My daughters are still years away from college or even high school, but I’m not looking forward to the high-pressure arena that they look to be from afar. The stress and lack of sleep has to take a toll on students' health. I was curious, then, to hear about a program developed by researchers from Stanford’s Graduate School of Education called Challenge Success. The program helps parents and schools develop a more even-keeled approach to the high-pressure world that many college-bound middle- and high-schoolers find themselves in.
Last week, the program released Overloaded and Underprepared: Strategies for Stronger Schools and Healthy, Successful Kids, a book that gathers what researchers at Challenge Success have learned in the dozen years the program has been in place. The GSE’s website features a Q&A with two of the book’s authors: Denise Pope, PhD, EdM, a Stanford GSE lecturer and co-founder of Challenge Success, and Maureen Brown, Challenge Success Executive Director.
Below are some highlights of the interview, which is worth reading all the way through:
How are students overloaded today?
Pope: People assume with the new standards and requirements for college admission, that teachers need to cover more topics in class and that kids need to take more courses and do more activities in school and after school to meet expectations for success. This is a confusion between rigor and load. Rigor is real depth of understanding, mastery of the subject matter. That's what we want. Load is how much work is assigned. Many educators and many parents assume that the more work you assign and the more work students do, the better they will understand it. That is not necessarily the case. For example, we have teachers who teach AP classes and cut their homework load in half, and the kids end up doing as well on the exam. You don't have to do four hours of homework in order to learn something in depth or to retain it. But four hours of homework can be incredibly damaging physically and emotionally.
. . .
Who should read this book?
Pope: We started writing it for educators, to give a guide to those schools that couldn't physically partner with us at Challenge Success. The goal was to compile our best practices. But after a little bit of writing, I handed it to my husband (who isn’t an educator) just to see if it made sense. He came back and said, 'You know, I was really interested as a parent as to why a school would use a block schedule or why so many kids are cheating or what is the purpose of taking an Advanced Placement course.' So we realized it was actually a book for a much broader audience of people who were interested in the research on some of these practices.
Brown: For example, if parents don't understand the 'why' for certain policies or practices, they can't help advocate for real systemic change. The book gives parents the ability to ask the right questions at their schools to understand why their school is going down a certain path.
Previously: Excessive homework for high-performing high schoolers could be harmful, study finds, With school bells ringing, parents should ensure their children are doing enough sleeping, Stanford expert: Students shouldn't sacrifice sleep and Stanford researchers to study effectiveness of yoga-based wellness program at local schools
Photo by Psy3330 W10
