Achievement Ideology and Alienation in School: Precarious Worth, Impossible Dreams, and Living Another’s Life

Drawing on over two years of the first author’s ethnographic fieldwork in two suburban high schools, the authors show how alienation is inextricably linked to an achievement ideology common in many forms of American schooling. In contrast to previous work that either no longer studies alienation or emphasizes alienation as a cause or result of student’ lack of achievement, the authors develop a theoretical defense of alienation to show how achieving students can still feel alienated. They describe three forms of alienation using the first author’s fieldwork: precarious worth, impossible dreams, and living another’s life. They close with the research’s political and sociological implications, especially the relationship between the achievement ideology and the study of schools itself.

Student Perceptions of Student Debt

Purpose: To evaluate the extent that high school students are concerned about student debt. Additionally, this study was conducted to see how much knowledge students had about college expenses and to see how they planned to pay back college debts. Hypothesis: Students will be concerned about having student debt. Method: 11th-12th grade students at two large, suburban high schools in the Northeast completed a 16 item survey assessing their plans for the future. The survey consisted of questions including if participants planned on going to college, how participants planned on repaying their college debts, how confident they felt in their abilities to pay back the borrowed money and how important the total cost of a college education is when deciding on what college to attend. Result: A total of 148 usable responses were collected and evaluated. 99.32% of participants planned on obtaining a college education, and 34.46% of students reported that cost was very important when making a final decision about where to attend college. A spearman's rank-order correlation analysis was conducted and found there to be several positive correlations including both parents socioeconomic status’ and the most important factor when deciding on a college. Conclusion: Although no correlation was found between students' grades and their concern with student debt, the study did show that students were only moderately confident in their abilities to repay their loans before graduation, helping to support the idea that high school students are concerned about student debt.

Correlation between Self-Reported Depression and Adolescent Obesity

This research study focused on the correlational relationship between self-reported depression levels and BMI. Health risks and suicidal levels have increased on a global scale due to slowly rising levels of obesity and depression. Past research has been conducted at a global level, only slightly touching on the direct correlation, finding that if one shows an increase, the other will as well1. However, there has been a lack of research focused on the local scale, specifically in suburban high schools in the Midwest. The author gave participants a personally constructed survey with the choice of an interview, testing their perception between the two variables. BMI along with results from a professionally developed depression test were reported, allowing for statistical analysis to be run between the two. This direct correlation, along with other potential factors receiving r values ranging from 0.04 to 0.5, found a few statistically significant relationships. This research led to surprising conclusions, with evidence for necessary further research.

The exploration of challenges to inviting social emotional learning in the secondary suburban classroom

The focus to emphasize Social Emotional Learning in the classroom has increased due to both Kansas state requirements for individualized learning plans and lack of skills reported by the State Education Commissioner (KSDE, 2019). What has not kept up with these demands are viable researched curriculums for social emotional learning available to high schools and more specifically suburban high schools (Williamson, Modecki, and Guerra, 2016). Through the lens of invitational education (Purkey and Novak, 2011) and coupled with the work of Elias, Ferrito, and Moceri (2016), it was the goal of the researcher to answer the overarching question what challenges exist to inviting Social Emotional Learning into the Secondary Suburban Classroom? The location for the study was purposefully selected due to meeting the criteria of being a suburban school district with multiple high schools from which to draw data and examine commonalities or differences. The diversity of the locations allowed the researcher to utilize a mixed-methods approach to engage teachers in a survey and focus groups. Simultaneously, the researcher observed classrooms and documents for evidence of Social Emotional Learning. Finally, the researcher interviewed district and building level administrators for their understanding of supporting social emotional learning. Upon analysis of the various data points, three themes emerged from the data: The organization is unintentionally invitational, lack of dissemination and training on SEL Standards, and disparity of common routines and processes. From this research it can be concluded; challenges exist when suburban high schools invite social emotional learning into the classroom and building, and proper training, consistent communication and the invitational process should be considered when planning.

In Suburbia

This chapter explores the Advanced Placement (AP) program in suburban school districts. Even as urban centers like Fort Worth and New York typify today's livelier venues for AP expansion, the program has deep roots in the prosperous suburbs that abut them. Along with elite private schools, upscale suburban high schools were among the program's earliest adopters, and they remain natural habitats for a nationally benchmarked, high-status venture that gives strong students a head start on the college education that they are almost certainly going to get and perhaps an extra advantage in gaining admission to the universities they aspire to. Yet they are also ripe for attention as they struggle with equity and growth issues of their own. The chapter then reviews two well-known yet very different suburban districts: Dublin City Schools in Ohio and Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland. Both are celebrated as education successes in their states and both boast long and impressive AP track records. Both, however, face distinctive challenges as they seek to serve today's constituents. Their stories illustrate how AP is functioning in places that know it well yet continue to evolve with it.

Across the Divide

The School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee coordinated a precollege program with rural, urban, and suburban high schools students to explore issues of race, class and geography to ameliorate the divide that often exists when high school students from monocultural communities move to more culturally diverse institutions of higher education. Through this program, participants engaged with each other via a common curriculum while participating in school projects and joint discussions. The goal of the program was to influence changes in the behavior of college-bound students, behaviors that often result in conflicts on campus when diverse cultures co-exist in new settings. Findings reveal that when institutions of higher education help connect and facilitate discussions among high school students, the potential benefits are high. Exposing high school students to diversity issues, while introducing them to a college experience, helps prepare them to ultimately take an active role in their communities.

The Coalition of Essential Schools and Rural Educational Reform

The Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) has existed for thirty years and includes hundreds of public schools that are diverse in size, population, and programmatic emphasis. A qualitative grounded theory approach is utilized to describe how three rural (non-urban/suburban) high schools operationalize CES Common Principles. This research documents that the CES reform network may be both a viable and underutilized reform model for rural school districts to assist them in achieving educational excellence. Empirical data came from school site visits, interviews and school documents. Grounded theory identifies four working hypothesis that explain how these schools, as CES members, aim to be true to the Coalition’s principles. The working hypotheses are: (1) Educational justice, democracy, and citizenship, (2) The educational value of interpersonal relationships between teachers and students, (3) Pedagogical and curricular organization to enhance student engagement and learning, and (4) Pathways to adulthood via the world.

Advanced Academic Participation

Participation in advanced academic programs such as Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) has been associated with higher student achievement and college readiness. In addition, AP and IB are widely recommended and implemented as services for gifted and talented students. Students who participate in these programs tend to be more successful in college admissions, scholarships, college grade point averages, and college completion rates. Black and Hispanic students do not generally participate in AP and IB programs at the same rate as same-school White students, leaving White students to benefit disproportionately in the transition from high school to college. This study analyzed ethnicity gaps in AP and IB programs longitudinally from 2001 to 2011 in 117 suburban high schools. Results indicated that AP/IB participation increased for all students over time ( d = 0.74). There were ethnicity gaps in 2001 and again in 2011 between Black and Hispanic student AP/IB participation and White student AP/IB participation, and the gaps neither increased nor decreased substantially over time. This study also examined school factors associated with AP/IB ethnicity gaps and found that overall schoolwide college readiness and the proportion of minority faculty at each school were moderately associated with changes in the magnitude of the gaps. Teacher experience and changing student demographics in schools showed little to no association with changes in the magnitude of the ethnicity gaps.