Study: Students who are challenged perform better

When teachers get tougher in their assignments, the students get going, a researcher at UW–Madison has found.

A study of 12 elementary and middle schools in Chicago has revealed two important findings: In writing and mathematics, few teachers give challenging assignments. But those who do get higher-quality student work.

In other words, there is a strong relationship between the quality of teachers’ assignments and the quality of students’ work.

“The average difference in student performance between the classes with the greatest challenge and the least challenge in assignments – an average of 46 percentile points – is amazing,” says Fred Newmann of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at UW–Madison.

Newmann did the analysis with two colleagues from the Consortium on Chicago School Research (CCSR), Anthony Bryk and Gudelia Lopez. The study’s purpose: To document the baseline quality of teacher assignments and student performance for later comparison in 2001.

The schools are participating in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a five-year program designed to help schools offer students more intellectually meaningful work. It was created as part of a 1993 challenge grant of $500 million to support school reform in the nation’s largest cities.

In the study Newmann assisted, a separate group of teachers was trained to score others’ assignments and the resulting student work. They used specific measures of the assignments’ intellectual demands and the quality of work produced. The classes were in writing and math at the third, sixth and eighth grade level.

Newmann defined intellectual challenge by what he calls “authentic intellectual work,” which does the following:

• Involves original application of knowledge and skills, not just routine use of facts and procedures.
• Entails disciplined inquiry into the details of a particular problem, not just superficial exposure to many topics.
• Results in a product or presentation that has meaning or value beyond success in school.

“Such work is authentic,” says Newmann, “because it reflects what adults do when they work with knowledge successfully. In contrast, much of the work in schools seems contrived and meaningless.”

Here are some of his findings in Chicago schools, based on how challenging assignments were (using categories of “no challenge” and “minimal,” “moderate” and “extensive” challenge):

• Forty-three percent of assignments fell in the “no challenge” category in both third grade writing and third grade math.
• In eighth grade, 22 percent of writing assignments were “no challenge,” compared to 56 percent of math assignments. (Overall, writing assignments demanded more than math did.)

Lump together “no challenge” and “minimal challenge,” and the problem becomes even more apparent. In eighth grade, for example, 56 percent of writing assignments and 71 percent of math assignments fail to offer even moderate challenge.

Consider what these typical assignments ask of students, says Newmann. A writing worksheet in sixth grade asks students to insert words into a given format, in this case a sentence diagram. But it does not ask them to compose their own writing and has no clear connection to students’ daily lives.

Math assignments in grades three, six and eight all call for computation based on memorized mathematical facts, but not higher-order, analytical thinking such as explaining how they got their answers. “They simply are worksheet exercises without a real-life context,” says Newmann.

The researchers also compared student performance in Chicago classrooms, based on how much authentic work teachers assign. Students in classrooms with the most-demanding assignments produced more authentic work than students in classrooms with the least-demanding assignments.

In third grade math, for instance, the performance difference between the most- and least-demanding classrooms was 56 percentile points (on a 100-point scale) and 52 points in third-grade writing. The average advantage to students receiving the most challenging assignments, across all grades and subjects, was 46 percentile points.

“Of course, assigning challenging work does not by itself cause high levels of student performance,” says Newmann. “But at a minimum, we have shown that high-quality assignments provide the opportunity for students to demonstrate such performance, which low-quality assignments do not.

“The ultimate goal is to learn how teachers can help students succeed in doing challenging assignments.”

Newmann hopes this study generates widespread discussion about standards for teachers’ assignments and student work in Chicago schools. The consortium plans on returning to the Annenberg schools in 2001 for a follow-up study on whether the incidence of authentic work and the level of student performance has gone up.

A summary of study findings has been published in a CCSR report titled “The Quality of Intellectual Work in Chicago Schools.” Copies are available ($10 a copy, plus $4 shipping and handling) from the Consortium on Chicago School Research, 1313 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637, phone (773) 702-3364. Copies can also be obtained at http://www.consortium-chicago.org.