A BRIEF REPORT FROM THE SUMMIT ON

Addressing Barriers to Learning:
Closing Gaps in Policy & Practice

As readers of this Newsletter know, our Center approaches mental health and psychosocial concerns from the broad perspective of addressing barriers to learning and promoting healthy development. Specific attention is given policies and strategies that can counter fragmentation and enhance collaboration between school and community resources.

In 1996, we held three regional meetings on the topic: Policies and Practices for Addressing Barriers to Student Learning: Current Status and New Directions. On July 28th of this year, we held a national summit on Addressing Barriers to Student Learning: Closing Gaps in School/ Community Policy and Practice. The various meetings brought together dedicated leaders representing an impressive mixture of national, state, and local agencies and organizations.

As we stressed in the report based on the 1996 meetings, developing a comprehensive, integrated approach to addressing barriers to student learning continues to be a low priority among policy makers. Also stressed was increasing concern about serious flaws in current policies and practices aimed at preventing and correcting learning, behavior, emotional, and health problems. This growing concern provides an opportunity for change.

Since last summer, we have continued to explore the current status of policy and practice around the country. We have zeroed in on state and local agencies and specific reform initiatives using structured surveys, reviews of formal documents they distribute and material they post on their webpages, and insights gleaned in discussions with those who are knowledgeable about prevailing policies and practices. The more we looked, the more we were struck by how few initiatives specifically approach barriers to learning as a primary and essential concern. Thus, our July summit was designed to begin a process to widely enhance realization of the importance of analyzing school reform and restructuring initiatives in terms of how well they address barriers to learning.

Participants at the summit had the opportunity to review a representative set of major initiatives aimed at improving student learning and development. Featured as a leaping off point for discussion were (a) models designed with support from the New American Schools Development Corporation, (b) changes in thinking at the California Department of Education resulting from its adoption of the concept of Learning Support, (c) an update on the Community Schools movement, (d) the upcoming effort to realign Missouri's Caring Communities initiative with the state's education reforms, (e) the Kauffman Foundation's work related to the Successful Schools initiative, (f) the movement for Comprehensive School Health Programs as stressed in the Institute of Medicine's recent report and as supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and (g) the approach the Los Angeles Unified School District is taking to reform and restructure its student support programs and services. In addition, participants brought to the table an immense amount of experience with reforms around the country. The day's work yielded further appreciation of the potential contributions such initiatives can make and increasing awareness of how few models include a focus on addressing barriers to learning as a primary and essential component of reform and restructuring. Also evident was the likelihood of further confusion among policymakers and more fragmentation in practice at all levels as model advocates compete for adoption.

This brief report reflects our efforts to analyze and extrapolate from the various sources of data.In preparing the report, we have tried to capture and integrate the consensus of what was explored at the summit with our other sources. At the same time, we recognize that data are always filtered through a personal lens; we take full responsibility for any errors of omission or commission and for all interpretations

Fundamental Gaps in Policy/Practice

Although the litany of gaps are all too familiar to anyone who works in the field, there are a number of implications that arise from viewing them within the framework provided. These implications are explored in some detail after we comment on each area and list out some of the fundamental gaps in policy and practice

(1)Measures to Abate Economic Inequities/Restrictive Opportunities

Everyone is aware that restricted opportunities affect learning and development. Restricted opportunities stem from a variety of documented factors and play a role in causing learning, behavior, emotional, and health problems. The root of many of these variables can be traced to conditions related to poverty. Thus, measures to abate poverty remain one of the most fundamental areas where major gaps in policy and practice undermine efforts to improve educational outcomes for all youth. As long as so many young people live in poverty, many will confront an enormous range of restricted opportunities that lead to poor school performance, and interveners trying to address such problems increasingly will be overwhelmed. And, of course, not only do youngsters with problems suffer, all public school students are negatively affected as larger proportions of school/community resources are diverted to cope with problems. What makes all this so ironic and poignant is that it exacerbates economic and social inequities by severely limiting who in the society reaps the benefits of formal education and who suffers the consequences of schools where high rates of failure and disaffection are the norm.

Major Gaps in this Area. There is consensus that current reforms represent woefully inadequate measures to abate the scope of restrictive opportunities that exist in the country. Relevant analyses, reflecting fundamental differences in social and educational philosophy, are readily available and need not be repeated here.

