The ESSA and opting out of the SBAC | Seattle Education

The ESSA and opting out of the SBAC | Seattle Education:

The ESSA and opting out of the SBAC

Pearson and others are exploiting our children by using them to establish the validity, or lack thereof, of the SBACSBAC Tests Show No Validity or ReliabilitySome state departments of education have threatened to withhold a high school diploma if a student doesn’t take and pass a so-called college readiness test in grade 11. However, no state legislature has passed a statute linking the award of a high school diploma to passing a state or federal mandated college readiness test in grade 11 (and it’s highly unlikely any legislature would).

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was replaced in December, 2015 with the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

This new Federal mandate was written to replace the No Child Left Behind Act. The main concerns that Carolyn and I have with ESSA are:

• The push for more charter schools.
• A big push for “personalized”, “blended” learning, meaning placing a student in front of a computer for the greater part of their class time. This is popular in charter schools as a way to keep cost down.
• A mandate of 95% student participation in standardized testing in response to the opt out movement with the threat of withholding Title I funds.

For greater detail on the ESSA, Mercedes Schneider has done a brilliant job of combing through the law and commenting on each aspect of the Federal Act.

About opting out of the Common Core testing, the state of New York in the springincreased their opt out numbers from 20% to 22%. There have been threats and pushback since the opt out numbers came out with the Federal government pressuring New York to come up with forms of punishment for districts who do not adhere to the 95% participation rate but as Sandra Stotsky points out, no state so far has been penalized by withholding Title I money and passing a mandated standardized test to graduate from high school needs to be put into law by the states to be legitimate.

We also need to keep in mind that the Common Core Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) has yet to be determined to be reliable and valid as an assessment of students’ understanding of subjects taught.

To follow is a repost of the article in full:

Opting out: A civic duty, not civil disobedience

The writers who crafted the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the 2015 bill co-The ESSA and opting out of the SBAC | Seattle Education:

Badass Teachers Association: The Opt Out Movement Continues to Grow

Badass Teachers Association: The Opt Out Movement Continues to Grow:

The Opt Out Movement Continues to Grow

This blog was originally posted at Changing the Narrative. Denisha Jones is a BAT Board of Directors and an Administrator for United Opt Out National. 

“As the opt out movement grows, we grow - sometimes in different directions and sometimes together - as we adjust to policy changes that impact our schools.” United Opt Out National. Growth is necessary to ensure we continue to refuse to accept the privatization of our schools and communities.  As a form of resistance, opt out threatens those who seek to push their toxic brand of reform on public education.  And as the tactics change and evolve, opt out is needed more than ever.  

            Opt out is a type of civil disobedience. It is a form of protest where parents, students, and teachers refuse to submit to the perverted use of high stakes standardized testing. We never wanted permission to opt out.  We never asked for an opt out clause. We promoted opt out as a tool for stopping the corporate assault on public education. Opt out was to be the first domino that sends the rest falling down. If a whole class opts out then there is no need for test prep and if a whole school opts out then there is no need to use valued added measures Badass Teachers Association: The Opt Out Movement Continues to Grow:

To Market, To Market – EduShyster

To Market, To Market – EduShyster:

To Market, To Market

A new study finds that with the education marketplace comes a whole lot of education marketing…

EduShyster: I thought I’d set the stage for our conversation by describing a great, by which I mean appalling, example of education marketing in action. Donald Trump visits a Cleveland charter school that advertises itself as *top-rated* despite getting an *F* rating from the state. And the school is operated by a deep-pocketed for-profit chain that is *on a journey towards excellence.* Thoughts?

Catherine DiMartino: It makes me think about health care advertising. With health care you have the FDA putting certain limitations and providing some kind of oversight. Education is a public good and this is children’s learning and their future, but there’s no kind of regulation.

EduShyster: One of the points you make is that parents, and even teachers, are To Market, To Market – EduShyster:

A Conversation With Diane Ravitch & Clarification On Opt Out – Exceptional Delaware

A Conversation With Diane Ravitch & Clarification On Opt Out – Exceptional Delaware:

A Conversation With Diane Ravitch & Clarification On Opt Out

Since myself and several other education bloggers came out with articles yesterday pushing for parents to opt out of more than just standardized assessments, we are being questioned by several in the fight against corporate education reform and the privatization of public schools.  Many of us found that social media groups where we regularly post articles were censoring us by not posting our articles.  This led to some anger and hostility.  Some felt we were undermining their own group goals with opt out.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Those of us who posted yesterday have been sounding the alarm about the ed tech invasion taking place in our schools even before the Every Student Succeeds Act bill was fully seen by everyone.  We believe the once a year assessments will be replaced by constant “stealth” assessments in a competency-based education set up by a constant digital learning environment.  We also believe that the ability to opt out will not be so easy when this happens.  Which is why we want to stop this from happening in the first place.  Sometimes you have to draw people into a conversation.  This was our attempt and it appears it is working.

