Independent School Health Check
Real Students. Real Data
This short but informative article from THE WEEK September 13, 2019 cites studies that begin to identify the risks involved with vaping.
Our new survey questions regarding vaping have yielded interesting data. We found that of the 12,808 student count for last academic year, 4,658 self-reported that they had vaped. That’s 36.4%. We invite you to compare your individual survey response rate to this national percentage.
Welcome back to school! We hope that you have all had a smooth re-entry. We are gearing up for a busy Fall Semester, the ISHC survey schedule beginning October 8th thorough November 22nd. We are accepting registrations that are submitted at least two weeks prior to your preferred survey dates. Our first year working with Indiana University, Center for Survey Research, has gone very well. The newly formatted, more comprehensive data reports have been met with genuine appreciation. We have worked out the minor kinks we experienced in timing and look forward to your receiving your reports within three weeks from your survey administration. I attach our 2019-2020 Registration form for your use if you have not yet registered. We encourage you to preview the middle school and upper school surveys on our website www.independentschoolhealth.com And, of course, email or call us with any questions.
The following article by Jessica Flaxman, Shady Hill School, for the KlingBrief from the Klingenstein Center at Columbia University highlights a book about girls and anxiety. Our ISHC National Database includes some comparative data for your review. How does your school’s ISHC data compare?
KLINGBRIEF
KLINGENSTEIN CENTER
TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
OF NOTE
Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls by Lisa Damour
Ballantine Book, February 12, 2019
“There has never been a more academically impressive generation of girls than the young women we are raising today,” says clinical psychologist Dr. Lisa Damour in Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls. Nor has there ever been a more stressed generation of young women: “A staggering 31 percent of girls and young women experience symptoms of anxiety compared to 13 percent of boys and young men.” Despite that fact, Damour argues that stress and anxiety are necessary for achievement, and that girls can learn to manage them both. Damour calls on parents and teachers to seek ways to help girls differentiate among types of stress (life events, daily hassles, and chronic stress); identify what stresses them individually; and take steps to cope with the waves of worry that come with striving and caring about success. Damour paints a positive and empathetic portrait of today’s pressured girls and reminds the adults in their lives “to frame the demands of education in positive, capacity-building terms, because doing so actually changes how our daughters experience school.” Teachers and parents alike can be cautious about the ways in which they implicitly or explicitly praise girls for being overprepared, perfect, or compliant at school. Damour posits that actually conditioning girls to stress – helping them to understand what stresses them and why – and then strengthening them so that they can handle the “weight” they pick up, will serve them better than agreeing with them that they can’t handle the challenges they face.
Jessica Flaxman, Shady Hill School, Cambridge, MA
We are now approaching the end of this year’s ISHC Survey session, on May 17th, 2019. This has been a busy year for us. We have added many more schools to the ISHC National Database. In collaboration with Indiana University, we have redesigned the survey and the reports. The new Standard Report format includes much more data than the prior reports. ALL of the survey questions are presented in breakdowns by gender and grade and are compared to the ISHC National Database. The Conclusion section of the report is the real gem! It identifies those survey questions where your school shows a statistically significant difference when compared to the ISHC National Database. These differences serve as a valid and reliable basis for your analysis and follow-up actions with your school community.
For those schools who administered the ISHC Survey this year we attach an evaluation form. Please take a few minutes to fill it out and return it to us. We depend on your feedback to improve our survey and the reports. We also attach the ISHC Registration form for next academic year. Please send it in as soon as you can arrange your most convenient survey date. We can then send you a contract and secure your survey date.
We hope you have a rewarding Spring semester…we know it will be busy!
We look forward to working with you,
Rosemary and Peter
Let Children Get Bored Again
by Pamela Paul
There are so many sentences we wish to quote in this article:
“The ability to handle boredom, not surprisingly, is correlated with the ability to focus and to self-regulate.”
“It’s especially important that kids get bored – and be allowed to stay bored – when they are young.”
“Nowadays, subjecting a child to such inactivity is viewed as a dereliction of parental duty.”
