country's efforts. Each requires our society to take a good hard look at how we `do business'. To increase academic success for all students will require compromises and change on the part of students, parents, schools, businesses, government and mass media.

In a sobering thought, Steinberg asserts that "no curricular overhaul, no instructional innovation, no change in school organization, no toughening of standards, no rethinking of teacher training or compensation will succeed if students do not come to school interested in, and committed to, learning. In order to understand how this commitment develops, why it has waned over the past three decades, and, more importantly, how we can reengage students in the business of learning, we need to look, not at what goes on inside the classroom, but at students' lives outside the school's walls. Until we do just this, school reform will continue to be a disappointment, and our students' achievement will fail to improve."

I finished the book out of breath. We're in a race to save our children. Will our country pull together in time?

Steinberg's book "Beyond the Classroom" uses extensive research to determine what every teacher knows really goes on in schools. The VAST majority of schools do their very best to prepare students for whatever the student's future holds, but many students and their families don't value the education enough to really work at it. That is why American performance lags behind that of other industrial nations. I teach high school and I see the "slacker" culture that pervades. Although Steinberg would not go that far, I know that the Media portrays underachievers, and goof offs as cool people, and academics as nerds. Many students simply don't make the effort to learn because they take it for granted and they put things like jobs, sports, and social life ahead of study. Our problems with public education do not begin in the schools, the consumer culture of America teachees children how to think and the results are manifest in the schools. His research supports what I see every day in the classroom. I don't buy what conservative policticians say, because they are not on the front lines like I am. They never include teachers in Ed Reform because they see us as part of the problem. We can help make schools better, but only when parents and children care about it enough. Steinberg hits the nail on the head.

In summarizing over a decade of academic research into high school student achievement, Laurence Steinberg, in Beyond the Classroom-Why School Reformed has Failed and What Parents Need to Do, poses an alternative hypothesis. He argues that poor student achievement and low student commitment are determined outside the school and therefore, attempts to solve the problem of American education through school reform are ineffective. Steinberg offers that a lack of engagement on the part of students has pervaded American teenagers across all socio-economic layers and is the root cause of school failure.

The author effectively develops his argument by defining and comparing engaged and disengaged students. He then cites research into ethnicity, parenting, extra-curricula activities, and peer grouping as the contributors and distracters to academic engagement. His analysis of the significance of peer group influences provides validation of what many parents would argue as common sense findings. Throughout the text Steinberg masterfully presents traditional arguments from both sides of the political spectrum and answers them with findings supported by research data.

Beyond the Classroom closes with ten recommendations for parents, educators, and government officials. Unfortunately, Steinberg's recommendations suggest that improvement in student performance requires societal structural changes that at best assume active acceptance and participation of a majority of citizens engaged in social reform. However, to believe that a society disengaged from it's educational system - a system responsible in large part for proliferating the attributes of citizenship - can develop the will to make such systematic change is unrealistic.

Perhaps Steinberg's most significant contribution in offering Beyond the Classroom is in dispelling the concept that school reform in the existing school system can in fact solve the problem of low academic performance. This purpose alone makes this book a worthwhile read for those engaged in the welfare of our children.

There is no doubt that our schools are living through tough times. The public school system was created with the premise that many students would not do well and would go on into blue-collar jobs. The schools were there to educated those who would go into college. Today, almost all parents want their kids to go to college, thus schools are expected to get all kids ready, using an old system.

The battle cry over the past few years has been "back to basics" and "tougher standards for students and teachers." Steinberg claims we need to refocus our attention away from reform of schools to changing students and parents attitudes about school and learning. He claims a way to do this is to make grades mean something - parents have to emphasize doing well in school as more important than socializing, sports or after-school work. Colleges have to create and enforce tougher admissions, and eliminate remedial college courses that simply bring freshman up to college-level expectations. Parents have to be involved in school. He even claims that standards can be useful, if they are uniform for every participant in the system, from K-12 to higher Ed. And lastly, students need to realize that not only the grades they earn, but what they learn, will have a huge impact on the rest of their lives.

As a parent of a 13-year old - soon-to-be HS freshman, this book has given me a new perspective on how to support her. As a K-8 educator, I see new ways of looking at standards and the back-to-basics push. I don't agree with all that Steinberg has said, but this book does speak of the public school systems difficulties in a fresh new manner.

From his carefully designed, three-year study on American teenagers, Laurence Steinberg has concluded that our kids do badly in school because of the attitudes they hold toward education, the way they are parented, the peer groups they join, and the way they spend their time after school. As a parent, I learned plenty of good, specific ideas for steering my daughter toward academic success. Clearly thought out and written, this book is a fascinating read for anyone who cares about education, children, or the future of our country.

Excellent book that I'd recommend to any parent with kids in school to any teacher trying to make sense out of some of the problems they're facing with kids in the classroom. A lot of the findings in this book are ones many parents might not want to hear; i.e., much of the responsibility for kids' success in school isn't the schools' or government's fault -- it has to do with good old Mom and Dad. Much of the success and failure in schools today has, in fact, much to do with what goes on "beyond the classroom" -- with peers; with family; and surprisingly, with the culture in which you're raised. And something else is driven home time after time in this book: success comes from hard work! Not from genes Not from wealth. But from hard work! Read this, parents!!