As part of my article yesterday, I wrote about Diane Ravitch’s role in all this and how some felt she wasn’t speaking loud enough about these issues.  Last night into this morning, I had a very long exchange with Diane on her blog about this.  I want to share this conversation so that some who were misled about the intentions of my article understand where it was coming from.  It began with a comment from someone called “Digital Skeptic” (which is not me nor do I know who it is).  There is one part of the conversation that is bolded for emphasis as I feel it was the most important part of it.  The full story behind where all this came from and where the actual exchange took place can be seen here: BIG NEWS! DISCOVERY! One (1) Funder That Supports Public Schools!

Digital Skeptic, 9/14/16, 10:43am:

Well, you need to get up to speed on digital badging and learning eco-systems ASAP then. Maybe set up a google alert for “personalized learning?” That would give you a lot of material to start with. Also Knowledgeworks is one of the main promoters of this new way of looking at “education.”

Kevin Ohlandt, 9/15/16, 6:43pm:

Why is Diane refusing to answer questions about digital badging? She addresses A Conversation With Diane Ravitch & Clarification On Opt Out – Exceptional Delaware:

Has Competency Based Education Made the Opt Out Movement Passe? - Living in Dialogue

Has Competency Based Education Made the Opt Out Movement Passe? - Living in Dialogue:

Has Competency Based Education Made the Opt Out Movement Passe?

Some have argued recently that the Opt Out movement is dead because it has actually become helpful to those promoting constant online testing, since it interferes with the annual standardized tests. Since the annual tests can be replaced by online monitoring of student performance, this will be the wave of the future. So we should stop organizing parents and students to opt out, and instead focus on the new dangers coming from educational technology.

There is a real danger here. I wrote a post more than two years ago, entitled “Classroom of the Future, Student Centered or Device Centered,” which warned of this. I wrote:

In this mode of instruction, these devices become the mediator of almost every academic interaction between students and their teacher, and even one another.Students are assigned work on the device, they perform their work on the device, they share work through the device, and they receive feedback via the device. What is more, the means by which learning is measured—the standardized test—will also be via this device.

It is the appliance that now becomes “intelligent” about each student and the appliance is the vehicle by which lessons are “personalized,” because the appliance is what is keeping track of what the student is capable of, and where the student is weak.

Of course the teacher has the ability to oversee and monitor the assignments the device is making, but the whole idea is to automate this process. And this is Has Competency Based Education Made the Opt Out Movement Passe? - Living in Dialogue:

Trump: 'President Barack Obama was born in the United States'

Trump: 'President Barack Obama was born in the United States' - CNNPolitics.com:

Trump finally admits it: 'President Barack Obama was born in the United States'

Washington (CNN)Donald Trump finally admitted Friday that "President Barack Obama was born in the United States," reversing himself on the issue that propelled him into national politics five years ago.

Trump sought to end his longstanding attempt to discredit the nation's first African-American president with just a few sentences tacked on at the end of an event to unveil his new hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington.

But the issue isn't likely to die down any time soon -- especially as Trump continues to falsely blame Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for starting the "birtherism" controversy. Clinton spoke earlier Friday and said Trump's acknowledgment of Obama's birthplace doesn't go far enough and that he must also apologize.

"For five years, he has led the birther movement to delegitimize our first black president," Clinton said at an event in Washington. "His campaign was founded on this outrageous lie."

Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961.

Donald Trump: Hillary Clinton started birther movement

The President dismissed Trump's criticism Friday, joking with reporters at the White House and saying, "I was pretty confident about where I was born."

The birtherism controversy exploded Thursday evening when Trump said in an interview with The Washington Post that he still wasn't prepared to acknowledge Obama's birthplace. Within a few hours, the campaign released a statement -- attributed to his spokesman -- that said Trump now believes Obama was born in the United States.

Trump finally said the words out loud Friday morning.

Trump's history of suggesting Obama is a Muslim

"President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Period," Trump said. "Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again."

