Student Achievement: Do Assets Make A Difference?
In schools across America, millions of youth face challenges that prevent them from achieving their academic goals. Peer pressure and harassment, exhaustion from too little sleep and too many activities, and the struggle to fit in are a few of the distractions students deal with on a daily basis. Yet, despite the demands, many students survive. Some even thrive. So what's going on in our schools that's keeping kids above water?
Search Institute has studied healthy youth development for more than a decade. The findings consistently reveal certain relationships, experiences, competencies, skills, values, and perceptions that young people need in order to have the most success in life. Specifically, the institute's researchers have identified 40 developmental assets that provide a solid foundation for life. Now, for the first time, researchers have examined the 40 developmental assets to determine which assets most profoundly impact student achievement, and which are most likely to be nurtured within school communities. Their findings are the focus of a new book, Great Places to Learn: How Asset-Building Schools Help Students Succeed, by Neal Starkman, Peter C. Scales, and Clay Roberts.
The assets found to have the most impact on academic performance, grades, and test scores in particular are #21(achievement motivation), #22(school engagement), and #18(youth programs). Students who report having these assets spend more time on homework, have better attendance, are more effective communicators, have greater feelings of support at school, and are more likely to enroll in college.
The Connection between Assets and School Performance
At its most basic level, the connection between assets and school performance can be summarized like this: Children who feel better about school do better in school. In fact, research supports this commonsense claim 1. But the relationship between assets and achievement is also more complex. In surveys of nearly 100,000 students in grades 6-12, Search Institute researchers found that young people with 31-40 assets were more likely to report getting good grades than young people with 0-10,11-20, or even 21-30. That means that while assets like #22 (school engagement) and #24 (bonding to school) add to the likelihood of success, so do less obviously school-related assets such as #14 (adult role models), #20 (time at home), and #33 (interpersonal competence).
The findings point to a holistic approach to helping youth succeed: Young people who have strong internal and external supports and guides, who feel valued and valuable, and who are involved in many positive activities and relationships do better in school. One of the important ways that assets work is that they help young people be resilient in the face of difficulties. A young person who struggles with a stressful household, taunting classmates, and an unclear understanding of the future may have asset-building connections that make her or him more resilient. For example, the young person may volunteer at a community center (asset #7, community values youth; #8, youth as resources; and #9, service to others), have a strong relationship with a friend's parents (asset #3, other adult relationships), and have an interest in art or computers that could lead to a career path (asset #17, creative activities).
Academic success is related, in part, to students' social competence and their ability to adapt to different environments. Thus, the more equipped young people are to navigate life, the more they are likely to achieve in school.
Schools Aren't Living Up to their Asset-Building Potential
Unfortunately, very few young people fall into the "most likely to succeed" category of 31-40 assets. On average, students surveyed by Search Institute experience about 18 assets; only 8 percent report having 31 or more. School communities should not assume that, because they are focused on young people and learning, asset building is already taking place, nor that it's at its fullest potential. In particular ,some assets related to school are quite low. Only 25 percent of students report having a caring school climate (asset #24).Twenty-four percent said they read for pleasure (asset #25), and less than one-third said their parents are involved in their schooling (asset #6). Fewer than half said that both parents and teachers expect them to do well (asset #16), that their schools have clear boundaries (asset#12), and that they do an hour or more of homework each school day (asset #23). More encouraging, but still not satisfactory, is that more than half the students reported caring about their schools (asset #24), being engaged in learning (#22), and being motivated to do well in school (#21). The picture grows more bleak as young people make the transition from middle to high school. Twelfth graders experience, on average, far fewer assets than do sixth graders. For this reason, creating and maintaining close relationships between students, teachers, and staff, as well as encouraging students to participate in activities that can contribute to the good of the school community, becomes even more important.
What Schools Can Do
Raising awareness throughout the school community about the importance of nurturing these assets is only a first step toward promoting the well-being of students. In order for students to benefit from asset building, administrators, teachers, and staff have to be intentional about focusing on assets in the school and making them a part of everyday life.
Assets are built primarily through relationships. How students relate to their peers, teachers, and other school staff and volunteers is key to whether or not they experience an asset-rich environment. Teachers especially have a unique role as they, more than anyone in a school, have the potential to empower their students and help them succeed.
Teachers can often pick out the children early on who, if they don't get extra support and attention, are likely to have problems in the future. The developmental assets can potentially help narrow the achievement gap between high- and underachieving students by giving them clear, consistent messages that can improve learning.
To most effectively build assets for all students in a school community, assets must be integrated into the major areas of school life, including curriculum and instruction, organization, and community partnerships.Other things that schools can do include embracing the developmental assets framework and actively promoting it; working to raise awareness in the wider community of the importance of building assets; assessing the number of assets students currently experience and what the school is doing to build assets; and infusing assets into the daily routine.
The Research Continues
Data on how the assets work are strong in some areas and sketchier in others. Some of the assets more directly affect the lives of young people and others work more indirectly. The assets cannot give all of the answers in understanding students' performance because many factors contribute to it. The clear message is that the developmental assets can play an important role in creating an environment optimal for learning. The asset framework serves as an organizing model that can help schools determine the best way to support and encourage students.
A successful child today can become a struggling teen tomorrow, if caring adults do nothing to meet her or his changing developmental needs or to positively impact daily experiences. No one source can by itself provide high levels of all the assets, but schools can be the catalysts for the community-wide collaboration needed to create a positive environment in which all youth can learn and grow.
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Average Number of Assets, by Grade
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Kalisha Davis
1 Goodeno, C. (1993). Classroom belonging among early adolescent students:
Relationships to motivation and achievement. Journal of Early Adolescence,
13,21-43.