The latest results from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) provide the first in-depth look at school connectedness – a student's feeling of being part of and cared for at school. Previous research suggests that school connectedness helps protect teenagers against a number of risky behaviors because it has been linked with lower levels of substance use, violence, suicidal thoughts and attempts, pregnancy, and emotional distress.
Among the major findings:
* At schools that have classrooms where students get along with each other, pay attention, and hand in assignments on time, teenagers report substantially stronger feelings of connectedness than do other teens.
* Classroom size, long a concern of parents, is not related to students' connection to school.
* School size is related to how students feel about school: as school size increases, school connectedness declines.
* Teachers' experience or completion of an advanced degree has no bearing on school connectedness.
"What goes on in the classroom is key to keeping kids from becoming disenchanted with school," said study author Robert Blum, M.D, Ph.D., professor and director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Adolescent Health and Development. "It doesn’t matter whether you have 20 or 30 kids in a class. It doesn’t matter whether the teacher has a graduate degree. What matters is the environment that a student enters when he walks through the classroom door.
"Do students treat each other with respect? Do they get along well with the teacher? Do they pay attention in class and complete their assignments on time? These are the important questions."
Results from the Add Health study are reported today in a monograph by University of Minnesota researchers and in the April issue of the Journal of School Health. The monograph incorporates findings from the journal article, which was written by Clea McNeely, assistant professor at the University of Minnesota; James Nonnemaker, a research associate at Research Triangle Institute in Research Triangle Park, N.C.; and Blum. It also incorporates findings from an unpublished paper by James Moody, of the department of sociology at Ohio State University, and Peter Bearman, of the department of sociology at Columbia University.
The congressionally mandated, federally funded Add Health survey is a comprehensive, school-based study of the health-related behaviors of adolescents in the United States. It was directed by investigators from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The study analysis of school connectedness is based on written surveys filled out during the 1994-95 academic year by 71,515 students in 127 schools. In addition, administrators at participating schools completed questionnaires about school policies and procedures, teacher characteristics, and student body characteristics. Thus, Add Health is the only current, nationally representative dataset with information on school attributes and on students' feelings of school connectedness. The dataset is also the most extensive body of information on friendship networks and groups in school.
Blum and his colleagues found that the average level of school connectedness among all schools is 3.64 on a scale of 1 to 5, indicating that most students feel more than moderately connected to their schools. There were no schools where the majority of students felt totally disconnected; nor were there any schools in which all students felt fully engaged.
Classroom Climate Associated with Students' Attitudes Toward School
The survey results show that overall school connectedness is high in schools whose classrooms are places where students get along with each other and with their teachers, are engaged in learning, and complete their assignments.
"This speaks to the ability of teachers to make kids feel they are important members of the school," Blum said. "Other research has shown that when teachers are empathetic and consistent, allow students to manage themselves, and encourage them to make decisions, the classroom is a better place—and so is the school."
Teacher experience and additional schooling such as a master's degree were unrelated to students' feelings about school. "Teachers can acquire the skills needed to create good classroom environments," Blum said. "But this has to be a schoolwide phenomenon in order to make a difference. We can't expect one hour a day in a well-run classroom to change a kid's life."
School Size Matters, Class Size Doesn’t
School size was the only structural characteristic associated with school connectedness; as school size increases, school connectedness declines. The relationship is consistent, but it is not strong. Schools surveyed ranged in size from a school with just 42 students to mega-schools with more than 5,000 students.
"In smaller schools, students, teachers, and schools administrators all have more personal relationships with each other," said Blum. "They know who you are. This is important to keep kids engaged and a part of school."
And there is such a thing as too small, Blum cautioned. "Other research has shown that optimal high school enrollment seems to be between 600 and 900 students," he said. When high school enrollment falls below 600 students, academic achievement tends to suffer because schools that small have few resources. When school enrollment burgeons to more than about 1,200, both connectedness and academic achievement diminish.
Blum and his colleagues found that class size is not associated with school connectedness, although classes do tend to be larger in large schools. Average class size was just under 23 students.
Data Raise Questions Surrounding School Discipline Policies
The researchers found that school connectedness is lower in schools with harsher discipline policies, for example, zero-tolerance polices that impose out-of-school suspension or even expulsion for a first-time offense. But Blum cautioned that it is not clear from the data whether harsh discipline policies make students feel less connected to school or whether some other factor is causing the correlations.
"Still," Blum noted, "this finding may be relevant to the debate on zero-tolerance policies, which are intended to make schools safer. We found that students in schools with those types of discipline policies actually report feeling less safe at school than do students in schools with more moderate policies."
According to the Add Health data, nearly 40 percent of schools give out-of-school suspension the first time a student is caught smoking, but only four percent of schools give out-of-school suspension the first time a student is caught cheating.
For further information on the University of Minnesota Division of General Pediatrics and Adolescent Health, visit the Web site at: http://allaboutkids.umn.edu.
The findings released today are available in two articles:
Blum, R.W., McNeely, C.A., Rinehart, P.M. (2002) "Improving the odds: The untapped power of schools to improve the health of teens." Center for Adolescent Health and Development, University of Minnesota. Copies of this publication (up to three) may be obtained by contacting the Center for Adolescent Health, University of Minnesota, Suite 260, 200 Oak Street S.E., Minneapolis MN 55455-2002, e-mail: aph@umn.edu.
McNeely, C.A., Nonnemaker, J.M., Blum, R.W. (2002) "Promoting Student Connectedness to School: Evidence from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health." Journal of School Health, Vol. 72 (4).
Dionne Dougall or Mary Darby, Burness Communications, (301) 652-1558
Brenda Hudson, University of Minnesota Academic Health Center Communications, (612) 624-5680
Sarah Youngerman, University of Minnesota Academic Health Center Communications, (612) 624-4604
Deane Morrison, University News Service, (612) 624-2346
Journal
Journal of School Health