(2) Primary Prevention and Early Age Interventions

The next line of defense in addressing barriers to learning involves primary prevention and early age interventions (e.g., fostering healthy development, promoting public health and safety, developing programs for community recreation and enrichment in poverty impacted areas).

Major Gaps in this Area. Current policies and practices do not ensure

• quality day care and pre-kindergarten education;

• home involvement in fostering healthy development and in solving youngster's problems;

• health care for young children;

• personalized instruction in the primary grades;

• recreation and enrichment programs for all youth;

• open enrollment options to provide a range of qualitatively good school program opportunities from which students and their families can choose a good fit.

(3) Identification and Amelioration of Learning, Behavior, Emotional and Health Problems as Early as Feasible

Given that primary prevention and early age interventions are not yet a high priority in policy and practice, early identification and amelioration have gained some prominence as the next line of defense. The intent is to combine both facets. With respect to health, the federal government's Early Periodic Screening, Diagnosis, and Treatment initiative has demonstrated both the potential and the inadequacies of current policy and practice related to early identification and amelioration. In an era of reduced public expenditures, insufficient underwriting of this program has curtailed aggressive outreach and tailoring of strategies to reach various population groups. Even more basic is the lack of resources for ensuring that medical, dental, and mental health treatments are available and accessible. Consequently, in many cases, significant treatable problems are found, but families cannot be connected with appropriate treatment. In schools, comparable gaps are seen in the dearth of programs that (a) provide immediate support to students when they begin to perform poorly academically and (b) anticipate and provide immediate support for those experiencing difficulty adjusting to school, making other transitions, or responding to crises -- all of which are strongly associated with poor academic performance.

Major Gaps in this Area. The need is to strengthen policy and practice to ensure

• aggressive outreach to find the problems and ameliorate them -- including home involvement in solving youngsters' problems and in fostering ongoing healthy development.

(4) Ongoing Amelioration of Mild-Moderate Problems

Activity that helps ameliorate mild to moderate problems has been significantly reduced by prolonged curtailment of funding for education and public services (including recreational and enrichment opportunities that foster healthy development). Relatedly, the number of students with learning, behavior, emotional, and health problems is increasing. Thus, it is not surprising that referrals for special help are escalating. Less services, more referrals equals not enough special help to go around. What should be a relatively small pool of youth in need of adjunctive services has become an overwhelming onslaught that drains dwindling resources to the point where the majority cannot be served. And, for a large proportion of students this guarantees below grade level performance at the end of middle school, non enrollment in college prep courses, and a high likelihood of dropping out. (Because so many of these students are seen as a product of failing social and educational systems, some analysts refer to them as pushouts.)

Major Gaps in this Area. Policy/practice is needed that goes beyond such current emphases as increasing standards and fostering collaborations; a primary focus also must be on ensuring

• high quality, integrated school-community programs designed to provide ongoing academic support and other related services needed to help students who are performing poorly at school; this includes assisting families so they can play a stronger role in helping their youngsters learn and perform more effectively;

(As noted in last year's report, achieving high quality programs involves transforming the education support resources schools own and operate so that the efforts (a) function in an integrated, programmatic way and (b) are woven together as much as feasible with community owned resources. The idea is both to use combined resources more effectively in addressing barriers to learning and to evolve a comprehensive approach for doing so.)

• quality programs for students not taking college preparation courses in high school -- because they are uncertain about higher education or have decided not to go on.

(Examples of program options include courses in computers and information technology; programs related to graphic, performing, and culinary arts; high school academies focused on business and health careers.)

(5) Ongoing Treatment of and Support for Chronic/Severe/Pervasive Problems

The increasing volume of students with mild-moderate problems is overwhelming the relatively few corrective strategies society has established. This means that a significant number of youngsters receive little or no special assistance, and their problems worsen. Because of this state of affairs, there is a tendency for teachers and parents to want more and more youngsters with mild-moderate problems referred for the special education and related remedial and therapeutic services. Referrals have increased markedly for special education and other specialized treatments intended for those with the most chronic/ severe/pervasive problems. Because of inadequate gatekeeping, this swells the ranks diagnosed and misdiagnosed students and misuses and overloads specialized systems of care. And, whether or not they end up in special education, students whose problems continue unabated over several years are prime candidates for dropping out of school.

