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Good Social Skills Are Pivotal in Academic Success

We’ve all heard the stories about the long-haired nerd who avoids other people, sticks to himself, and aces every course he takes. The research shows that academic achievement rarely works like that – especially for primary and secondary school age children. In fact, the research shows just the opposite: Students who are well adjusted and have strong relationships with their teachers and other students are more likely to do well in school than those who don’t.

Schools Can Create Supportive Environments
When we see children who are well-adjusted, have productive and high trust relationships with their teachers and fellow students, and perform well academically, we applaud the students. On the other hand, when a student is not well-adjusted, is suspicious of others, and performs poorly in school, we blame the child.

Some children may have an innate drive in one direction or another, but the major influences on children are their home lives and their schools. These are the influences that can “make or break” a child. It also means that schools have a far greater role in determining the success of their students than most people have thought. The environment schools promote has a dramatic effect on the success of their students. The academic performance of the student body tells far more about the schools than it does about the aptitude and attitudes of the students on the day they enter their schools.

Social Skills Are Latent in Children and Shaped by Schools
Social skills are entirely voluntary. Positive social skills benefit others. These skills are easy to recognize because others can observe students and recognize their:

• sense of self-awareness
• awareness of their larger social environments
• ability to control their own emotions
• propensity to build high-trust relationships with others
• tendency to consistently make responsible decisions

Because these behaviors are voluntary, the role the school plays in shaping these behaviors is all but invisible. Nevertheless, the impact of schools on students’ social skills is profound. Further, the impact of students’ social skills on their academic performance is also profound. If we place this in the longstanding “nature vs nurture” argument, the evidence is very clear: nurture far, far outweighs nature.

In communities where parents don’t provide the social skills training that is so vital to academic success, it falls to the schools to provide that training.

Schools set the stage for building positive social skills several ways. The most obvious way is by setting school rules for behavior in the classroom and on playground. These rules tell children how to distinguish right from wrong. These values are not intrinsic; they are taught.

But rules are not enough. Teachers and the administration need to enforce the rules consistently all the time. Enforcing the rules is a matter of discipline. But this is still not enough.

Teachers need to recognize and reward their students’ social behaviors. More than that, students must recognize the achievements of the other students. This recognition of positive social behaviors provides feedback to each student about how to behave. They have to learn what is anti-social and what is acceptable.

Students who bully others need to be called to account – and quickly. Students will recognize their schools’ failure to identify and correct inappropriate behaviors. If left unresolved, these misbehaviors will leave lasting impressions on young children that can lead to lack of motivation in school, trouble with authority figures, and perhaps even expulsion. Schools recognize this dynamic and are adopting social programs that promote positive growth in the classroom and minimize bullying on the playground.

Academic Performance and Social Behavior Are Tightly Linked
Research has shown a correlation between childrens’ academic performance and their social behavior. Students who exhibit mature social behavior often have better academic performance than those who disregard others. Children who have positive relationships with their teachers are more apt to learn and be open to academic help and feedback. Through social programs, teachers and administrators create environments that promote meaningful student-teacher relationships and foster communities of students who want to come to school each day.

Peer-to-Peer Relations Are as Important as Student-Teacher Relations
Positive peer interactions and student-teacher relationships promote positive social behaviors and reduce bullying among elementary school aged children. These interactions and relationships can be structured through positive social emotional learning environments. This type of environment will promote cooperative classroom settings that, in turn, improve academic motivation and eliminate bullying. Social programs have the potential to reach students who are on the path for expulsion before it is too late.

The Personal and Social Costs of Being Expelled from School Are Very High
Expelling students from school is a lengthy process. It often begins with chronic absenteeism. In extreme cases, students can be expelled for causing serious physical injury to someone else, carrying a dangerous object, possession of certain substances, robbery, extortion, or assault on a school employee. The principal and the district superintendent must agree that expulsion is the only viable course of action. Students who are expelled have generally been suspended several times.