“Because there is nothing better to spur creativity than a blank page or an empty bedroom.” Lin-Manual Miranda
After school hours do you have time to read for pleasure | None 74.5%
While I am doing my homework I
Hello! Announcing the ISHC Survey Session for Fall 2019: beginning October 10th through November 16th. Please plan ahead and let us know of your interest in surveying your students in the Fall. A Registration form is attached for your use. Once we receive it, we can send you a contract and secure your survey dates!
We are in the midst of our first year of working with Indiana University, Center of Survey Research (CSR). The schools are receiving our new, improved report format. It includes Part 1: Aggregate Results and Part 2: Statistical Analysis (including a PDF for use in presentations).
There’s No Extra Credit at Work
by Lisa Damour
New York Times February 10, 2019
Opinion | Why Girls Beat Boys at School and Lose to Them at the Office
This article talks about how schools may encourage an imbalance in confidence building in boys and competency building in girls that puts girls in a disadvantaged position in the competitive workplace. It stimulates us to think about what learning behaviors we reward in our students and to question why.
Although we don’t ask questions that directly address confidence in the ISHC survey, we have selected questions related to this topic that demonstrate gender differences as expressed by the students in the ISHC National Database.
Note: M=Male, F=Female, > greater than.
Spend more than 2 hrs on school work out of class F>M
More than 7 hours sleep M>F
Motivated to satisfy self F>M
Motivated to satisfy parents M>F
Received diagnosis of Anxiety F>M
Cheat on tests and quizzes M>F
Academic pressure from parents same
Academic pressure from teachers F>M
Academic pressure from self F>M
Feeling sad and hopeless for more than 2 weeks F>M
The males exceed the females in only three areas: sleep, cheating and parental motivation. These differences are not in any way conclusive but they may encourage dialogue with your faculty and students.
Hope you are enjoying this unpredictable winter season whatever climate zone you are in.
We are in full swing for this semester (2/5-5/17) survey schedule. There is still time to register for administering the ISHC surveys the end of April or beginning of May if you wish. Registrations are due by April 19th. There is an advantage to having the data to work with over the summer.
But there is also a benefit to starting off the school year fresh by announcing the survey to parents and students when they return to school in the fall. We are already scheduling for the fall. The new 2019-2020 registration form is attached for your use.
Click here for 2019-2020 Registration Form
The newly designed survey reports are rich with data and are being well received by the schools. If you have any questions please email us at Rbaggish@gmail.com or call 860.989.8289.
Best Regards,
-Rosemary & Peter
A thoughtful article in INDEPENDENT SCHOOL Winter 2019 written by Alison Baron, a fourth-grade teacher at the Park School In Baltimore offers practical guideline for evaluating a school’s homework philosophy and policy.
A look at the historical use of homework in education, where we are today, and what schools need to consider as they evaluate their approach
By Alison Baron
Trend Lines: How Important Is Homework?
Homework is a constant and sometimes controversial endeavor in all of our schools. The ISHC National Database shows the following distribution of time spent on homework each night in Middle and Upper Schools. These hours are contaminated by the percentage of students who report multi-tasking during homework time.
We offer you this interesting data to consider as you think about YOUR faculty’s and students’ homework efforts.
Dear ISHC Schools,
Effective February 2019, we will begin the Winter/Spring session (2/5-5/17) of surveys in your schools. We are offering one Standard ISHC Report ($3000), a comprehensive document with charts and graphs for every question, and breaking down all of your answers by grade, gender and with comparison to our ISHC National Database. To give you a preview, your results will also be presented in 8 categories:
Attached to this message is the ISHC Registration form for you to complete and return to us so we can secure your date of choice on our survey schedule.
The schools that surveyed in the Fall 2018 will receive their survey reports at the end of this month. We regret the delay in reporting back to those of you who surveyed this fall, but it has taken special attention and expertise on the part of Indiana University’s Center for Survey Research and us to redesign, program and test the accuracy of the reports. We sincerely hope that you will think the product is well worth waiting for! Now that all of the upfront work is done, the return time for the Winter/Spring schools’ reports will be within a month of the survey dates. We look forward to your reactions to our new reporting format.
Regards,
Peter and Rosemary