The developments over the past day were steeped in political motivations. With 53 days before the presidential election, Trump is moving into a margin of error race with Clinton and trying to broaden his appeal while maintaining his grip on the GOP base. Trump has made strenuous attempts to improve his dismal standing among minority voters and moderate Republicans in recent weeks, many of which see birtherism as racially motivated and an insult to Obama.

He is also aiming to take the issue of Obama's birthplace and legitimacy off the table by the time of the crucial debate with Clinton on September 26.

12 of Trump's most outrageous 'birther' claims

Trump has declined other opportunities in the past two weeks to refute his original birtherism.

When local Philadelphia TV station WPVI asked Trump on September 2 about his past statements about Obama not being born in the US, Trump replied: "I don't talk about it anymore. I told you, I don't talk about it anymore."

He repeated the same line when asked about it during a gaggle with reporters aboard his plane last week.

And in an interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly last week, Trump again said, "I don't bother talking about it."

Trump's extraordinary attempt to prove Obama was not a natural born US citizen and was therefore not qualified to be President started on the conservative fringe but incredibly gathered pace and became a major issue. The White House initially tried to ignore the birtherism movement as the work of conspiracy theorists but Trump's huge media profile propelled the issue through conservative media and it eventually gathered traction.

The saga only ended in a surreal and extraordinary moment in American politics when the sitting President went to the White House briefing room in April 2011 and produced his long-form birth certificate.Trump: 'President Barack Obama was born in the United States' - CNNPolitics.com:

 

Charter Schools in Black Areas Suspend More Often - The Atlantic

Charter Schools in Black Areas Suspend More Often - The Atlantic:

Where Charter-School Suspensions Are Concentrated

Many cities are rethinking how they discipline students, but old practices remain in some neighborhoods.

A group of students enters Opportunity Charter School in New York.

Students enter Harlem's Opportunity Charter School, which issued 231 suspensions in 2014, more than any other New York City school that year

Shanice Givens’s son, Cyrus, was 6 years old when administrators at his charter school, Success Academy in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, put him on a list of students they wanted to push out. “They’d suspend him for not having on shoes, for not having his shirt tucked, for going to the bathroom,” says Givens. “So he lost courage and a will to want to do better.”

According to Givens, Cyrus was suspended 30 times that school year. Success Academy spokesperson Ann Powell says the kindergartner was suspended only seven times. Either way, that’s a lot of suspensions for a 6 year old. Today, city leaders are increasingly pushing to reform school-discipline practices to minimize suspensions for students like Cyrus, heeding calls from activists and researchers who say excessive discipline can fuel rises in student dropout rates and push young people into the criminal-justice system.

In 2014, Boston mandated that suspensions and expulsions be treated as a last-resort option and that such decisions must come with guaranteed due process for students and their families. Last year, Washington, D.C., passed a bill that would prevent schools from expelling or suspending pre-kindergartners, with some exceptions for classroom violence. And New York City is now pushing to ban suspensions entirely from kindergarten through second grade, albeit with somepotential loopholes.

But data from these school districts indicate that one major factor may be undermining these reform efforts: charter schools.

In New York City, although the charter-school student population represents just under 7 percent of the district’s total enrollment, charter schools accounted for nearly 42 percent of all suspensions, according to the latest available state data, from 2014.

Over the 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 school years, of the 50 New York City schools with the most student suspensions, 46 were charter schools in 2013 and 48 were charter schools in 2014. Looking at suspension rates, 45 were charter schools in 2013 and 48 were charter schools in 2014. (These suspension rates control for student population and do not double-count students who receive multiple suspensions.)

A CityLab geographic analysis of these hyper-disciplinary schools finds that nearly all are concentrated in majority-black communities. And among the outlier schools, those with the most flagrant suspension numbers are clustered in the heart of New York’s black communities, particularly in Harlem in Manhattan, and in Crown Heights, Brownsville, and East New York in Brooklyn.

Similar patterns extend beyond New York. According to 2011-2012 charter and traditional public-school data from Washington, D.C., obtained by The Washington Post, charter schools accounted for 40 of the 50 schools with the most total suspensions and expulsions that year, despite the fact that they accounted Charter Schools in Black Areas Suspend More Often - The Atlantic:

Where Charter-School Suspensions Are ConcentratedCharter Schools in Black Areas Suspend More Often - The Atlantic:

Are U.S. children getting the best education for the dollar? | PBS NewsHour

Are U.S. children getting the best education for the dollar? | PBS NewsHour:

Are U.S. children getting the best education for the dollar?