Students who face expulsion often lack academic motivation. They are often distant from peers and don’t look for positive relationships with authority figures. According to the American Bar Association, these students are 3.5 times more likely to be arrested as adults. The American Psychological Association concluded that zero tolerance of misbehavior is ineffective and leads to higher rates of antisocial behavior in the future. Students who face expulsion are unlikely to finish high school. In fact, they tend to be headed toward a life of unemployment and crime.

Expulsions don’t just affect the students. They affect the entire community. Expelling students often leads to more crime in the community. This is particularly pronounced in communities with high school drop-outs rates.

Social Skills Must Be Taught; They are Not Innate
Social behavior is a skill like any other. Parents and teachers must reinforce these for children to see them as normal and natural.

The University of Maryland’s Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology conducted research that demonstrated how crucial it is to build positive student-teacher relationships and improve the classroom climates through social development programs. Interactive social development programs stimulate emotional learning through cognitive development and interactions with other children. These interactions are most effective at developing positive social environments when students reinforce each other. This promotes cooperation and trust. Social programs also build a sense of community in the classroom. This comfort and positivity in the classroom motivates students to come to school.

The research also shows that when students show positive social behavior they are more likely to be successful academically. Social programs build healthy student-teacher relationships that foster better learning. Social programs condition students to receive acknowledgement for academic progress and good behavior from both their peers and their teachers. This, in turn leads students to be more invested in their education.

In Summary
When schools implement social development programs in their classrooms, children are conditioned to associate the positive social environment with learning and interacting in their classrooms. This, in turn, promotes school attendance and academic success.

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The California Department of Education Is Putting Its Money Where Its Mouth Is

At the beginning of 2013-2014 school year, the California Department of Education rolled out its Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF). The goal of the LCFF is to simplify how State funding is provided to local education agencies. The old system of funding was based on a revenue limit multiplied by the school district’s average daily attendance. With LCFF, the State has dropped its 40-year-old system; it has created a new method of funding that eliminates revenue limits and targets student profiles.

Parent-Teacher Associations Will Play Key Roles
The LCFF requires each school district to involve parents, teachers, and educators in creating a Local Control and Accountability Plan. This plan has eight areas of focus that reflect factors in and out of the classroom that shape students’ academic success. These areas include:

• basic services
• implementation of State standards
• course access
• student achievement
• other student outcomes
• student engagement
• parent involvement
• school climate

Altogether, the LCFF works to ensure that funding goes to support high quality educational programs — from fully credentialed teachers in each subject area to ensuring that school programs provide equal opportunity for each student.

The top notch educational programs are not the only part of a good school. The quality of the school social climate is just as important. With this in mind, the State designated half of the funding areas to maintaining the school climate and academic environment. These areas include:

• student health
• safety
• student discipline
• school connectedness

The State measures school connectedness through suspension and expulsion rates as well as surveys from students, teachers, and parents. The State also focuses on student engagement; the school should provide stimulating programs and course work that promote attendance and graduation. The State measures engagement through attendance rates, dropout rates, and graduation rates.

Even though the State introduced its LCFF plan, in some cases it still provides grants based on average daily attendance. The State provides school districts and charter schools a uniform base grant based on average daily attendance.

In Summary
The new LCFF plan gives school districts an opportunity to not only invest in the academic learning of students, but social-emotional learning as well. The LCFF involves the school’s parents, teachers, and staff in defining both academic and social learning programs. These programs should be designed to create an engaging and successful classroom environment. By investing in both aspects of children’s education, schools are supporting children’s academic success to the fullest extent. The academic and social-emotional programs work together to help students mature and connect to the academic environment. This, in turn, fosters a stronger will to learn. This new funding plan helps school districts promote better attendance and graduation rates by creating positive and engaging classroom environments.

