Rural Youth

Postsecondary
Aspirations +
Noncognitive Variables
Rural Alliance Meeting
September 2013 Spokane WA

General Rural Ed
Characteristics
Over of all US school districts are in rural
areas
1/3 of schools are rural
20% of the nations students attend rural
schools
Rural schools are experiencing enrollment
growth while nonrural schools overall are
experiencing a decline

Citation: Demi, M., Coleman-Jensen, A., & Snyder, A. (2010). The rural context
and post-secondary school enrollment: An ecological systems approach. Journal
of Research in Rural Education, 25(7). Retrieved from
http://jrre.psu.edu/articles/25-7.pdf.

Postsecondary Aspirations
of Rural Youth:
Rural youth - lower academic and occupational
aspirations than their urban peers.
Lower socioeconomic status in many rural
families.
Youth aspire to what they know or can
imagine. With limited career diversity and few
role models, aspirations of rural youth are
limited by geographical and cultural context.
Often, educational and occupational
aspirations of rural students take them out of
the local community.

The Importance of Place

Rural populations tied to place: Farm
families tied to the land, long-time rural
families with long ties to a community,
settled-out migrants who value
remaining near family, Native Americans
who choose to live on the reservation
Rural youth come of age in familial
contexts of attachment to place, with
rural families being more likely than
nonrural families to have turned down a
job to remain in their communities.

Rural Context and

Postsecondary 2010 The
importance of school

Contrary to existing studies of urban youth,

indicators of family income and relationship
with parents have only a small significant
association with post-secondary school
enrollment;

1)

2) Indicators of the school context have strong

direct associations with student grades,
aspirations, and self efficacy;
3) The school context is a strong mediator in
predicting post-secondary school enrollment.

Brain Drain in Rural

Districts
Postsecondary &
The job of schools is to educate children to
Outmigration
meet their highest future aspirations, and
become contributors to the national economy.
Rural schools have the additional
responsibilities of supporting the viability of
local rural communities, more so than urban
and suburban schools.
This creates a tension when counseling
students to pursue ambitious postsecondary
goals that may indeed take the child out of
the community, the ultimate brain drain that
is a part of the calculus of every rural district.

New research indicates a

new rural reality:
2012 study University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
(UNC Chapel Hill) Rural High School Aspirations (RHSA)
Study indicates that:
ASPIRATIONS: Most students surveyed aspire to a
postsecondary degree: 13% for a 2-year degree, 36%
plan to complete college and 35% plan for an advanced
degree.
PREPARATION: Rural students consult multiple sources
including parents and school counselors, but mostly
classroom teachers.
Most had not participated in job shadowing, mentoring
and/or internships.
College prep programs were related to the size of the
school- the larger the school the more likely the
programs. Smaller schools were less likely to offer AP.

Impact Factors in Rural

Postsecondary Access
Girls more than boys aspire to postsecondary access
If students see local economy as promising they
planned to remain in community, less apt to seek
postsecondary options
If students experienced family hardship, and had
greater respect and identification for parents less
likely
Students who reported parental expectations for
college more likely
Students from more remote rural less likely
Students who enrolled in college prep, took part in
postsecondary prep, higher levels of achievement,
academic self concept, and school valuing = more
likely to aspire to postsecondary

From Aspiration to
Preparation
Are our students ready for
postsecondary?
What are the critical
measures?
LITERATURE REVIEW JUNE 2012
Teaching Adolescents To Become Learners - The Role of
Noncognitive Factors in Shaping School Performance: A Critical
Literature Review University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago
School Research

Grades versus Test Scores:

What Matters? GRADES!
Current policy: rigorous high school curriculum improves students test scores which should lead
to high school and college success
But GPA and class ranking are much better predictors of postsecondary success and other longterm life outcomes
Why? Current thoughts: Grades measure students knowledge and academic skills, AS WELL AS
academic behaviors, attitudes, and strategies critical for success in school and in later life:
study skills and work habits
attendance and time management
help-seeking behaviors,
metacognitive strategies, and
social and academic problem-solving skills
These help students negotiate any new environments and meet new academic and social
demands

Teaching Adolescents To Become Learners - The Role of Noncognitive Factors in Shaping School
Performance: A Critical Literature Review June 2012
University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research

What predicts grades?

Attendance + Homework
Attendance and studying predicted course failures and
GPA more so than test scores or student demographics
CCSR study of 9th grade course failures: students test
scores + demographic characteristics explained 12
percent while students absences and self-reported
study habits explained 61 percent.
Even small differences in attendance can have large
impacts: The lowest-achieving 9th graders (low test
scores) with less than 1 week of absences per
semester passed more ninth-grade courses than
students who entered high school with test scores in
the top quartile who missed just one more week of
class.
Why? Absent students develop foundational learning
holes that impact subsequent course grades?
Teachers grades include attendance? Extended or

What is it about
homework?
Homework = positive effect on grades in middle school and
high school controlling for race, background, ability, and
field of study (college preparatory versus vocational).
Low testing students who spent 1-3 hours/week on
homework could raise their grades to Bs and Cs, equal to
students with middle test scores who did no homework.
Students with low test scores who spent over 10 hours
weekly on homework, could raise their grades to mostly Bs,
equivalent to top-scoring students who did no homework.
Why?? Do teachers respond to students students who
exhibit positive academic behaviors, spending more time
helping them and more closely monitoring their learning,
giving these students with positive academic behaviors a
differential instructional benefit that improves their
performance?

