Academic Success Among Students at Risk for School Failure

Abstract

A sample of 1,803 minority students from low-income homes was classified into 3 groups on the basis of grades, test scores, and persistence from Grade 8 through Grade 12; the classifications were academically successful school completers (''resilient'' students), school completers with poorer academic performance (nonresilient completers), and noncompleters (dropouts). Groups were compared in terms of psychological characteristics and measures of ''school engagement.'' Large, significant differences were found among groups on engagement behaviors, even after background and psychological characteristics were controlled statistically The findings support the hypothesis that student engagement is an important component of academic resilience. Furthermore, they provide information for designing interventions to improve the educational prognoses of students at risk.

Full text

Journal
of
Applied
Psycholog
1997,
\bl.82.
No. 2,
221-2:
Copyright 1997
by the
American
Psychological
Association,
Inc.
0021-9010fl7/S3.00
Academic Success Among Students
at
Risk
for
School
Failure
Jeremy
D.
Finn
State
University
of New
%rk
at
Buffalo
Donald
A.
Rock
Educational
Testing
Service
A
sample
of
1,803
minority
students
from
low-income
homes
was
classified
into
3
groups
on
the
basis
of
grades, test
scores,
and
persistence
from
Grade
8
through
Grade
12; the
classifications were
academically
successful
school
completers
("resilient"
students),
school
completers
with
poorer
academic
performance
(nonresilient
completers),
and
noncompleters
(dropouts).
Groups
were
compared
in
terms
of
psychological
characteris-
tics
and
measures
of
"school
engagement."
Large,
significant differences
were
found
among groups
on
engagement
behaviors,
even after
background
and
psychological
charac-
teristics
were
controlled
statistically.
The findings
support
the
hypothesis that student
engagement
is an
important
component
of
academic
resilience.
Furthermore, they provide
information
for
designing
interventions
to
improve
the
educational
prognoses
of
students
at
risk.
The
purpose
of
this investigation
was to
understand
the
processes
that distinguish minority students
from
low-
income
homes
who are
academically successful
from
their
less successful peers.
The
definition
of
academic success
used
in the
study
was
(a)
passing grades throughout high
school,
(b)
"reasonable"
scores
on
standardized achieve-
ment
tests,
and (c)
graduating
from
high school
on
time.
The
assumption here
is
that these represent significant
accomplishments
for a
youngster
who
must
surmount
a
multitude
of
obstacles
to
attain them.
We
refer
to
individu-
als who
achieve these outcomes
as
academically
resilient.
The
primary hypothesis
of
this study
was
that academic
resilience
is at
least partially explained
by the
extent
to
which
students
are
actively engaged
in
school.
The
study's
focus
on
student engagement
is
based
on two
premises.
First,
engagement
in
learning activities
and in the
broader
school environment
are
important antecedents
of
school
achievement. Second,
unlike
such characteristics
as
socio-
economic status
(SES)
or
race, engagement
may be
ma-
nipulable;
that
is,
educators
may be
able
to
encourage
engagement
behaviors
to
increase
a
student's
chances
of
completing school successfully. Because
a
youngster's
de-
Jeremy
D.
Finn,
Graduate
School
of
Education,
State
Univer-
sity
of New
\brk
at
Buffalo;
Donald
A.
Rock,
Educational
Test-
ing
Service,
Princeton,
New
Jersey.
This
research
was
conducted
while
Jeremy
D.
Finn
was a
Visiting
Scholar
at
Educational
Testing
Service.
We are
grateful
to
Judith
Pollack
for
help
in
preparing
data
files for the
study.
Correspondence
concerning this
article
should
be
addressed
to
Jeremy
D.
Finn,
Graduate
School
of
Education,
SUNY-
Buffalo,
408
Christopher
Baldy
Hall,
Buffalo,
New
"fork
14260.
Electronic
mail
may be
sent
via
Internet
to finn@acsu.
buffalo.edu.
cision
to
participate actively
in the
school's
academic pro-
gram
may
also
be
rooted
in
relatively
enduring
motiva-
tional states,
we
asked whether resilience
is
related
to
engagement
above
and
beyond such attributes
as
self-
esteem
and
locus
of
control.
Academic
Risk
and
Resilience
The
concept
of risk,
drawn
largely
from the field of
medicine, embodies
the
notion that exposure
to
particular
conditions,
or
risk factors, increases
the
likelihood
that
an
individual will experience certain adverse conse-
quences.
In
terms
of
academic outcomes, well-established
risk factors include group status characteristics associated
with
academic
difficulty
or
dropping
out of
school,
for
example,
being
a
minority student attending
an
inner-city
school,
or
coming
from
a
low-income home
or a
home
where
English
is not the
primary language.
Many
young-
sters
who
experience
these conditions manage
to
achieve
some
level
of
school success.
But all too
often,
these risk
factors
are
accompanied
by a set of
risk behaviors, which,
manifested
by
individual students, create impediments
to
learning,
such
as
skipping school
or
skipping classes,
not
attending
to the
teacher,
or not
completing required class
work
or
homework.
A
substantial body
of
evidence attests
to the
association
of
status characteristics
with
risk behavior.
For
example,
it is
well documented that minority students participate
less
fully
in
learning-related activities
in
class (Finn,
Fbl-
ger,
&
Cox, 1991; Finn,
Pannozzo,
&
Voelkl,
1995; Lam-
born, Brown, Mounts,
&
Steinberg, 1992;
McClure,
1978;
Trueba,
1983),
exhibit more behavior problems
in
school
(Bennett
&
Harris, 1982;
Farkas,
Grobe,
Sheehan,
&
221
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