School reform has always focused on teachers, teaching styles, curriculum, etc., without any regard for the student. Then when the reform fails to increase student achievement we wonder why. Steinberg, et al have finally created a study that looks at the external factors that effect students. People have always believed that parents, peers, culture, and expectations effect student achievements and attitudes, and now we know how. Anyone who is interested in school reform needs to read this book. School reform efforts need to continue to look at what happens in the classroom, but if we are truly interested in students learning and achieving at a high level, we need to begin focusing on how we get students to be engaged in learning.

I have been following the school reform movement for many years. The rhetoric is at times strident and the prescriptions lacking in common sense. I could never be convinced that the people who were writing the books on school reform knew any real teenagers. Steinberg, et al have for the first time in my memory actually gone and asked teenagers why they are screwing up. They went to seven schools and surveyed ALL the students there over a ten year period. Their conclusions fit in with all I know about the problems with declining test scores. This is decidedly not a politically correct book. It addresses why Blacks and Latinos do not objectively perform as well as Whites and why Whites do not perform as well as Asians in high schools. The basic problem is who your kids hang out with. Who their friends are. How they manage their time. This all appears to be a big DUHHH, but school reform people have missed this component completely. In short, this book is the best written and researched book on why scores on the SAT and other objective tests have been falling over the last forty years.

Focusing on the theme of extramural forces that contribute to the failure of school reform, psychologist Laurence Steinberg uses his expertise on adolescence and school engagement to posit that the achievement problem we face in the U.S. is unequivocally "a problem of attitude and effort, not ability" (p. 184), and nested outside the school's walls--primarily, in polarized parenting practices and a youth culture that demeans academic achievement, hard (academic) work, and internal attribution in favor of socializing with peers, leisure activities, part-time jobs, and blind faith in "native ability."

Although Steinberg investigates ethnic differences in student achievement, parenting practices, and peer culture, he walks a tightrope to avoid cultural insensitivity while making gross generalizations; notwithstanding, his findings and suggestions ultimately smack of intrigue and contention. Steinberg claims that authoritative parenting--as opposed to authoritarian, permissive, or disengaged--is most conducive to promoting engagement in school and learning. He then finds minimal between-group differences in parenting styles for White, Asian, Latino and Black families, which leads him to the inference that something is mitigating the parenting effect on Hispanic and Black students: that "something" is the peer group. Anti-intellectualism amongst peers, says Steinberg, is the single greatest threat to an individual student's achievement: "Much of the good work that Black and Latino parents are doing at home is being undone by countervailing pressures in their youngsters' peer groups" (p. 159). This, of course, begs the question, Are achievement patterns more dependent on the choice of the peer group--or is it the other way around--in other words, do peers place themselves into groups based on achievement patterns? I am inclined to believe that the issue is far more complicated than just this.

Particularly good to know is that Steinberg quells any theories about genetic inferiority between ethnic groups; particularly annoying, however, is Steinberg's use of Asian students as the benchmark from which he draws many inferences. For instance, why have Asian students generally outperformed their White, Latino, and Black counterparts? According to Steinberg's sources, Asian students are more sensitive to the perceived peril of not getting a quality education because the paucity of visible Asian role models (e.g., entertainers, athletes, and politicians). So is he suggesting that Black and Latino students don't see the danger of dropping out of high school because uneducated Black and Latino entertainers, athletes, and politicians just happen to be out there in abundance? That achievement is only normative within White and Asian peer groups? This argument is preposterous at best; specious at worst. I am not discrediting Steinberg's claim that peer culture is a salient factor in adolescent socialization and academic achievement; I'm just more interested in how and why certain peer groups form, why they are homogenous and exclusive, and how educators can make a difference if parents have apparently dropped the ball on their children (which apparently is outside the purview of this work, which is ostensibly aimed at parents). This is not to say that ethnic group differences are irrelevant--they clearly are not--I'm just not satisfied by reductionistic arguments like the one that puports that some ethnic groups equate intellectual achievement with "selling out" or "acting white." Clearly, there are a host of complex intervening factors that contribute to the achievement gap.

In a chapter cleverly entitled "All Work and All Play Makes Jack a Dumb Boy," Steinberg says that part-time employment and socializing are two major factors that undermine school engagement, and that teens are working and socializing more now than in the past. For the most part, he is right (although his empirical claim of 35 to 45 hours per week seems a bit sensational). However, he fails to situate his argument within the hegemony of consumerism and the economic reality of capitalist America (the land where "who you are" is determined by what you own--by the way, I have just added Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism to my must-read list). Nevertheless, Steinberg notes that particularly vulnerable to the insidiousness of consumerism are teenagers, who by and large are working menial part-time jobs that take away time from the potential of intellectual pursuit. This may be great for restaurants and retail stores, who often lobby to keep adolescent employment policies lenient, but I wonder what it really does to our students who detach themselves from school. Moreover, is it even realistic to think that we can save the detached student who is 16 years old and eager to enter part-time, unskilled work? By that age, teens may have already made up their minds that the academy is just not for them. Clearly, determining who schools are appealing to may be more important than blaming the students themselves.

Although Steinberg further annoys me by extending a clarion call for national standards and by plugging the work of Diane Ravitch, he has written an important piece that, if nothing else, reiterates the importance of looking beyond the school's walls for a better educational future.