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Colvin, G., Tobin, T., Beard, K., Hagan, S., & Sprague, J. (1998).  The school bully: Assessing the problem, developing interventions, and future research directions.  Journal of Behavioral Education, 8(3), 293-319.

One of the increasing problems in classrooms and playgrounds today is that of bullying activity, perhaps the most overt of the symptoms of lack of respect and responsibility.  Such behavior has serious repercussions for the climate of the school and for the safety of the students.  Recent research has shown that there is a strong relationship between bullying in the school and later violence and crime in the community.  It seems that bullying in school becomes the training ground for future criminals.  The real questions are: (1) What encourages and perpetuates the behavior of bullies?  (2) What needs do bullies have that could be met in more constructive ways? (3) What responses from victims and non‑-victims make bullying more or less likely to occur?  (4) What factors in the school may contribute to an atmosphere that fosters bullying?  A number of schools are starting to attack the problem by developing bullying prevention programs.  The authors identify three criteria for bully prevention programs.  Those criteria are that the pro­gram has research documenting its effectiveness, is based on established behavioral principles, and emphasizes establishing prosocial behavior to replace bullying behavior.  Suggested areas for future research are: (1) What supports do teachers need to conduct functional behavioral assessments of bullying? (2) What components of early social skills instruction are important in the prevention of anti‑social behaviors leading to bullying?  (3) Which interventions are effective with students who have established patterns of bullying behavior?  Bullying is a problem that in the past has been treated piecemeal, on a case-by-case basis.  These authors have recognized the need for a systematic and comprehensive approach.

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Kellam, S. (1999).  The influence of the first‑grade classroom on the development of aggressive behavior.  Phi Delta Kappa Research Bulletin No. 25.

All effects have causes and all causes have beginnings.  The truth of this rather obvious observation is not always acted upon, but investigator Kellam did so by attempting to relate classroom behavior in first grade to classroom behavior in middle school.  This longitudinal study was initiated in the 1985-86 school year with 1,084 first grade students in eighteen Baltimore City Public Schools and was terminated with the remaining 682 middle school students in 1991-92.  Classroom behavior was rated twice each year in the first two years of the study and once each year thereafter, and an intervention program, the “Good Behavior Game,” was conducted on a randomly selected half of the classrooms throughout the first two years.  Three types of measures were taken:

The results were mainly on boys because only 9 percent of the first grade girls were classified as aggressive.  This was too small a sample for dependable inference.  However, it was found that boys who rated in the upper quartile of aggression in the first grade and who were in higher aggression first­ grade classrooms, were 59 times as likely to be rated as aggressive in middle school.  The intervention appeared to have some effect but the results were uncertain.

Perhaps the most important informal conclusion was that a large proportion of teachers are ill-prepared to handle maladaptive behavior in first grade students, with the result of such aggression continuing through school.  The lesson seems clear.  Teachers even at the earliest levels of schooling need to be trained in the best techniques of dealing with maladaptive student be­havior and the school system needs to have strategies to respond to highly aggressive students and classes.

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Lee, K. (1996).  A study of teacher responses based on their conception of intelligence.  Journal of Classroom Interaction, 31(2), 1 -12.

Sometimes the respect teachers find in the classroom depends in part on how much respect the teachers display toward the students.  One problem is that sometimes teachers are displaying a form of disrespect without even realizing it by treating different students differently.  Why would they do that?  Well, sometimes it's because they perceive different levels of intelligence among their students and they respond accordingly.  A very human trait, you say?  Inves­tigator Lee of the Columbia University Center for Young Children and Families probed this point.  The hypothesis of the study was that teachers who believe that intelligence is a fixed quality (entity theorists) will treat students more unequally and in a more biased way than will teachers who believe that intelligence is malleable (incremental theorists).  The study involved 200 teachers, 100 of each type as identified by the Teacher's Implicit Theories of Intelligence Questionnaire.  All teachers were asked to estimate their expectations of target students' performances on a simulation task.  They also gave feedback on the students on the subscales of scoring, quality of feedback, reason for assignment, and placement.  If you're anticipating the results, you're probably right.  Entity-type teachers do treat students differently than incremental-type teachers, and they (entity) are more influenced by their perceptions and expectations.  What kinds of teachers do we have in our schools?

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Glass, T. (2000).  Better boards, better schools: Using school board evaluation to help raise student achievement.  American School Board Journal, 187(11), 42‑44.

In our frenzy to evaluate every aspect of the educational process in order to improve student achievement, are we forgetting something?  Is there an important entity in the school system that has so far escaped our critical attention?  Thomas Glass, professor of educational leadership at University of Memphis, thinks so.  That entity is the school board.  It's not that school boards are never evaluated.  It is apparently common for at least 20 percent of the boards to conduct some form of self-evaluation, either on individual members or on the board as a group.  And what about the ballot box?  Most governing board members consider that they have been validly evaluated if the vote comes out in their favor.

But, self-evaluation is notoriously self-serving and the ballot box is undeniably political.  Is there another way?  Glass suggests evaluation by outside assessors—either all consultants, or consultants combined with selected community members—be used.  External evaluations might include interviews, observations, review of data, focus groups, and mailed surveys.  Data should be combined, analyzed, and matched to the critical objectives of the evaluation.  The team might function continuously over a pre‑determined period of time, periodically meeting with the board to discuss results and make recommendations.  This would be the formative stage.  There would also be a summative stage, the final report.  Author Glass is convinced that board evaluation should be part of the overall school improvement process and that in the long view this inclusion will result in better discussions, greater public confidence and, ultimately, improved student achievement.