From the first day of kindergarten to graduation from high school, schools in the United States invest nearly $139,000 for the average student’s education. That’s far less than some other developed countries.

That finding comes from a new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that explores education systems in 46 nations, including the United States, to better understand what factors influence children’s access to the classroom.

The United States ranks 12th among the nations in terms of the total amount educational institutions spend per student. The next country, Australia, pays $142,000 per student. Luxembourg tops the list with nearly $248,000.

“The world has really changed” in terms of access to education, but needs to do more. — Andreas Schleicher of OECD

Developed nations spend an average of more than 5 percent of their gross domestic product on education, according to the report. The United States is a little above average, spending more than 6 percent of its GDP on education, putting it seventh on that list behind Costa Rica, the United Kingdom and Colombia.

Overall, nations need to make education more “inclusive and equitable” and do more to encourage lifelong learning in order to meet the world’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals in education, which say — among other targets — that all girls and boys should attend free quality primary and secondary school, the report said.

“The world has really changed” for children’s access to education, said Andreas Schleicher, who oversees education research for the OECD.

A closer look at how nations spend those dollars reveals how countries prioritize and fund education differently — from per-student investment to teacher pay — and how varied student outcomes may be.

For example, U.S. middle school teachers’ salaries sit at the bottom of all OECD nations, behind only the Slovak Republic and Czech Republic.

But U.S. students sit in the classroom for more hours than nearly anywhere else — roughly 9,000 hours from kindergarten to eighth grade, according to the report.

The only countries where students receive more in-class instruction are Colombia, Denmark and Australia. Students in Hungary, Latvia and Russia spend the least amount of time in class among developed countries in the study.

And most U.S. children aren’t enrolled in preschool, despite research that suggests early childhood education provides a strong foundation for young students.

According to the OECD, four out of 10 3-year-olds are enrolled in pre-elementary education in the United States, which is about the same as Mexico. Both nations sit in the bottom 25 percent of countries analyzed.

By comparison, all French children are enrolled in pre-elementary education by age 3.

“The U.S. is really close to Mexico rather than most of the Atlantic leaders,” Schleicher said.

How much do education systems worldwide pay for the average student’s education?

• $247,822

Luxembourg

• $231,497

Switzerland

• $196,026

Norway

• $165,166

Denmark

• $163,790

United Kingdom

• $162,399

Austria

• $162,045

California

• $154,506

Sweden

• $146,672

Iceland

• $146,672

Netherlands

• $141,556

Australia

• $138,692

United States
Source: OECD

 Are U.S. children getting the best education for the dollar? | PBS NewsHour:

CURMUDGUCATION: Petrilli: Mission Accomplished + What do you mean? I took the test.

CURMUDGUCATION: Petrilli: Mission Accomplished:

Petrilli: Mission Accomplished

Remember when we had a terrible, terrible crisis in the number of terribly bad awful really no good schools (filled with stinky, disastrous teachers) and we had to put the reform pedal to the scholastic metal toot de suite! Common Core, teacher evaluations, choice-flavored systems-- we had to have them RIGHT NOW and couldn't afford to wait another second because crisis crisis CRISIS! Remember all that?

Well, good news. Crisis over. All fixed. Mission accomplished. At least that's the word from Mike Petrilli (Fordham) over at the Flypaper blog. 

School failure is no longer the United States’ most pressing educational problem—mediocrity is.

 For sure, we’re used to hearing that, and some of us are used to saying it. Indeed, many schools serving African Americans (and Latinos and low-income students) haven’t been very good. Some are still failing. But the truth is that they have gotten better over the past two decades—a lot better.

What Petrilli is arguing for here is a shift of focus, from focusing on creating excellent schools rather than eliminating bad ones.

Now as always we need to remember that Petrilli is not always in lockstep with his reformy brethren (he's still pretty much alone in pushing out loud the idea that not only should charters be allowed to  cream, but that creaming is really their actual purpose). Nevertheless, cancelling the Terrible Schools Crisis represents a bit of a rhetorical shift.

So what's going on here? Let me offer a couple of possible interpretations of the shift.

It's politics.

Petrilli invokes Trump's special message to black voters-- "Your lives suck terribly"-- and backs away from it. Right now reformsters have a Trump problem; specifically, their problem is that Trump is CURMUDGUCATION: Petrilli: Mission Accomplished:





What do you mean? I took the test.

 My class is wasting our time engaged for two days with a popular "research-based, computer adaptive assessment that helps kids learn."  It is several hours of our lives that we can't have back, and it reminds me once again of the very basic hurdles that these standardized bubble tests have trouble overcoming.

