Parents, Schools Team Up to Keep Problem-Plagued Students in School

Students in trouble at Chatsworth Park Elementary School used to be sent to the principal’s office. These days, however, students with problems meet with the Team.

Chatsworth Park is one of 25 campuses in the Los Angeles Unified School District that have pioneered the Student Study Team approach to problem solving.

Known as the SST, it is an approach that has proved so successful in Los Angeles and other school districts that California legislators in 1985 made establishment of the groups mandatory in schools that receive special state dropout-prevention funds.

In the next two years, 64 Los Angeles district schools will establish SST groups as part of dropout-deterrent plans.

Dora Golden, principal of Chatsworth Park, got her school involved in the SST program in 1983.

“I saw that it was becoming more difficult to get children with exceptional needs--that is, students who have learning disabilities, behavioral difficulties or who are slower-than-average learners--into special classes,” Golden said. “This meant we would have more of these children in regular classrooms.

“We had to find a way to work with these children at the same time we worked with others in the class.”

There are six members of the Chatsworth Park SST group--four classroom teachers, a teacher who specializes in working with slow learners, and the principal. Although it involves extra hours, SST members do not get paid for participating in the program.

The team moves into action when a teacher or a parent fills out a form requesting a counseling session. Problems that can be brought before the SST range from disruptive classroom behavior and bullying other children on the playground to difficulty with reading.

The child’s teacher, parents and team members meet after school for 30 minutes. If the child’s teacher from the previous year is at Chatsworth Park, that teacher is also invited. Team members are provided with the student’s academic records, which include information such as grades, teacher evaluations and scores on standardized tests.

Before the meeting, parents are given a list of questions that are likely to be asked during the session. Team members said this is one way for parents to be prepared for the direction the meeting will take.

The meeting begins by teachers, parents and other team members listing the child’s strengths. These can be, for example, academic achievements, leadership qualities, athletic prowess or sociability.

“Parents tend to be less defensive when we start talking about their child’s strengths,” said Beverly Manasse, a Chatsworth Park third-grade teacher and SST member.

Next, the group talks about areas of concern. During this part of the discussion, the teacher lists the problems the child is having at school. The parent may talk about problems the child is having at home. For each problem brought up, the team members suggest a method that may change the unwanted behavior.

Team members may suggest after-school sessions with a teacher for a youngster who never turns in any homework. It might be recommended that a student with failing grades be tested for learning disabilities.

After a discussion, the group decides what should be done and, just as importantly, who should do it. If the team believes the student should be tested, the counselor may set up a test date. If the team thinks the student should see a therapist, it may fall to the parent to see that the child receives outside help. Teachers are often asked to work with the child after school or during lunch.

The student may be asked to sign performance contracts with parents and teachers. The contract may state that the child will not be able to play with friends after school if he or she receives a grade below C on the next report card.

Four to six weeks later, another meeting is held to check the student’s progress.

“Their suggestions worked for us,” said a parent who has met with the team four times. “It has turned my son around.”

Not all of the suggestions work, nor do parents always follow through on the group’s suggestions.

In one case, team members believed that forcing a fifth-grader to stay after school with either his teacher or the principal would serve as punishment for months of ignoring homework assignments.

The student, however, enjoyed the extra attention and only completed those assignments worked on during the after-school sessions. SST members quickly devised a new strategy: The boy was sent to do his homework in a kindergarten classroom, which he found humiliating. He started doing his homework at home.

And when SST members recommended that a girl who was a year younger than the rest of her classmates be held back to gain a little maturity, the girl’s parents refused. A year later the girl’s immaturity became an even greater problem, and the parents asked that she be held back a year.

The Chatsworth Park SST team reviews from 12 to 15 cases each year, a small percentage of the 439 students who attend the west San Fernando Valley school, according to principal Golden.

The first year the program was available at Chatsworth Park, only one or two cases were referred to the SST. According to Golden and team members, teachers feared that asking for help would be interpreted as a lack of competence.

“When teachers saw that the team was a supportive rather than an adversarial group, then more and more started to use the team,” Golden said.

A recently published report on SST groups surveying 33 schools in California led researcher Margaret Scheffelin to find good points and bad ones in the process.

On the positive side, there is immediate attention given to a youngster’s problems. The team’s suggestions are actually carried out. And more than 50% of the suggestions helped to solve the student’s problems, said Scheffelin, a consultant in the Program Evaluation and Research section of the state Department of Education.

Negatives, according to Scheffelin, are that the program requires a lot of time for preparation and discussion; parents and teachers do not always follow through on suggestions, and at some schools students are rarely referred to the group. Because the SST concept is so new to many teachers, there is still some distrust of it.

But at Chatsworth Park, support for SST appears to be growing.

“This is not a punishment group. This is a problem-solving group,” said Bonnie Bishop, who trains SST members at Valley schools.