Book Club Chapter 3-4

In chapter 3 and 4 of "Organizing Schools for Improvement Lessons from Chicago," the improvement for students to excel in school continued. This time they're testing the framework of the essential supports. Using this essential support, the focus is to examine students improvement with engaging in school and the changes in their learning towards reading and mathematics. At first there were 36 separate organizational measures from each school, later it was combined into 14 indicators of the five essential supports. The core indicators of the five essential supports are, school leadership, parent-community ties, professional capacity, student-centered learning climate, and instructional guidance. Each support has a different purpose that will aid students progress in school. "We categorized schools as strong on an essential support if they placed among the top quartile of Chicago elementary schools based on the 1994 survey data for that core indicator. Similarly, schools ranked in the bottom quartile on a core indicator in 1994 were classified as weal on that essential support" (Bryk et al, 2010, p. 83). Below are the charts:

After looking at both of the bar graphs I question how important are the five essential supports. I do not think the supports can improve schools in general because many schools lack these core indicators, even with bringing attention to it. Parent involvement I find the most important for schools or students to improve in school. When parents are involved it encourages and forces students to do better and parents can help with what their child is lacking. Some reasons why the parent involvement is weak because, some parents do not care for education, understand it, or know how to teach it. Also student-centered climate I find important as well. In many communities, schools are surrounded by violence or there can potentially be violence. For example, my middle/high school in my opinion is surrounded by violence. Across the street from the school there's a liquor store. Students would enter the liquor store after school, some would be able to get away and purchase items, and some would not. The adults that crowd the liquor store tends to cause trouble with the students sometimes because they're under the influence. Attempting to sell and bribe students to give them money to obtain liquor and tobacco products, in result gaining something out of it too which is money. The five essential supports I find is deeper than what their purpose are when looking at the surrounding of the schools. Was your elementary, middle/high school surrounded by violence or has the potential to be in violence?