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The Unintended Consequences of School Suspensions

While school suspensions aim to correct problem behavior, the results are often quite the opposite. Students who face suspension are more likely to end up struggling academically, face multiple suspensions, and are more likely to drop out and/or end up in jail.

Additionally, the absenteeism caused by suspension takes funding away from schools—in the hundreds of millions of dollars every year. This only exacerbates the issue as lack of resources makes it harder for schools to address problem behavior by students.

A vicious cycle can form where a student does not correct the problem behavior, faces multiple suspensions and eventually expulsion, and then moves to another school where the cycle continues. This not only likely results in students dropping out, but also leaving schools with low attendance, further reducing the funding they get.

Most educators understand this, but are at a loss for practical and effective solutions for correcting problem behavior without expelling or suspending students.

The Process of Suspending a Student

The decision to suspend a student comes about when a principal considers that the safety, care, and wellbeing of the student, staff, or other students is at jeopardy. Suspension of a student is typically considered when the student is involved in:

  • An act of violence
  • The possession of a firearm or prohibited weapon (including knifes)
  • The possession of illegal substances
  • An act of serious criminal behavior related to the school

Before a student can be put on suspension, a principal must consider the age, disabilities, and developmental level of the student, as well as the student welfare strategies that have been implemented, such as seeing the school counselor or nurse.

Based on the severity of the student’s actions, suspension can be broken down into short and long-term suspensions. A short-term suspension is when a student is suspended no more than four school days at a time. Short suspensions are typically implemented for cases of continued disobedience and aggressive behavior.

For a long-term suspension, the principal can impose up to 20 school days of suspension. If the behavior continues after two long suspensions, then the student is subject to expulsion from the school.

Why Out-of-School Suspensions Don’t Work

It is highly likely that a student facing suspension already holds a negative view towards attending school. To such as student, a suspension does not appear as punishment, or time to reflect on his or her actions, but instead as vacation time away from school and supervision.

Suspensions do not teach students how to correct the problem behavior, nor addresses underlying issues that may be present. More often than not, the student returns and reoffends, making time away from school only exacerbate the problem at hand, as noted in the 2012 Journal of School Violence.

On the other hand, the school does not have much of a choice. While alternative steps such as counseling can be taken, these require the student’s participation in order to be effective, as well as large sums of funding needed to support behavior-correcting solutions that may simply be nonexistent. Furthermore, discipline procedures are set by the school boards and lawyers, and removing a student appears to be simpler and more appealing than seeking alternative means of correcting the behavior. In the end, suspended students are often left without the support they need to make real changes.

The New Attitude Towards Suspensions in California

The attitudes towards student suspensions are changing. In 2014, California passed a bill, developed by the State Board of Education, that eliminates willful defiance or disruption of school activates as a reason to expel students, and shifts the focus of remedies towards positive reinforcement. This bill, known as Assembly Bill 420, came as a result of a push to keep students in the education system and to reduce suspensions in the state.

Before 420, The “act of willful defiance” made up almost half of suspensions, ranging from reasons such as not turning in homework to disrespecting a teacher. After the bill came into law, more than 45% of districts received the positive ratings of “blue” or “green”, indicating favorable performance under the new suspension standards. The total number of suspensions fell from 709,580 in 2011-12 to 503,101 in 2013-14—a 29% reduction–based on data from the California Department of Education.

Moreover, in Bellflower Unified School District, the reported number of instructional days missed because of suspension in 2015-2016 dropped by 85%, compared to 2014-2015. These improvements came after the new legislative approach that focuses on investing in student-teacher relationships, positive reinforcement for behavior through Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, and investing in elementary school counselors.

Additionally, in Stockton Unified School District, multiple elementary schools implemented “classroom circles” where students can make amends for poor behavior towards others and work through conflicts. These schools saw referrals to the office and suspensions drop by 70% and nearly 50%.

