By PHK
The New York Times “rags-to-riches” Christmas story (December 21) on education featured Boston’s Media and Technology Charter High School, an institution established to help kids from poor, minority urban families succeed academically.
The proficiency levels of a majority of its students who had tested at the bottom rungs on the state’s eighth grade proficiency exams prior to entry rose dramatically after two years at the charter school. According to Times reporter Katie Zezima, 69 percent of the school’s tenth graders scored the highest possible rating in math and the school ranked 18th out of 338 Massachusetts high schools in English with 32 percent of the sophomores receiving the highest possible rating on the state proficiency exams.
So what’s the magic key?
The answer: Long hours, discipline, and strong student-mentor relationships – according to administrators, teachers and tutors. Young, college educated, 24/7 tutors who live in dorm-like accommodations on the school’s top floor made much of the difference.
But can this formula succeed elsewhere?
Skeptics include the Dean of Boston University’s School of Education who doesn’t think such a model could be made to work in public schools. Others question the school’s 20 percent drop-out rate. But what about the 80 percent who are succeeding? That figure looks awfully good to me – especially when most of those 80 percent were also destined for failure.
I think that this charter school demonstrates what can and should be done. Education colleges, state and city boards of education and parents should look at it carefully instead of lightly tossing the model off as impossible to replicate.
In effect, the young, college graduate tutors provide the role models and individual support these previously destined-for-failure kids from failed families require. These young grads tutor their charges in the basics allowing the teachers to concentrate on substance. In my experience, the two are closely intertwined: you can’t have one without the other.
And yes, because the tutors are on call 24/7, live in dormitory conditions, they don’t have much of a personal life. But does a U.S. soldier in Iraq? A sailor on a ship? Or what about people who are working two and three jobs just to get by?
I’m impressed that these Boston charter high school students have been able to bridge such deep achievement gaps in just two years, gaps that must have taken a lifetime to develop. These kids couldn’t have done it on their own.
There are probably a number of reasons for this charter school’s high success rate, but one that especially comes to my mind is: Attention. Someone cares. Someone who has succeeded actually thinks “I too can succeed and that person will help me do it.” Is this a piece of the “demanding Asian mother” syndrome (if you want to call it that) which my son often accused me of having when he was a high school student at the International School Manila (ISM) one of the Philippines’ most demanding schools? If so, good. Served him well; thank you very much.
A Still Valid Eighty Year Old Theory?
When I studied organizational theory in graduate school years ago, I read about the Hawthorne Effect – a testable theory based on empirical research about fundamental human nature although, of course, there are the critics.*
The studies were conducted from 1927-1932 at Western Electric’s Hawthorne plant in Chicago by Professor Elton Mayo. Much to my surprise when I was Googling for specific information about this theory, I discovered exactly what I needed - front and center on a six months old Singapore consulting firm’s website (www.singaporeteambuilding.com). This Asian team-building consulting firm located in one of Asia’s wealthiest countries points out:
the findings in Hawthorne Experiments have been generally described as the “Hawthorne Effect”, which can be summarised as "Individual behaviors may be altered because they know they are being studied." This is, however, only one of the many useful conclusions that Professor Mayo made. For example, Mayo also found that worker productivity increased with the psychological stimulus of being shown individual attention, feeling involved, and being made to feel important.
Isn’t that what the Media and Technology Charter School is all about? Making students feel involved and important through individual attention – perhaps the first concentrated dose of positive adult attention requiring hard academic work that many of these Boston slum kids have ever had? In the Hawthorne Works factory in Chicago in the 1920s and 30s, workers increased production – not because of changes in environment or wages – but because of the personal and positive attention paid by Mayo’s researchers.
I’m convinced that this is one of several keys to Asian educational success that I highlighted in an earlier post. So no surprises to me that Japanese manufacturers in the 1970s and Singaporeans today think Mayo’s eighty year old findings are important decades later.
Shouldn't more 21st century Americans take them seriously too?
Note: Managers.net explains the Hawthorne Effect succinctly and also briefly describes the critics major objection in clear English, not in the unreadable jargon used in the critiques I gave up attempting to decipher.