The biggest first hurdle is that the students have to care. The students have to think that it's really, really important that they give their all for these tests. The whole business makes me wonder if any of these test manufacturers have ever met an actual human, but I suspect that the real problem is that they have themselves so convinced that these tests are really important, valuable measures that it just no longer occurs to them that other people don't see reality in the same way (is there a word for when you gaslight yourself?)

But yesterday's first round reminded me of another issue, more subtle, but equally problematic.

So my student Chris (not the actual name) completes the forty-three questions in roughly ten minutes. This strikes me as improbable. SO I ask Cris, "Did you actually read the questions"

"Sure," Chris says.

"And did you read the selections that the questions went with?"

"No," Chris replies, with a subtext of "why would I What do you mean? I took the test.

Pro-charter school question drawing out-of-state backers - Berkshire Eagle Online

Pro-charter school question drawing out-of-state backers - Berkshire Eagle Online:

Pro-charter school question drawing out-of-state backers
Many out-of-state donors in play over charter school cap question

BOSTON ; A ballot question aimed at expanding the number of charter schools in the state is being funded by a network of deep-pocketed backers, with much of the money coming from outside.

Nearly half of the $12 million raised to support the charter school question comes from the New York-based Families for Excellent Schools, according to an Associated Press review of records filed with the Office of Campaign and Political Finance. Other funders include independent former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and two Arizona-based heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune.

There also are strong ties between the administration of Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, a long-time charter school supporter, and groups supporting the question. Baker's hand-picked chairman of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, Paul Sagan, contributed $100,000 to a group pushing the question.

James Peyser, chosen by Baker to serve as the state's secretary of education, formerly served as a trustee for Families for Excellent Schools. Peyser resigned on Jan. 5, 2015, about two weeks after then-Gov.-elect Baker announced his appointment.

Baker has defended the Sagan donation, describing criticism of it as "a nothing-burger." He said the focus should on the 32,000 students on charter school waiting lists.

"If other people want to make this all about the adults, that's fine," Baker said Monday. "We're going to focus on the kids."

The ballot question is about letting Massachusetts add up to a dozen new or expanded charter schools each year outside of existing caps.

The biggest source of funding comes from Families for Excellent Schools Advocacy Inc., which made nearly $5.8 million in direct contributions and another $301,020 in in-kind contributions. What's unclear from the campaign finance reports is where the group's funding comes from.

In response to an email seeking more information, the group released a statement from its state director Keri Rodrigues Lorenzo, who described Families for Excellent Schools as a nonprofit organization that has operated in Massachusetts since 2014.

"Our mission is to ensure that every child attends an excellent school by building coalitions of families and their allies and running campaigns that change education policy," the statement said. "We currently organize families across the commonwealth who are desperate for a better education in their communities."

The group is a more familiar presence in New York. This year it filed a federal lawsuit arguing the state Department of Education failed to properly address violence in schools, depriving students of their right to a public education.

On the pro-charter side, Bloomberg contributed $240,000; Jim Walton, the son of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, contributed $1.1 million; and Alice Walton, the daughter of Sam Walton, contributed $704,000.

Other big contributors include Lynnfield-based Strong Economy for Growth Inc., which gave $650,000; John Douglas Arnold, a principal for Centaurus Advisors from Texas, at $250,000; Education Reform Now Advocacy, of New York, at $250,000; and Boston-based Expanding Educational Opportunities, at $250,000.

Companies including EMC Corp., Partners Healthcare, The Kraft Group and Vertex Pharmaceuticals also are backing the ballot question and gave between $50,000 and $100,000. Pro-charter school question drawing out-of-state backers - Berkshire Eagle Online:

Take Two | Do big charitable donations to education always get an A+? | 89.3 KPCC

Take Two | Do big charitable donations to education always get an A+? | 89.3 KPCC:

Do big charitable donations to education always get an A+?

Wealthy philanthropists like Laurene Powell Jobs, Eli Broad and Mark Zuckerberg have made headlines for their charitable contributions to public education.

They make sizable donations with the hope of improving schools and, therefore, improving our future work force. Educational institutions benefit from these generous donations, but some wonder what kinds of complications could also arise?

For a deeper look into big money in public education, Take Two’s Alex Cohen spoke with Dale Russakoff, the author of “The Prize: Who's in Charge of America's Schools.”

