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In our study, “with remarkable consistency, across the states and types of schools, teachers and administrators struggle with the short term, and immediate problem of how to motivate students to perform on the tests” (Siskin and Lemons 2000, 6). Approaches to this problem were varied, but two motivating factors that surfaced frequently and which also resonated with our conversation with students were (1) having a sense of school pride and (2) having a culture of “community” found in our orthogonal schools or in a particular subject area, such as music and band, where teachers talked about students as having real ownership of their learning.
School Pride How their school appears to others is important to students. In Kentucky, despite the fact that the state assessment does not have direct stakes at the student level, students were concerned about the public nature of score release. In these cases, teachers and administrators talked about how students saw it as important that their school appeared favorably, and they were well aware when it did not. Some adults in the school, in fact, tried to use this as a motivating force. As the principal at Baleford, our orthogonal school in Kentucky, says, “…so why should they be nervous about a test? I hope they are, because they want their school to do well.” In speaking about how she got students to want their school to do well, the Baleford principal notes how they recognized individual student performance publicly in the school, but tied it to the larger school: “It's climate and culture. I mean, yeah, doing the recognitions for one day, you're doing it because you know it's going to cause them to respond differently in a program. And so the pride factor, you know? 'I go to [Baleford].' Kids back in their neighborhoods, they're about what goes on. And if you're at a school that's not doing well, everybody in the world knows it. And so they don't want to be a part of that. And they avoid situations like that, just like you do.” In New York, the reputation of their school seemed to be a source of motivation for Rivera students. They talked about going to college and participating in the opportunities Rivera offered them to help in this regard. In this conversation about college, students talked about information that institutions of higher education had about them and which the students perceived as unfavorable to colleges, including (1) that they are minority, (2) that they are from New York, (3) that they attended public schools, and (4) that their income was not high. They said that the school reputation helped their prospects for college, given these factors. In Kentucky, the Baleford principal expressed something similar about students there: “What we do is try and say you're representing [Baleford], and you know what people say about [Baleford] every place. We want to be able to hold our heads up. So that works in our favor.” At Binghamton, the target school in Kentucky, school pride cuts across many activities and filters into the testing arena. One teacher at this school talked about how the success of the basketball team helps motivate students to do well generally, including performing well on the CATS: “A lot of it is, just, the kids want to look good. I mean, we've had a really good athletic year this year with our school. Our basketball team went to the state tournament, finished in the top eight or the elite eight. And the students got a lot of good press and the school got a lot of good press, and the students this year are really excited about it and they want to look good… And the kids have just gotten on the bandwagon with all this press and they want to look good, so that's just helping by itself.” As discussed previously, Byrd uses videos and wrestling matches to motivate students by creating a sense of school pride and pride at the grade level. Another motivating factor for students seemed to be their own learning. In New York, Rivera students talked about graduation from high school in order to move on to college and apply what they learned in high school to their collegiate studies and future professions. Ring students said that pride motivates them and that if you are learning, you feel successful. They also explained that high-stakes tests made them feel like they were not able to learn. A Binghamton teacher emphasized the need for “…a lot of practice and motivating to let them know that they can do it, because I think they just look at it and think they can't and they just close the book.” The Baleford principal reinforced this sentiment, tying it to the need for the school to help students feel that they are capable of doing well on these exams: “When they print school data in the newspaper, parents look at that, and they avoid the schools that do not appear to be doing well. And so there's parents looking at it, kids are looking at it. I mean, they're not crazy, they know. I guarantee you every kid in this building can name for you the schools in this district that they think are the best schools in the district. And so, sure, they're talking about it. Most people won't give them credit for really having the pride, because most schools aren't there. They aren't doing, they aren't approaching it the way we approach it. But I tell you again, climate and culture. What we better do…is figure out a way how to augment the self-esteem of our students systematically.” School pride seems to be a large source of motivation for most students, although it has different meanings at different schools. In our better-positioned and target schools, school pride seemed to be very concrete and clear. For instance, at our target schools, students must be motivated to uphold the reputation of the school and meet the expectations that come as a result of it. Finally, in our orthogonal schools, school pride seemed to be more of a tension and threat, where teachers and administrators are concerned that the new accountability policy will undermine students' motivation to learn. This tension may not be congruent with motivating students toward the test. Community and Culture The missions of the orthogonal schools seemed to be unique from other schools in our sample. In examining data from our orthogonal schools, we found that most of the teachers and administrators spoke of their students as highly motivated. Additionally, in some conversations with teachers across all of our study schools, we found that students who were meaningfully connected to the school or a program within the school were motivated. Here, teachers and administrators talked about students perceiving the school or program as integral to their lives. In Baleford, our Kentucky orthogonal school, a teacher talked about students being highly motivated because of the nature of the school. [They are] very motivated, very career oriented. They're here for a purpose. Baleford is a magnet school, so we don't have a home-school district boundary. Kids don't come here because they have to. They come here because they choose to enroll. Coming to Baleford is almost like going through a college application [process] because the students have to fill out an application, they have to have two letters of recommendations, they have to write an essay on why they want to come to this school, and then they have to send a copy of their grades in.
Teachers at our New York orthogonal school, Ring, had similar things to say about their students, “We don't have any resistance like some of these schools where the kids say, 'You can't tell me nothing.'” Other teachers at Ring talked about motivating students by having them be active learners in their work, sensing a gap between the content, pedagogy, and the way it is assessed. One teacher says of the Regents, They don't learn anything from taking that sort of test. My philosophy is that students learn by doing something, by participating in a step-by-step process, producing something… So for me, it's not the actual answer, but learning how to answer it that's important. Yesterday, we were talking about cancer. Whether they remember that there's a receptor on the cell, what the name of that receptor is, that there are these things called growth factors, I couldn't care less if they remember that five years from now. But what I do want them to remember is that in cancer cells stop functioning in a certain way. If they want to find out what that way is, they would be able to find out what that is and be able to maybe understand something about it…I don't expect them to remember receptors, and that's what Regents, SATs, and those sorts of achievement tests look at. Like I said, from what I understand, Regents are slowly moving away from that…the way the questions will be set up is that you have to do some thought beforehand, and your answers will be based on the work that you've done, which is very similar to MCATs, medical school tests, law school tests.
Participating in outside competitions, events, and activities, students who are involved in the band or a music group also seem to be highly motivated and connected to the school. As one teacher at Robinson, our New York target school says, “Some of them come here without any interest at all. Some of them come very motivated. Some get motivated because their best friend got motivated, and it's a domino effect. It builds up like that because it's the nature of music and art.” The Ricki Lee band teacher echoed this sentiment, talking about how students in the band are also very connected to other parts of the school, “Well…they are in the band, but they're also in athletics and extra-curricular things after school. I mean, they're involved. Our kids are involved.” Overall, as is consistent with prior research, there are many factors that motivate students to do well in school and on exams. In our study sample states, common themes that emerged as motivation for students to do well on the state assessment, whether or not high stakes were attached for them, included a sense of school pride, or “wanting to look good, ” as well as feeling that they, as students, were connected to part of a school culture that was meaningful. Indeed, these are sources of motivation that are interrelated and which schools in our study seek to cultivate.
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