Nonetheless, the absenteeism costs schools in California hundreds of millions of dollars. Before the new legislative rollout in 2014, public schools in San Diego County reported a loss of $102 million dollars in state funding because of absenteeism. The attendance-based funding formula forces schools to track each students’ attendance, excused, unexcused, and suspension related combined. Therefore, while the number of suspensions are seen to be improving, the funding for schools are still constantly at risk because of chronic truancy. The new legislation is working to battle suspensions, but students still lack motivation to regularly attend school. This is a problem that districts have been facing at increasing rates since 1994.

Changing the Social Climate

There is a large push in the education system to move away from the penalty approach towards the restorative practices that bring involved students together, along with adults and peers, to talk through conflict. However, the students involved must be willing to participate to make the practice effective.

Nonetheless, the restorative process and formal Positive Behavioral Interventions and Support method have shown to improve the climate of schools in California. These methods encompass meditation, youth mentoring, and classroom circles to help keep students on track academically in addition to efforts to improve student-teacher relationships. This is a facet of support that can reduce classroom chaos, instill more respect towards the learning environment, and promote attendance.

If suspensions are the only practical option, in-school suspensions are recommended so that the student can remain under school supervision and receive attendance.

Overall, the focus should be on changing the social climate of the school. If students feel respected, safe, and comfortable in their learning environment, then they are more likely to participate in positive reinforcement methods and more regularly attend school.

About CoolSchool Central

CoolSchool Central aims to facilitate the transformation that Changes Futures by using SEL and video modeling. With CoolSchool Central, schools have the opportunity to save funding that can be invested back into the system to continually work towards positive behavioral development for students. Good for schools, good for students. Let’s help make this positive change together!

CoolSchool Central’s mission is to Change Futures by helping public schools create a safe, enjoyable environment where kids are excited about education. Studies show that the two key reasons why children don’t go to school are being afraid of being bullied at school and finding school to be boring. Using animated interactive programs, CoolSchool Central delivers SEL in an easy and engaging way to teach kids how to manage and navigate social interactions – creating truly CoolSchools.

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Teachers and Students of California: Samantha

Samantha

“My bubble was bursted. No matter what was happening in their lives or at school, the students knew they could come to me and I’d be there to listen. I would talk to them. They would always try to come to school and if they weren’t doing their homework we would work together to find out why. I feel that they (the students) need to have that loving, caring place – almost like being a family – because you don’t know where these kids are coming from. You don’t know where they wake up. You don’t know what happens in their life. You’re not walking in their shoes at that moment. But if they have somewhere safe then it can start. It can build their security and make them feel empowered, and want to come to school,and want to do work. And you can build up from there.”

Samantha is one of the twenty-six thousand teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District that deal with chronic absenteeism in K-12 classrooms. The teacher turnover rate is almost 40-50 percent according the laschoolreport.com and that equates to approximately $2.2 billion in funding that is lost per year.

CoolSchool Central offers a solution. It Changes Futures.

Names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.
Special thanks to Pexels for providing the stock image.
And special thanks to laschoolreport.com (http://laschoolreport.com/commentary-the-hidden-crisis-of-teacher-turnover-in-los-angeles-public-schools/)
Founded by SOMAmetrics Marketing Analyst, Winson Truong

winson@somametrics.com

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Bullying and Chronic Absenteeism

Education researchers are finding out that chronic absenteeism is one of the strongest predictors of success in school, impacting not only performance but high school graduation rates. Kids who are chronically absent find it very difficult to keep up with their school work and eventually may drop out.

We are also seeing research evidence tying bullying at school with chronic absenteeism. Any strategy to combat chronic absenteeism must also include strategies for combating bullying at school.

this article describes these issues in more detail and proposes some solutions.

Defining Absenteeism

The Federal guideline states that a student is considered chronically absent if she/he misses 10 percent or more of the school year—for any reason. That is roughly 18 school days, or about a month per school year.