HIGHLIGHTS

Your book,“The Prize: Who's in Charge of America's Schools” looked at what happened when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg donated $100 million dollars to revitalizing schools in Newark, New Jersey. What was he trying to accomplish?

This was his very first philanthropic move. He was twenty six years old when he made the gift. His desire was to change the nature of public education. He felt that it wasn’t serving the poorest kids at all and that he felt the main thing that was needed was to have a higher quality teacher in a system at every level. He wanted to create a different system that would attract better teachers and reward them so that they would stay. He thought he could do it by taking on this one public school district and transforming it.

What was the result of Zuckerberg’s donation to the schools in Newark, New Jersey?

It was a very mixed picture. The school district has seen some improvement in just the last year or so but for the first five years, the student performance was going down not up. There was a tremendous amount of upheaval and change because so many kids were leaving for charters in part and also because they were closing district schools and moving children around and moving teachers around so that students would come back to school in the fall and they would have all different teachers and a different atmosphere. I think that churn and that change turned out to be very problematic.

The question was, were those dollars actually spent on the individual needs of the kids? Having better teachers definitely meets certain individual needs of the kids but changing a big system and how teachers are rewarded and recruited and so forth doesn’t ensure that every child is going to have a better teacher. It may create a better system but when you get to the level of the individual child, you’re not guaranteeing that you’re going to see real change in the support for that kid’s needs.

For a wealthy benefactor like Mark Zuckerberg, how is donating to education different than other kinds of contributions like medical research or helping the homeless?

I think that in education, the emergence of charter schools - and charter schools in Newark did get a big chunk of the Zuckerberg money - has very much attracted wealthy donors because they see charters as running on the same principles as business run because they’re private organizations. Most charter schools are not union and they have the flexibility to make the kinds of changes that public schools in large bureaucracies with union workers can’t make on a dime. I think also, when they give money to a charter school, with a relatively small amount of money for them, they create a school and there’s something for them to see for their investment whereas if they’re giving to an art museum or a hospital they’re perpetuating something but they’re not seeing something new and different and I think that’s very satisfying to donors. 

*Quotes edited for clarity. 

The hear the full interview, click the blue arrow above.Take Two | Do big charitable donations to education always get an A+? | 89.3 KPCC:

Schools Look to Parents and Communities To Help Reduce Student Stress

Schools Look to Parents and Communities To Help Reduce Student Stress:

Educators Look to Parents and Communities To Help Reduce Student Stress

The change Chris Boitz saw in his students was gradual but unmistakable.

“Over the course of a few years, everything was different—their expressions, their demeanor, their moods,” he recalls. “There was a loss of focus. Many of them looked pretty desperate, actually.”

Boitz blames the “fear factor.” Students were afraid they weren’t taking enough Advanced Placement (AP) courses, that they weren’t getting the best grades, that they wouldn’t get into the best colleges, and that they weren’t pleasing their parents. The result: a stress level that shouldn’t be felt by an adult, let alone a 16- or 17-year-old high school student.

Boitz is a music teacher at Saratoga High, a high-achieving school in California where students are under great pressure to perform well. But schools that don’t share Saratoga’s high-performing percentile are not immune to high-stress academic environments.

A 2014 study by the American Psychological Association found that U.S. teens are even more stressed out than adults. Thirty percent of teens reported feeling sad or depressed because of stress, and 31% felt overwhelmed. Another 36% said that stress made them tired and 23% said it made them skip meals.

Awareness of student stress, says Denise Pope of Stanford University, has moved to the forefront. Pope is co-founder of the Challenge Success project, which provides school districts with strategies to promote student wellness, and co-author of
“Overloaded and Underprepared: Strategies for Stronger Schools and Healthy, Successful Kids.”

“People are finally seeing what negative stress does to the body, what that does to the psyche, and what it does to school engagement,” explains Pope. “Schools and communities know stress is a problem and they want solutions.”

School as a Pressure Cooker

Dr. Denise Pope of Stanford University

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with a little stress. That is, the kind of nervous energy or “butterflies” that can sharpen focus and increase performance during, say, a big test or a class presentation. But many students, educators and parents will tell you it’s different now: The strain has grown to crisis levels in many schools.

“The entire education system has created a pressure cooker for students and staff,” Pope explains. “Twenty years ago, when you asked teenagers about what stressed them out, you would typically first hear things like ‘my parents’ divorce,’ or ‘my Dad’s an alcoholic,’ or ‘I don’t fit in socially.’ Nowadays, it’s always about school.”Schools Look to Parents and Communities To Help Reduce Student Stress: