The book Inequality by Christopher Jencks is in one sense an arid waste of somewhat confusing and misleading statistics between chapter one and chapter nine, and, in another sense, a destructive, unscientific critique of American education and families. Jencks' interpretation comes down hard on his basic feeling that "The crucial problem today is that relatively few people view income inequality as a serious problem; indeed the Nixon administration apparently convinced itself that income was too equally distributed in 1968 and that the rich needed additional incentives to get even richer . The Kennedy and Johnson administrations were only marginally better. Neither made any explicit effort to equalize incomes; the subject was hardly discussed. Instead reformers focused on equalizing opportunity." This view is probably correct but it is no excuse for an unscholarly, unscientific polemic against far from "peripheral institutions," which is Jencks' evaluation of the American schools. This book states

Inequality, A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America.

The construct of school climate has received attention as a way to enhance student achievement and reduce problem behaviors. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the existing literature on school climate and to bring to light the strengths, weakness, and gaps in the ways researchers have approached the construct. The central information in this article is organized into five sections. In the first, we describe the theoretical frameworks to support the multidimensionality of school climate and how school climate impacts student outcomes. In the second, we provide a breakdown of the four domains that make up school climate, including academic, community, safety, and institutional environment. In the third, we examine research on the outcomes of school climate. In the fourth, we outline the measurement and analytic methods of the construct of school climate. Finally, we summarize the strengths and limitations of the current work on school climate and make suggestions for future research directions.

School Climate: A Review of the Construct, Measurement, and Impact on Student Outcomes.

https://isiarticles.com/bundles/Article/pre/pdf/36748.pdf

Update on bullying at school: Science forgotten?

This Social Policy Report considers the importance of young children’s emotional development for their school readiness, suggesting that social scientists can provide policy makers with concrete ways to conceptualize, measure and target young children’s emotional adjustment in early educational and child care settings. This Report then reviews a recent and persuasive body of rigorous research, to determine whether children’s emotional adjustment can be significantly affected by interventions implemented in the preschool and early school years. Results of this review suggest that family early educational, and clinical interventions offer policy makers a wide array of choices in ways that they can make sound investments in young children’s emotional development and school readiness. This research suggests that, while young children’s emotional and behavioral problems are costly to their chances of school success, these problems are identifiable early, are amenable to change, and can be reduced over time. What kinds of investments should policy makers be advised to make, at what point in young children’s development, and in what settings? While modest investments in low-cost interventions initially may seem appealing, this report suggests that there are few bargains to be had when investing in young children’s emotional adjustment. With this caveat in mind, the findings of this report suggest that policy makers should broaden early elementary educational mandates for school readiness to include children’s emotional and behavioral adjustments as key programmatic goals. Policy makers should consider targeting young children’s emotional adjustment prior to school entry, in diverse settings such as Head Start, child care settings, as well as in the first few years of school. Finally, young children’s emotional adjustment can serve as an important benchmark of programmatic success in other policy arenas focusing on child welfare, family support, and economic self-sufficiency, as well as in education.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/j.2379-3988.2002.tb00041.x

Emotions Matter: Making the Case for the Role of Young Children's Emotional Development for Early School Readiness

Emotional/behavioral disturbance (EBD) is characterized by a range of behaviors that adversely affect a child's academic performance and cannot be explained by other sensory or health impairments. Al- though research has clearly demonstrated that children and youth with EBD tend to exhibit high rates of problem behavior, research on the characteristics of their academic performance has been less clear. This article reports the results of a meta-analysis of the academic status of students with EBD. The over- all effect size was −.64, which indicated that students with EBD had significant deficits in academic achievement. An examination of moderators (subject area, setting, and age) indicated that students with EBD performed at a significantly lower level than did students without disabilities across academic subjects and settings; greater deficits were not observed in older students with EBD (i.e., those more than 12 years old), as compared to younger students. Implications and areas for future research are discussed.

/pdf/a-meta-analysis-of-the-academic-status-of-students-with-34ejp9c6uh.pdf

A Meta-Analysis of the Academic Status of Students with Emotional/Behavioral Disturbance:

Researchers have demonstrated a strong correlation between antisocial behavior and academic failure among students.Yet current educational programs designed to modify one or both of these patterns of conduct tend to be limited in at least two fundamental ways. First, they tend to treat conditions associated with academic achievement as separate from those associated with violent or other antisocial behavior. Second, they often focus narrowly on modifying selected cognitions or personality characteristics of the individual (e.g., changing attitudes and beliefs).Yet both antisocial behavior and academic failure are context specific; each occurs within a climate in which conditions can be identified that reasonably predict problematic behavior and can be modified to reduce such behavior.The success of prevention and intervention programs, therefore, hinges on their ability to identify and modify climates in which academic failure and antisocial behavior emerge. In this article we examine the role of school c...

Robert Welker

Papers

Antisocial behavior, academic failure, and school climate: A critical review.

Toward a broader understanding of professional responsiblity: A reply to Samual Mitchell