Deasy, J. (2000).  Moving from oversight to insight:  One community's journey with its superintendent. Phi Delta Kappan, 82(l), 13-15.

Are we really involving our communities in the ways they should be involved in education?  We pay strong lip service to the notion of community involvement in the improvement process, but I suspect that in some cases, perhaps in many cases, community involvement is more pro forma than real.  In this article a superintendent in Rhode Island tells how a community of over 35,000 people turned itself around from acrimonious opposition to virtually everything the school dis­trict wanted to do, to thoughtful, informed, and vigorous support.  The story is worth reading, in toto, but I here offer you a few snippets to give you some idea of what went on.

In Rhode Island, as in many New England states, citizens who attend the annual town meeting can vote on the school budget.  For years this particular community had experienced contention and demoralizing debate, which almost inevitably resulted in a crippling reduction of the school budget.  In 1994 author Deasy became superintendent and resolved to change the basic way in which the school was functioning within the community.  In essence, the following came about:  (1) They crafted a district vision and mission, and then developed a set of measurable goals (Sound familiar, so far?). (2) They gave the community annual reports on the pro­gress being made toward the goals (Not so familiar?).  (3) The school shared full details on the plan of action with the community.  (4) The school examined students' work and numerous assessment forms to construct plans to close the gaps associated with economic status, gender, race, or ethnicity.  (5) The school developed new and vigorous means of self (professional) evaluation and holding themselves accountable for success or failure.  (6) The school placed educational issues squarely before the public, explaining that they would not go away unless means to meet these concerns were developed as a part of the improvement process.  The board members even took the courageous step of taking the state exams themselves, just to see what sorts of hurdles the students faced.

Has it worked?  Perhaps a few quotes from the article will inform you:  "dramatically changed the board's operational style,” “town meetings average 40 minutes, and…citizens approved our school budgets by unanimous vote,"  "it took great courage, I believe, for participants to openly criticize my actions (the author/superintendent speaking, here), but this was yet another payoff," "we have also seen remarkable success in the areas of student achievement, high standards, professional development, and the funding nec­essary to support them,” and “in our town insight has proved more powerful in the end than oversight ever was.”

Interested?  Of course, the town meeting was an advantage to Deasy because when the community was upset, it was no secret.  How many of our districts are trying to move ahead without knowing how much or how little community support they really have?

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Ross, C., & Broh, B. (2000).  The roles of self‑esteem and the sense of personal control in the academic achievement process.  Sociology of Education, 73(4), 270‑284.

How many of our schools in the past five to ten years have selected the affective goal of student self-esteem, only to be frustrated by any one or more of the following factors: (1) The difficulty in identifying high self‑-esteem, (2) The difficulty in promoting it in an effective manner,  (3) The difficulty of measuring it in students, (4) The difficulty in discerning the effects of purportedly increased self-esteem in student behavior or academic performance.  This study by Ross and Broh is tailormade for all of us.  Their clustered probability sample, from the National Education­al Longitudinal Study, included 24,599 eighth-graders from 1,052 public, private, and parochial schools.  Follow-ups were conducted two and four years after the base year when most of the students were in tenth and twelfth grades.  Most previous studies on this topic had either treated self‑-worth or personal control but not both.  This study did treat both simultaneously so that ad­justments could be made, and determinants and consequences of one would not be attributed to the other.  What did they find?  Their results showed that a sense of personal control is sig­nificantly associated with high grades and test scores while self‑-esteem showed no relation­ship at all.  Is it any wonder many educators in our schools have been frustrated when utilizing self-‑esteem as a goal?  If it's any comfort, this study also showed that academic achievement does affect self-‑esteem.  It just doesn't seem to work the other way around.

Vare, J., & Miller, K. (2000).  Integrating caring across the curriculum.  ERS Spectrum: Journal of School Research and Information, 18(l), 27-‑35.

In our improvement efforts today, many schools are addressing some form of the affective goal that could best be summarized as “caring for self and others.”  In spite of the popularity of this goal, however, most faculties are frankly puzzled as to how to go about nurturing a “caring sense” in students, and some faculties openly admit that they are not even sure precisely how to define this attribute in the students.  Investigators Vare and Miller have tackled this topic, and have provided some ideas that may be helpful to our schools.  On the latter point, reaching out to Thayer-Bacon (1993, Caring and its relationship to critical thinking, Educational Theory, 43[5]) and to Gilligan (1982, In a different voice, Harvard University Press), the investigators speak of caring as “a moral approach to relationships,” providing an ethical basis for actions toward others, a basis rooted in affective response and grounded in an ethic of responsibility to self and others.  Armed with this definition of caring, what can an aware faculty do to promote these attitudes?  Based on an extensive study of pertinent literature, Vare and Miller have developed a three-pronged concept regarding how the faculty can promote caring in school.  The author's comments are in parenthesis.

This list hardly represents a recipe, but I do believe it offers schools some solid footing for the beginning of what may well be a long-term effort to impact the social climate.