Major Gaps in this Area. Policy/practice are needed to ensure

• more effective gatekeeping and detection of false positive diagnoses related to special education and related remedial and therapeutic services;

• enhancement of intervention effectiveness.

  (The focus on enhancing intervention effectiveness should include further clarification of the respective contributions of special instruction, psychotherapy/ counseling, dropout recovery, family respite/ support/ preservation, juvenile justice transition programs, and truly comprehensive systems of care.)

  Some Implications

  In addition to gaps in policy and practice that are evident when looked at from the perspective of addressing barriers to learning, other implications arise from analyses using a framework that recognizes the interrelationship of the continuum of fundamental school and community interventions that are needed.

  No integrated set of policies for addressing barriers to learning	From a "Big Picture" perspective, probably the largest gap is the virtual absence of an integrated set of policies for addressing barriers to learning. The widespread prevalence of piecemeal programs and fragmented practices are widely attributed to funding and guidelines tied to problems that have been narrowly categorized (e.g., safe and drug free schools, pregnancy prevention, child abuse protective services, juvenile crime reduction) or are separated from each other more for political than sound intervention reasons (compensatory and special education). In the absence of an integrated "big picture" framework for policymaking, it seems inevitable that the argument of advocates for narrow and often competing initiatives will push policymakers into enacting fragmented programs with no plan for how the pieces eventually come together to resolve major psychosocial, educational, and health concerns.
  Deemphasis of the prevention end of the continuum causes problem-oriented interventions to be overwhelmed and problems become intractable	The sequence of interventions outlined as a continuum in the accompanying figure highlights how intertwined the areas are. Inadequate attention at the broadest level (prevention) leads to increasing numbers who need help at other points in the continuum. Thus, in the absence of an increased emphasis on measures to abate economic inequities/ restricted opportunities, primary prevention, and early age interventions, excessive numbers of youth continue to overwhelm existing programs and services. As indicated in the figure, these fundamental areas require policies and practices that are broadly focused (designed to affect large numbers of youth and their families). Failure to close gaps in these areas ensures that many more youngsters than should be the case will continue to develop problems and be a needless drain on existing resources. Indeed, the concern here is not just about having more people to treat because we don't do enough prevention, the concern is that by not pursuing prevention aggressively we contribute to the growing numbers seeking assistance for problems. In some communities, the numbers are so large that the resources available to deal with them are woefully inadequate, and the problems run rampant and seem intractable.
  Collaboration for what? . . . to evolve comprehensive, integrated approaches to address the full continuum of intervention needs	The push for collaboration has stimulated discussions about potentially valuable system changes. One unfortunate side effect is that many groups are brought together to "collaborate" without taking time to build a sense of vision, commitment, and readiness for change. Thus, it is not surprising that the "not another meeting" phenomenon has surfaced. Policy simply calling for interagency collaboration to reduce fragmentation and redundancy with a view to greater efficiency is insufficient. And in the long run, it well may be counterproductive to improving intervention effectiveness. The example of school-linked services initiatives illustrates the point. Such initiatives tend simply to focus on co-locating a limited amount of community agency resources on a few school campuses. On the positive side, such cooperative ventures provide some clients easier access and attract some who otherwise would not have received services. It also allows some areas of intervention such as child welfare and juvenile justice programs to work more closely with other community and school resources. The work also demonstrates the feasibility of community agencies coming to school sites. On the negative side, such services are woefully inadequate to meet the needs of students and without fully integrating with school operated programs and services, school-linked services are producing a new form of fragmentation. Moreover, some policymakers are pointing to the demonstrations as evidence that community services can replace school-owned and operated support services(e.g., as reflected in increasing talk of contracting out work done by some pupil services personnel). Such a policy would have a number of serious repercussions,including reducing the overall pool of resources for addressing barriers to learning and preventing efforts to reform and restructure existing resources to evolve a comprehensive approach.
  Effective collaboration requires policy and practices that ensure: "big picture" mapping, analysis, redeployment and blending of resources	Currently, there is no overall analysis of the amount of resources used to address barriers to learning or of how they are expended. Without such a "big picture" analysis, policymakers and practitioners are deprived of information that is essential to enhancing system effectiveness. Until there is comprehensive mapping and analysis of resources, major redeployment and blending of resources are unlikely to occur and the token efforts made will have little effect. At the same time, there should be no illusions about currentallocations; even when public school and community agency resources are redeployed and blended, there is no reason to believe that existing resources are sufficient to evolve a comprehensive approach for addressing barriers to learning. This has obvious budgetary implications, but it also underscores the need to pay greater attention to integrating with all neighborhood resources (families, youth and faith organizations, local businesses).
  creation of linked mechanisms for system change	Collaboration designed to produce the type of major changes implied above requires linked policy that delineates high level leadership assignments and underwrites essential leadership training related to both the vision for change and how to effect such changes provides adequate funds for capacity building to accomplish desired system changes creates change teams and change agents to do the day-by-day activities that build essential stakeholder support and redesign institutionalized structures and processes so system changes are established and maintained guarantees roles and training for the effective involvement of line staff, families, students, and other community members in shared decision making.
  inservice training is upgraded and is provided to all involved parties	An essential element of successful capacity building is inservice training that significantly upgrades the competence of all who are involved in intervention efforts, including a focus on attitudes, knowledge, and skills related to system changes. Current policies and practices pay scant attention to inservice to improve approaches to addressing barriers to learning -- nevermind differentiating inservice to ensure different personnel are able to perform their functions effectively.
  True home involvement requires outreach and support designed to mobilize families	Policies and practices stressing parent involvement do not go far enough. They do not account for the fact that in many homes grandparents and other relatives have become the primary child caretakers. In addition, they completely ignore the influence of older siblings. And they overrely on parent education as the key intervention strategy and are widely ineffective in involving the majority of homes. An integrated set of policies to address barriers to student learning in a comprehensive manner must broaden the focus from parent to home involvement and underwrite strategies for outreach and for providing a range of supportive interventions designed to mobilize families.
  New thinking about higher education and school/community relationships	Those involved in school and community reforms recognize that institutions of higher education currently are part of the problem (e.g., because of what they don't teach undergraduates, what they don't focus on in pursuing research, the inadequacy of professional preparation programs and professional continuing education programs). Can such institutions should become a greater part of the solution? Most colleges and universities have long histories of informal and formal relationships with public schools and community agencies. These include special projects designed to improve school and agency performance, placements for training, programs to encourage college students to volunteer as aides, tutors, and mentors, outreach to increase college enrollments, and much more. Some of the activity is designed to advance knowledge, some enriches college instruction, and some is done in the interest of service and public relations. For the most part, the activity is ad hoc and fragmented rather than programmatic and integrated. Clearly, the connections between higher education and public schools and agencies are not part of an overarching policy vision for the many ways the institutions should benefit from each other. Involvement of higher education in more substantive collaborations will not occur because of good intentions. To achieve more than a marginal involvement of these mega-resource institutions requires policy, models, and structural changes that ensure the type of truly reciprocal relationships necessary to produce progress in addressing the pressing educational, social, and health concerns confronting our society.