However, since actual attendance is taken at a local level, definitions of absenteeism vary from state to state. For example, in some states, absence as a result of observance of a religious holiday may be excused. In others, absence due to care for a family member may be excused and not count as lack of attendance. Still more complicating the definition of absenteeism is whether attendance is recorded at the beginning of the school day or at the beginning of each class.

With that said, the vast majority of schools do not really keep attendance record by student, but mostly track percentage attendance per day. Therefore, a 90% daily attendance simply means that 90% of students showed up that particular day (and perhaps didn’t stay all day). It does not in any way provide information on which students missed 10% or more of school that year.

What we know about Absenteeism

In a comprehensive study on the effects of chronic absenteeism (Balfanz, R., & Byrnes, V. (2012): Chronic Absenteeism: Summarizing What We Know from Nationally Available Data. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Center for Social Organization of Schools), raises an alarm that all educators should heed:

  • Chronic absence in kindergarten was associated with lower academic performance in first grade. The impact is twice as great for students from low-income families.
  • Chronic absenteeism increases achievement gaps at the elementary, middle, and high school levels.
  • Chronic absenteeism is most prevalent in poor and/or rural communities, regardless of race and gender.
  • The study postulates that strategies that reduce absenteeism can drive up achievement, high school graduation, and college attainment rates even more than any changes in improvements of the education system.
  • The negative impact of absenteeism on school success increases with each passing year as students who are chronically absent tend to continue this pattern year to year unless steps are taken to change this. In other words, achievement gaps worsen with each passing year as such students end up missing a year’s worth of school in a five-year period.

The study also found out that only six states—Oregon, Rhode Island, Maryland, Florida, Georgia, and Nebraska—collected any data on chronic absenteeism. The picture from this data is not encouraging. The percentage of students who are chronically absent (miss 10% or more school days in a year) are from 6% (Nebraska) to as high as 23% (Oregon).

When looked at by specific counties, rural and/or poor counties tend to have a disproportionate rate of chronic absenteeism, reaching as high as 20% to 34% of students who are chronically absent. The problems are especially more urgent in high schools, and particularly among seniors. In many of these impacted areas, half or more of the students are chronically absent, missing as much as a month or more per school year.

For example, in one county in Maryland the percentage of students who are chronically absent are 24% of elementary students; 41% of middle school students, and 67% of high school students.

Furthermore, when a cohort of sixth-graders in Florida were tracked for seven years from 1997-98 through 2003-04, 46% of the students were found to have been chronically absent at least during one year (missed at least one month) and 18% of these sixth graders missed at least two months of school that year.

This long term tracking found that while for one-third of the students the chronic absenteeism occurred only once (only in one year), for two-thirds of the students, it was more persistent, occurring at least two out of the seven years: 39% were chronically absent three years or more; 22% were absent four years or more; and 10% were absent five years or more. The last group missed an average of 171 days of school in the seven years—practically a whole year of school.

Although we have data for only six states, the numbers in Florida and Maryland are likely representative of the nation due to the diverse nature of their population. It appears that anywhere from 10-11% of students nationally are chronically absent, missing one or more months of school per year, and that half of these are likely to be chronically absent at least two years. Millions of students nationwide are missing months of school.

Who, When and Where of Chronic Absenteeism

From the John Hopkins study, we see that chronic absenteeism starts high in Kindergarten, gradually decreases to its lowest level in third and fourth grade before rising again to peak in high school. This seems to indicate that initially, children miss school as parents adjust to new circumstances, and that this adjustment has reached its peak by elementary school. The fact that absenteeism rises again especially in high school indicates that new circumstances are the cause of it later on. There seems to be a correlation between key transitions in schooling.

The John Hopkins study further showed that gender does not seem to be a factor—those that are chronically absent tend to be equally divided by gender. Nor does it seem to matter whether the school site is urban, sub-urban, or rural.

However, the study shows a high degree of correlation between poverty and chronic absenteeism—students from poor areas (regardless of gender, race, or geographic location) showed high levels of chronic absenteeism. For example, in Maryland, the study found that chronic absenteeism were three times higher for economically disadvantaged students for middle and high schools, and at least twice as high for high school students. Similar results were shown for Oregon, Nebraska, and Georgia.

What may be more revealing is that the study consistently found that chronic absenteeism seemed to be concentrated within a few schools. Whether this is solely due to concentration of disadvantaged or poor students in that school or whether there are additional factors is not clear.

Does Attendance Matter?

Now that we have a better understanding of what chronic absenteeism is and whom it impacts, the next question is: How big an impact does it really have on learning success?

Various studies show that chronic absenteeism impacts students at all stages from kindergarten through high school graduation.

  • A study by Change and Romero (“Present, Engaged, and Accounted For. The Critical Importance of Addressing Chronic Absence in the Early Grades”) showed that chronic absence in kindergarten had an immediate impact on academic performance on all children, with long term consequences being most significant for poor children. The study found that not only the chronically absent children were affected, but so were the regularly attending children due to the constant disruption and changing dynamics.
  • A 2010 paper by Douglas Ready (“Socioeconomic Disadvantage, School Attendance, and Early Cognitive Development: The Differential Effects of School Exposure”) showed that chronically absent students had 14% less literacy skills in kindergarten than regularly attending students. These gaps became more pronounced by first grade with 15% less literary skills and 12% less mathematical skills.
  • More significantly, The Ready study showed that children from low-income households with good attendance gained more literacy skills than their higher income family peers.
  • Research by Michael Gottfried (“Evaluating the Relationship between Student Attendance and Achievement in Urban Elementary and Middle Schools: An Instrumental Variables Approach”) states, “The findings support the premise that a significant and practically meaningful relationship exists between attendance and achievement across multiple grades in urban schools: students with a higher number of days present have higher GPAs. Attendance also appears to be more strongly correlated with a higher GPA as students advance through years of schooling.”
  • Research by Chicago University Allensworth and Easton (“What Matters for Staying On-Track and Graduating in Chicago Public High Schools. A Close Look at Course Grades, Failures, and Attendance in the Freshman Year”) showed that how well students did in ninth grade was a strongest predictor of high school graduations and that, in turn, attendance was found to be the strongest predictor of academic performance.

These and various researches have indicated that from kindergarten through high school, attendance is highly correlated with academic performance—regardless of gender, geographic location or socio-economic status. In fact, these studies show that regular attendance was the single most reliable antidote to performance gaps shown between students from low-income households and more students from more affluent households.

What causes Chronic Absenteeism

So far, we have examined absenteeism and the incontrovertible evidence of significant impact on k-12 academic performance. The next question becomes, what are the causes of chronic absenteeism and how do we effectively deal with these to improve student attendance?

Various studies show that there are primarily two categories of reasons why students are absent from school:

  • They cannot go to school because they are required to be elsewhere (as in working to help support family or taking care of a family member) or are too sick to attend school
  • They will not to go to school because are trying to avoid unpleasant or even dangerous situations at school or on the way to and back from school.

Considering the fact that chronic lack of attendance for any reason is highly detrimental to academic success and high school graduation, it is imperative that schools find effective strategies to deal with each type of reason for such absence. However, as the reasons for absence are different, it is important to understand that the strategies must also be customized to address the reason for absence.

In this article, we look a little further into the second reason for chronic absenteeism—why children make a conscience effort to avoid school.

Why Kids Will not Go To School

While it is true that some kids are chronically absent because they find school boring and would rather be elsewhere, a significant portion of chronically absent students who make a conscience decision to avoid school do so avoid being harassed or bullied by other kids, either in school or on their way to and back from school.

