The Seven Secrets of Successful Urban School Students

Abstract

This article identifies seven specific attitudes, behaviors, and skills among academically successful urban Black students and explores the relationship to their achievement. This study examines the academic achievement of 157 Black students and finds that when specific Successful Learner Characteristics are present, above-average academic achievement is likely to result. This research further determines that when urban Black students demonstrate these characteristics they also share in greater responsibility for their own learning. Finally, this study concludes that there may be less of an “achievement gap” than there is a gap in attitudes, behaviors, and skills that lead to academic achievement.

Keywords

urban education students educational reform multi-cultural education

I often conduct impromptu social experiments with my graduate students and other adults in Cleveland, Ohio. In the first part of the experiment, I ask if they can explain why so many students from the Cleveland Metropolitan School District have such low academic achievement. Their responses are quite common. Typically, they suggest that the low achievement is the result of generational poverty, poorly educated parents, a lack of student motivation, low expectations from parents and community, and so on. The impromptu participants are always eager to provide their opinions and elaborate on the suspected causes.

In the second part of the experiment, I ask if they can explain why some of those same students who have experienced generational poverty, have poorly educated parents, and so on exhibit stellar academic achievement. This part of the experiment usually causes the participants to be much less secure in their answers, to make wild speculations, or to simply admit that they do not know.

This experiment is conducted to demonstrate that almost anyone, educators or otherwise, can generically explain urban student failure. But, few people can provide a common rationale as to what drives urban students to academic success, especially when demographically and statistically speaking they should fail. We have always known that some students, regardless of race or economics, will achieve academically. And, it is the position of this author that understanding why some urban students succeed academically is more useful in research than only understanding why they fail.

Every year, some Cleveland students survive devastating family, community, and school obstacles, then go on to graduate with honors, and are well prepared to pursue intellectually challenging career options. A few of those students receive full academic scholarships to attend prestigious universities. Others acquire grade point averages (GPAs) and Scholastic Achievement Test (SAT) scores for traditional acceptance into colleges and universities. And still, some qualify for admittance into community colleges, the armed forces, and to pursue high paying skilled labor apprenticeships.

Almost everyone can think of a friend or an acquaintance who overcame tremendously difficult circumstances and became successful in a specific field. We have all heard of individuals who were born into poverty, attended failing schools, were raised by a single parent, and survived tough city streets. Yet, those individuals went on to become some of our most admired citizens. How is this possible? What distinguishes one student from another when neither has familial, economic, or social advantages? Why does one inner-city student succeed in school while another fails, yet both are demographically similar?

Answers to those questions are highly complex and may never be fully understood. However, it is those questions that are explored in this research. This current study examines seven specific attitudes, behaviors, and skills among urban students that are related to their academic success.

My research in this area began with a qualitative study titled “The Seven Secrets of Successful Inner City Students” (Hampton, 2008). That study examined the lives of five academically successful seniors from an inner-city high school in Cleveland. The search for those students was conducted with the caveat that they had come from impoverished homes, were raised by only one parent, and that parent had no formal education beyond high school. Each of those students overcame tremendously difficult personal and family circumstances. None of the students had been involved with their fathers, all were on public assistance, one of the students had faced homelessness, and others had been in the care of various extended family members. Some of the students had witnessed the effects of drugs on their remaining parent, and all lived in neighborhoods with high drug, crime, and gang activity.

Given those conditions however, all five of those students demonstrated high academic achievement, and had mapped out promising post-high school careers. Those students had GPAs that ranged from 3.3 to 4.0. One student had received a full academic scholarship to attend a southern historically Black college and another had received a partial academic scholarship to attend a different southern historically Black college. Although the remaining three qualified for general college admittance, two deferred entrance for military service and governmental funding for college, which was their long-term goal. The last student intended to enroll in a community college to begin a nursing program.

That study revealed seven common characteristics among those students which contributed to their academic success. Although in varying degrees, they all shared specific characteristics regarding their attitudes, behaviors, and skills that related to successful learning and achievement. While none of the five students particularly regarded the others as friends, those seven characteristics emerged as the most common denominators defining their paths to academic success. Those attitudes, behaviors, and skills became known as their “Successful Learner Characteristics” (SLCs) and were identified and defined as follows:

SLCs

Self-respect—The extent to which the student demonstrates a high regard for himself or herself.

Command of standard English—The extent to which the student demonstrates the ability to routinely construct grammatically correct sentences and to pronounce words correctly.

Goal-setting ability—The extent to which the student demonstrates the ability to identify relevant short- and long-term objectives.

Self-motivation—The extent to which the student demonstrates the ability to push himself or herself toward the accomplishment of relevant short- and long-term objectives.

Time management skills—The extent to which the student demonstrates the ability to plan, organize, schedule, and work on relevant tasks.

Consequence awareness—The extent to which the student demonstrates a concern for the outcomes of his or her actions (to usually think before they act).

Respect for others—The extent to which the student demonstrates regard for the worth, rights, property, and the feelings of others.

The current study explores the impact of those SLCs on African American student achievement, but on a larger and quantitative scale. In this research, there is an examination of the achievement of 157 African American students to determine if the presence of these characteristics translates into higher academic achievement among students who possess them in the broader population. Also, this study seeks to discover whether any specific characteristic or combination of characteristics tends to result in higher achievement than the others.

Review of Literature

Resilient Learning

Some children develop the ability to survive despite many adverse situations in their lives. Those children not only survive, but also thrive academically and socially (Condly, 2006). Many students of color frequently express high aspirations to succeed academically (Fine, 1991; Fordham, 1996; Hauser & Anderson, 1991; Ogbu, 1990). Yet having abstract desires to succeed is quite different than making the commitment of time and effort to transform the abstract desire into a solid reality.

One area of research that has important implications for the success of students at risk of academic failure is focused on “resilience,” or those students who succeed in school despite the presence of adverse conditions. Conceptual and empirical work on resilience has gained recognition as a foundation for examining why some students are successful in school, while other students from the same demographically disadvantaged backgrounds and communities are not (Reis, Colbert, & Thomas, 2005).

The construct of “educational resilience” should not be viewed as a fixed attribute, but rather as something that can be promoted by focusing on “alterable” factors that can affect an individual’s success in school (Benard, 1993). This approach does not focus on attributes such as ability, because ability has not necessarily been found to be a characteristic of resilient students. However, Benard went on to find four personal alterable factors that have been found to influence resiliency in students: social competence, problem-solving skills, autonomy, and a sense of purpose.

Empirical studies indicate that resilient students may approach learning differently from other students: They generally put more effort in their studies and have a higher level of homework completion (Finn & Rock, 1997). They display greater preparation and participation in classwork and come to class on time more frequently (Finn & Rock, 1997). They make better use of their time both during and after school hours, they participate more in extracurricular activities (Catterall, 1998), and they display greater engagement in academic activities (Borman & Overman, 2004; Catterall, 1998). Psychologically, resilient students tend to have a higher sense of self-esteem, higher self-efficacy, and a greater sense of control over success and failure in school than their non-resilient counterparts (Borman & Overman, 2004).

Numerous studies on resilience establish a correlation between academic resiliency and academic success, especially in lower socioeconomic populations. For example, a longitudinal study by Scales, