Tag: public schools

Posted in Reading Response

School Effectiveness & Possible Improvements

Posted on by Dallie P.

Reading Response #6: “Time in School: How Does the U.S. Compare?”

Jim Hull and Mandy Newport worked together to create a brief entitled “Time in School: How Does the U.S. Compare” which strives to answer the question do United States students spend less time in school than students in other countries? Published by the Center for Public Education, the article examines the claim made by U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan during a congressional hearing which used data to assert that students in India and China attended school twenty-five to thirty percent longer than students in the United States. The claim was made in an effort to prompt a policy decision in favor of raising the minimum number of hours required by schools in the United States.

Hull and Newport’s article utilized data from the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), Education Commission of the States’, and the World Data on Education to develop the briefing. The time measurements were based on the countries’ compulsory hours, or minimum hours of instruction per year, allowing for some discrepancies in what countries consider instructional hours. India and China were considered to directly examine the claims made by U.S. Department of Education Secretary Duncan. Korea, Japan, Finland, Canada, England, France, Germany, and Italy were also examined in order to fully examine whether United States students were required to spend less time in schools than other countries.

The results were overwhelmingly against Secretary Duncan’s claims. India and China required less or about equal to the same number of hours as United States. The other countries repeated this pattern, often requiring less hours. Finland, one of the world’s top performers in education, actually had a minimum number of hours significantly smaller than the United State’s average and still less than Vermont’s minimum, which is the least amount of hours required of any state in the U.S.

The Persistence of Memory – Salvador Dali

As a work in the public sphere, this briefing is a well done response to claims made by a public figure. U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan made a claim, and the authors of this briefing, Jim Hull and Mandy Newport, made a reply in that they looked at Secretary Duncan’s claims and determined more explicitly the veracity of said claims. The briefing remains unbiased, clearly listing the source of its data and the method utilized. It also makes clear the limitations of its findings. The briefing also offers alternative methods to be considered in order to improve student effectiveness that does not include adding more hours to the minimum requirement.

The article is interesting in that it puts the United States public schools on a national scale and makes a comparison. The United States is fairly average in number of instructional hours required of students. Increasing the minimum would not create a more constructive educational system. Making students attend school longer would not make them better students. Instead, policy makers should consider alternative methods to increase effectiveness of students and instruction. The briefing lists a few ways to make the most of school time. I would encourage ways the schools could make the most of the students’ abilities. Mental health issues have been proven to be detrimental to student success, especially when they present as behavioral issues that disrupt entire classrooms. By addressing these concerns through various practices designed to better the current treatment and counseling systems indirectly, students would receive the help they need and their balanced well-beings would result in more effective learning. Students with balanced mental health would be more successful and less distracting, resulting in the improvement of school effectiveness desired by policy makers such as U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

Meditation for the Classroom
Mindfulness in the Classroom
Posted in Reading Response

Mind-Body Techniques

Posted on by Dallie P.

Research Blog #2: “Use of Treatment and Counseling Services and Mind-Body Techniques by Students with Emotional and Behavioral Difficulties”

Wasantha Jayawardene, Ryan Erbe, David Lohrmann, and Mohammad Torabi worked together to produce a peer reviewed research article entitled “Use of Treatment and Counseling Services and Mind-Body Techniques by Students with Emotional and Behavioral Difficulties.” Their proclaimed motivation was to study how treatment and counseling services from schools affected the use of mind-body techniques in students with difficulties based on the notion that MBTs can improve children’s health and wellness. All of the findings were based on National Health Interview Survey data. The article came to an interesting conclusion after studying not only the use of treatment and counseling services as well as mind-body techniques, but also the correlation with family-level factors.

The research found that mind-body techniques were more likely to be used in students with emotional and behavioral difficulties in 2007 than in 2012, demonstrating a decrease of its usage. Gender showed a significant difference as girls were much more likely to utilize mind-body techniques than boys. The use of mind-body techniques also increased based on a family with higher educated parents or a member with a limitation. Finally, school only treatment and counselling services were less likely to use mind-body techniques than nonschool only services.

These conclusions are interesting because it suggests that there is truly a stigma involved. An increasing number of school-aged people are experiencing emotional or behavioral difficulties, yet this research indicates that schools are less likely to utilize mind-body techniques, which have been proven to help, than other outside institutions. This is troubling because not only do students spend a vast majority of their days at school, leaving schools with a responsibility to properly care for all factors of their well-being, but their families may be dependent on school assistance to care for their kids.

As a research article in the public sphere, the authors presented their findings as objectively as possible, even sighting the limitations of their results. They detail all the aspects of their work and findings and present it in a logical format. The article was accepted in less than a year, effectively working its way through the public sphere of academia. It is a strong, well-presented article.

It is the information within that is cause for concern to me. Schools hold a responsibility to protect and care for their students. That includes caring for their well-being, mental or otherwise. Mind-body techniques have been shown to work, yet the schools show a tendency to avoid using them. Rather than simply avoiding the hassle, schools should be striving to battle the stigma surrounding the use of mind-body techniques. They are helpful for everyone. It is not something just for girls or those rich families; mind-body techniques are useful way to treat emotional and behavioral difficulties without resorting to medications.

Public schools are equalizers. The economic status of a child’s family plays very little part in the day to day activities within the schools. If schools were to introduce mind-body techniques to all of their grade levels, everyone would be able to get access to help and the stigma would slowly dissolve as more students were exposed to it. The difference between mind-body technique usage would no longer be as vast between parents with higher education and without, or between families with or without a member with limitations. All genders would be exposed to helpful techniques that could help them balance their well-being. This article shows that public schools ought to step up their game and begin introducing mind-body techniques into their treatment and counseling services and, ideally, to their student body as a whole.