How schools can help kids beat the odds

Opinion editor's note: Editorials represent the opinions of the Star Tribune Editorial Board, which operates independently from the newsroom.

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It's arguably the most critical question in modern education: How can schools with the most challenging, lower-income student populations and seemingly intractable learning disparities boost achievement?

A recent Star Tribune news story highlighted schools across Minnesota that showed better-than-expected test results in schools with higher numbers of lower-income families. That's used as a metric because much of the research on student achievement finds a direct correlation between academic achievement and family income.

The schools and districts that are showing success offer strong examples and lessons for programs that are struggling.

Beating-the-odds schools, experts say, use instruction methods that introduce concepts through different kinds of lessons, empower students and expose them to more content that is relevant to their lives and cultures.

At Gideon Pond Elementary in Burnsville, for example, a teacher told the Star Tribune that students write and talk about their cultural identity as one way to better connect with other students and their academics. Gideon Pond is among about 30% of high-poverty schools that did better than expected last year on the state's math test and among the 20% that beat the odds on the reading exam.

Joe Nathan, co-director of the St. Paul-based Center for School Change, told an editorial writer that his organization's research over the years on both charter and traditional schools has found that strategies in several categories show the best results for improving student learning.

Among those areas: School staff should have high expectations coupled with helping students see a successful future for themselves through academics. They should define and reinforce clear goals for the entire school. And they should help students understand that they can make a real difference in the world. He agreed that family involvement is high on the list of key factors for schools.

"People talk about family engagement, but it must be serious, meaningful and should start even before school begins," Nathan said. "Schools must reach out to families … and as part of that engagement do things to build upon the strengths of the students and families — not just talk about their deficits."

And as Nathan pointed out in a recent commentary responding to a Star Tribune editorial, service learning is a strategy that not only helps improve attendance but also boosts general learning. He added that schools such as Higher Ground Academy in St. Paul have shown beat-the-odds improvement using those strategies.

"Earlier this year, Minnesota policymakers adopted policies that mobilize insights, ideas and the energy of Minnesota K-12 students," Nathan wrote. "These strategies recognize that, as one student explained, 'allowing me to help fix local problems helped fix me.' This is an asset approach, in contrast to the widely used deficit approach."