  Participants at the summit recognized that the thinking of key policymakers is shifting. Among the positive trends, the federal government wants more intra and interagency collaboration, the U.S. Dept. of Education is calling for school-wide planning to counter fragmentation, the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services is under-writing initiatives for comprehensive school health programs, and foundations are moving away from supporting initiatives that fold when project funding ends. And, as the presentations at the summit demonstrated, there is no lack of ideas for how to make things better. At the same time, it is clear that policy continues to be developed in a piecemeal manner, with the focus often on marginal responses to complex problems. Policy makers can and must do better. The full report from the summit will discuss an agenda for moving forward.

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  1Below are a few references dealing with concerns about economic inequities/restricted opportunities.

  For an intervention-oriented discussion of environment and reciprocal deterministic perspectives of learning, behavior, emotional, and health problems, see

  H.S. Adelman & L. Taylor (1993). Learning problems and learning disabilities. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.
  

  H. S. Adelman & L. Taylor (1994). On understanding intervention in psychology and education. Westport, CT: Praeger.

  For an urban schooling view of the problem, see

  L.F. Miron (1996). The social construction of urban schooling: Situating in crisis.Cresskill, NJ: Hampton.

  For an up-to-date social policy/practice perspective relevant to economic inequities, see the discussion and references cited in

  "Focus on Welfare Reform" in The Community Agenda -- published jointly by The Center for the Study of Public Policy and The Together We Can Initiative phone: 202/822-8405, ext. 45.

  We keep getting stuck because we find it so easy to state the outcomes we want -- and then sit back without ever taking on the many problems that must be dealt with to get from here to there.

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