In “A Program for At-Risk High School Students Informed by Evolutionary Science” PLOS
David Sloan Wilson and colleagues report:
Improving the academic performance of at-risk high school students has proven difficult, often calling for an extended day, extended school year, and other expensive measures. Here we report the results of a program for at-risk 9th and 10th graders in Binghamton, New York, called the Regents Academy that takes place during the normal school day and year. The design of the program is informed by the evolutionary dynamics of cooperation and learning, in general and for our species as a unique product of biocultural evolution. Not only did the Regents Academy students outperform their comparison group in a randomized control design, but they performed on a par with the average high school student in Binghamton on state-mandated exams. All students can benefit from the social environment provided for at-risk students at the Regents Academy, which is within the reach of most public school districts.
If you leave out the meaningless evo psych filler (which we rendered in red), they seem to be trying to teach students to co-operate in order to learn.
In the short run, they saw success, but so do most programs. That’s called the Hawthorne effect – people stuck in school or a dead end job are pleased that someone notices them, and most will co-operate with the program. Long term, these programs seldom make much difference because they have the problem by the wrong end.
At risk youth (= of dropping out, getting pregnant, getting addicted, facing criminal charges) don’t usually have trouble co-operating. There’s a good chance they belong to gangs, and there is no safe alternative to co-operation, especially when the gang gets involved in a felony offence. But they don’t stay in school because school is irrelevant to their current culture and probable future.
Interventions rarely work long term because they can’t change the environment in which dropouts make decisions that feel okay to them. The only remedy that has shown some promise is to move the kid out of that environment, into one in which cooperation means being on the team, not in the gang. And the team must be an authentic part of school and neighbourhood culture, not a “good work” sponsored by outsiders. But all too often, destructive family and cultural ties pull the kid back into the vortex of failure anyway.
But it’s always nice to see people trying.
Wilson DS, Kauffman RA Jr, Purdy MS (2011) A Program for At-Risk High School Students Informed by Evolutionary Science. PLoS ONE 6(11): e27826. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0027826