Beyond the Classroom: Why School Reform Has Failed ans What Parents Can Do

Journal of Negro Education, The, Summer 1996 by William Franklin

Beyond the Classroom: Why School Reform Has Failed and What Parents Can Do, by Laurence Steinberg, B. Bradford Brown, and Sanford Dornbusch. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1996. 233 pp. $22.00, paper.

Reviewed by William Franklin, California State University-Monterey Bay.

Beyond the Classroom provides parents, students, teachers, and administrators with a thought-provoking analysis of out-of-school factors that lead to academic underachievement. The authors of this book contend that the "real" problem with America's educational system is not a matter of school reform, diversity, mass media, or disadvantaged populations; rather, it is the disproportionate number of disengaged students. They further claim that America's classrooms are primarily filled with students who have not made an investment in their education, who spend more time participating in extracurricular activities and after school jobs, watching television, and hanging out with friends than studying. Moreover, their parents are unwilling or unable to sustain interest in their youngsters' educational endeavors after their elementary school years.

They draw these conclusions after conducting a 10-year longitudinal study that examined out-of-school factors contributing to low commitment and achievement levels in adolescents. A multidisciplinary team of scholars surveyed over twenty thousand adolescents from nine high schools in Wisconsin and California. They not only surveyed and interviewed students but also consulted teachers, parents, counselors, and administrators.

Clearly written for a general audience, the book is organized in such a way that the authors are able to present their case using language unobstructed by statistical inferences, tables, graphs, and scientific nomenclature. However, Steinberg et al. assert in the opening chapter that their findings and recommendations are supported by legitimate scientific research procedures.

Chapter one, entitled "The Real Problem," provides an alarming and disturbing overview of the state of education in the United States and the role of student disengagement. The authors define disengagement as typifying those students who "do not exert much effort in the classroom, are easily distracted during class, and expend little energy on inschool or out-of-school assignments. They have a jaded or cavalier attitude toward education and its importance to their future success or personal development" (p. 15). Engagement is defined as "the degree to which students are psychologically connected to what is going on in their classes" (p. 15). Engaged students, according to the authors, "concentrate on the task at hand. . strive to do their best when tested or called upon, and when. . given homework or other outside assignments. . .do them on time and in good faith" (p. 15).

In chapter two, the authors argue that not only is the U.S. a nation at risk, but it is also a nation in denial regarding the long-term negative effects of underachievement. They examine educational indices such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test and conclude that poor school performance is evident for students at all grade levels and in all social classes. When comparing educational achievement internationally, they find that U.S. students fare worse than their counterparts from nearly all other industrialized nations. They also cite research showing that even when comparing this nation's best students with their international counterparts, U.S. students fare worse.

Beyond the Classroom contends that America's school reform efforts have been disproportionately directed at changing structural elements of the system such as curricula, pedagogy, school calendars, school choice options, teacher training methods, and so forth. Millions of dollars and hours have been directed at changing how we deliver services to students within schools, without any substantial regard to factors outside the classroom that contribute to underachievement. The authors contend that school reform efforts have yielded pockets of success but have done little to significantly improve educational outcomes. However, they note that these efforts may have been successful at staving off an even more dramatic decline in academic achievement.

One of the most compelling and controversial chapters in Beyond the Classroom investigates the links between ethnicity and adolescent achievement. Although the authors express reservations about tackling this volatile subject matter, they insist that their findings were too important to exclude. Thus, in chapter five, "Ethnicity and Adolescent Achievement," Steinberg et al. turn their focus to what many academicians refer to as the "model minority" discourse. From the outset, the authors note that their approach to this topic is not merely to report differences in the level of achievement between Asian American students and their counterparts but to understand why those differences exist. Their findings reveal that Asian American students are doing significantly better in school than White, Black, and Latino adolescents. Moreover, they note that these achievement disparities persist even when social-class differences are considered. Although the authors note early in the chapter that there are low-achieving Asian American students as well as high-achieving Black and Latino students, they follow the national trend of treating those populations as anomalies or outliers and choose to focus exclusively on general patterns of ethnic differences in achievement. "In terms of school achievement," they conclude, "it may be more advantageous to be Asian than to be wealthy, to have nondivorced parents, or to have a mother who is able to stay at home full-time" (p. 86). They subsequently argue that when compared to Black and Latino adolescents, Asian American students are excelling because they are significantly more engaged in school and more likely to believe that doing poorly in school will lead to negative life outcomes. They further contend that as ethnic minority adolescents become more Americanized, their chances of doing well in school decrease. They are, however, less than explicit about what it means to be Americanized, thereby leaving readers confused and concerned about this lack of clarity.