An annual report called, “Bullying in US Schools. 2014 Status Report” indicates the following:

  • About 17% of all US public school students report being involved in bullying (12% were bullied only; 3% were both bullied and bullied others; and 2% reported bullying others).
  • However, the report found that bullying was the highest among 3rd grade students who reported being involved in bullying with 4th graders being the second highest at 19%. We will recall from the section on chronic absenteeism that this was precisely when chronic absenteeism was lowest, perhaps contributing to the higher number of students reporting being bullied.
  • This could also be indicative of why absenteeism continues to rise after 4th grade as more kids try to avoid being involved in bullying.
  • The report also shows a strong correlation between bullying and liking school: in grades 3-5, one out of five students exposed to bullying reported strongly disliking school. This number goes to one out of two students involved in bullying reporting strongly disliking school.
  • The report further showed that the level of empathy for those bullied was highest among 3-5th graders, and decreased with each increase in grade—from a high of 73% of 3-5th grade girls who want to help those being bullied dropping to 48% by the time they are 9-12th graders; and from a high of 69% of 3-5th grade boys who want to help dropping down to 42% of boys by 9-12th

This report tells us two important pieces of information we need to address regarding bullying in schools:

  1. It is highest among 3-4th graders
  2. That is the age when kids have the highest sympathy or empathy for those who are being bullied.

Therefore any strategy that focuses on teaching 3-4th graders to reduce bullying—by teaching those that are bullying that it is wrong; by teaching those that are being bullied how to properly respond so they are not bullied in future; and by teaching bystanders what the appropriate way is to help those that are being bullied—will have the highest impact on reducing bullying in schools or grades going forward.

The classroom curriculum should include instructions that help kids know how to appropriately respond to being bullied so that they are less likely to be bullied again. It should further teach compassion so that other kids know how to appropriately step in and help those that are being bullied. Ultimately, the goal is to teach kids why it is wrong to bully others so those likely to bully others stop doing so.

In a bullying-free school zone, kids would have fewer reasons to dislike school and avoid it, improving attendance, which improves performance at school.

This is born by evidence. A 2011 BERC study showed a strong correlation between 6th grade attendance and high school graduation rates. For kids who missed less than 10 days of 6th grade school, the high school graduation level was 70%. On the other hand, only 13% of students who missed 40 days or more of school year in 6th grade ended up graduating from high school.

The BERC study strongly indicates that reducing the number of school days missed at an early age increases high school graduation rates. Any effort that goes towards reducing absenteeism increases graduation and overall academic success.

Effective Anti-bullying programs for Schools

The most effective anti-bullying programs for schools should focus on very young children that are between kindergarten and 4th grade. It is especially most effective when taught to 3rd and 4th graders precisely because that is when bullying truly begins and kids at that age also have the highest empathy levels for other kids.

At a minimum, the characteristics of an effective anti-bullying program should look as follows:

  • It is directed primarily at young children
  • It teaches by example and is engaging, utilizing the medium that children prefer such as video animation
  • It does not create a burden for the teacher or the school, but enables the homeroom teacher to easily weave the program into the normal curriculum
  • It is builds on lessons so that students increasingly understand why bullying is wrong, why they should not engage in it, and why they cannot be just bystanders but must act appropriately to stop it. The program must be offered on an ongoing basis from year to year throughout elementary grades.
  • It is data driven and measures the effectiveness of the program, enabling teachers and administrators to see the effect and adjust the program as necessary
  • It should be inexpensive enough for every school to purchase, implement, train teachers and administrators, and continue to use the program from year to year

Conclusion

This article has documented the research done to show the impact of chronic absenteeism on overall academic performance and high school graduation levels.

It has also shown that a major contributing factor to chronic absenteeism is a need on the part of the student to avoid harassment and bullying in school. The article further shows studies on bullying that provide strong linkage between bullying and the dislike of school.

More importantly, the article makes the case that the right time to prevent bullying and increase classroom attendance is very early in elementary grades, where the likelihood of the of the effectiveness of programs are the highest.

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