Addressing barriers to development and learning: School, family, community, and agency partnerships in New Mexico

Counseling and Human Development, Mar 2000 by Adelsheim, Steven

Every day, too many youngsters encounter external and internal barriers that interfere with healthy development and positive learning. This unfortunate reality ultimately makes it difficult for them to become productive members of society. Among those living in poverty, major inequities of opportunity interfere with school readiness, and this contributes to the large proportion of learning and behavior problems in urban and rural schools, especially those serving economically impoverished families. For all youngsters, a host of interfering factors arise from physical, mental health, and psychosocial concerns such as neighborhood and domestic violence, physical and sexual abuse, exposure to disease, relationship difficulties, school adjustment and attendance problems, encounters with the juvenile justice system, substance abuse, youth pregnancy, dropping out of school, homelessness, and so forth.

This article underscores the nature and scope of barriers to young people's development and learning, stresses the importance of collaboration for efforts to address such barriers, and offers a few implications for future policy and practice. With respect to collaboration, the emphasis is on highlighting the value of adopting a unifying concept around which prospective partners can rally and illustrates how one state, New Mexico, is doing this.

BARRIERS TO LEARNING

From the perspective of schooling, barriers to development and learning encompass any factor that interferes with satisfactory performance at school, including factors that make it difficult for teachers to teach effectively. The problems are exacerbated as youngsters face the frustrations of confronting barriers to development and learning and the debilitating effects of performing poorly at school (Adelman & Taylor, 1993; Allensworth, Wyche, Lawson, & Nicholson, 1997; Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, 1989; Comer, 1988; Dryfoos, 1990, 1998; Knitzer, Steinberg, & Fleisch, 1990; Schorr, 1997).

The number of youngsters affected is large and growing. How many are affected? Estimates vary. With specific respect to mental health concerns, between 12 percent and 22 percent of all children are described as suffering from a diagnosable mental, emotional, or behavioral disorder, with relatively few receiving mental health services (Costello, 1989; Hoagwood, 1995). Of the approximately 20 percent of children with mental health problems, however, 50 to 80 percent do not receive mental health care; 70 to 80 percent of children from disadvantaged families do not receive critical mental health services (Richardson et al., 1996).

If one adds the many others experiencing significant psychosocial problems, the numbers grow dramatically. Harold Hodgkinson (1989, p. 24), director of the Center for Demographic Policy, estimates that 40 percent of young people are "in very bad educational shape" and "at risk of failing to fulfill their physical and mental promise". The problems these students bring to the school setting often stem from restricted opportunities associated with poverty, difficult and diverse family circumstances, lack of English language skills, violent neighborhoods, and inadequate health care (Dryfoos, 1990, 1998; Knitzer et al., 1990; Schorr, 1997). The reality for many large urban and poor rural schools is that over 50% of their students manifest learning, behavior, and emotional problems.

One view of this issue is provided by a 1997 survey of 28,000 New Mexico public school students, grades 7 through 12, by the state's Office of Epidemiology in the Department of Health (New Mexico Department of Health, 1999). The survey focused on substance use, self esteem, depressive symptoms, and school behavior. The number of students abusing substances other than alcohol showed an increase from a previous study done in 1993. Of particular note: Marijuana use increased to approximately 25 percent of boys and 22 percent of girls, and other drugs of abuse, particularly inhalants and crack cocaine, continued to increase.

Those who reported any substance use were much more likely to have had problem behaviors at school, such as having stolen things, ditched school, put down others, or hit others on purpose. Students who reported higher rates of depressive symptoms, such as feeling sad, discouraged or hopeless, also reported more problem behaviors at school. Those reporting high rates of substance use, too, had higher scores on a measure of depressive symptoms (e.g., they too indicated feeling sad, discouraged, and hopeless), raising the suspicion that the students reporting more substance use also were the students reporting depressive symptoms. It was not clear whether the depression these students identified was a result of their substance use or their substance use secondary to self medication for depression. National data indicate that 20 to 40 percent of adolescents with substance abuse problems also may have co-morbid depressive disorders (Stowell & Estroff, 1992; Riggs et al., 1995; Weinberg et al., 1998).