The importance of
noncognitive variables
What makes a student choose
to come to school every day?
What inspires a student to
complete homework for each
class regardless of how long it
takes them to complete it?
Why do some students persist
to do hard work, and others
give up?

Academic Behaviors:
most important for
achievement
Academic Behaviors -- being a good
student regularly attending class,
arriving ready to work (with necessary
supplies and materials), paying
attention, participating in instructional
activities and class discussions, and
devoting out-of-school time to studying
and completing homework.
Many programs, policies, and even
curricula could be considered effective
if they lead to an increase in student
attendance, homework completion,

Noncognitive Variables
Duckworth and Seligman (2005): academic
performance depends on students self-control or
Conscientiousness, concluding that a major reason
for students falling short of their intellectual potential
[is] their failure to exercise self-discipline (p. 939).
They claim that measures of self-discipline are far
more predictive of positive academic outcomes than
are measures of IQ.
Carol Dweck and colleagues (2011) use the term
academic tenacity suggesting that educational
interventions and initiatives that target these
psychological factors can have transformative effects
on students experience and achievement in school,
improving core academic outcomes such as GPA and
test scores months and even years later (p. 3).

Academic Mindsets
Academic Mindsets the beliefs one has about oneself in
relation to academic work.
Positive academic mindsets motivate students to persist at
schoolwork (i.e., they give rise to academic perseverance),
which manifests itself through better academic behaviors,
which lead to improved performance.
Strong positive academic performance validates positive
mindsets, increases perseverance, and reinforces strong
academic behaviors.
Negative mindsets stifle perseverance and undermine
academic behaviors, which results in poor academic
performance. Poor performance in turn reinforces negative
mindsets, perpetuating a self-defeating cycle.
Psychology research has also addressed the way context
and experience can undermine positive academic mindsets.

Four Academic Mindsets

1. I belong in this academic
community.
2. My ability and competence
grow with my effort: if I work
hard, I will improve.
3. I can succeed at this.
4. This work has value for me.

Academic Perseverance
Academic perseverance -- a students tendency
to complete school assignments in a timely and
thorough manner, to the best of ones ability,
despite distractions, obstacles, or level of challenge.
To persevere academically requires that students
stay focused on a goal despite obstacles (grit or
persistence) and forego distractions or temptations
to prioritize higher pursuits over lower pleasures
(delayed gratification, self-discipline, self-control).
It is the difference between doing the minimal
amount of work to pass a class and putting in long
hours to excel in the course.
Also, GRIT.

Grit: What is it?

Seahawks v Houston
Texans: 23-20 in
overtime
Pete Carrol: This game came down to grit.
But, Russell Wilson, one of the most prepared
quarterbacks in the NFL at half-time: Just give me
a chance, I know we can do this!
When ? Was called for stepping out of bounds: NO
WAY!
When the kicker came out, I can do this

Can Grit and other

behaviors be taught in
school?
While some students are more likely to persist in tasks
or exhibit self-discipline than others, all students are
more likely to demonstrate perseverance if the school or
classroom context helps them develop positive mindsets
and effective learning strategies.
Mechanisms through which teachers can lead students
to exhibit greater perseverance and better academic
behaviors in their classes are through attention to
academic mindsets and development of students
metacognitive and self-regulatory skills, rather than
trying to change their innate tendency to persevere.
This appears to be particularly true as adolescents move
from the middle grades to high school, and it again
becomes important in the transition to college.

Behaviors are critical and

perhaps malleable
If noncognitive factors are malleable and critical
to academic performance, educators must work to
develop these skills, traits, strategies, and
attitudes along with content knowledge and
academic skills.
Can classroom instruction and teachers help
students move from passive recipients of
academic content to active learners who an
manage their workload, assess their progress and
status, persist in difficult tasks, and develop a
reliable set of strategies to master increasingly
complex academic content as they proceed
through school?

Implications for Rural

Students Postsecondary
Aspirations

Provide equitable access for all students to aspire

to to all postsecondary options, and prepare
students for whatever their future holds.
Can we teach behaviors that will help move our
lowest performers to those of any other student?
This issues move out of the realm of the counselor
and into the realm of instructional leadership
principals, superintendents, teachers, and
counselors.

A Favor:
Peabody Article: STEM Activities and Initiatives
ongoing in your school or district: for career and
course content.
STEM has the largest potential for job growth and
wealth particularly in Washington STATE.
STEM ALSO has the potential for building deep rigor in
the curriculum, can provide area-relevant core content
as we move to Common Core and Next Generation
Science Standards.
Can we identify all the lucrative STEM jobs in our area?
Can help students imagine themselves into these
jobs?
Can we prepare them to complete postsecondary
training and return?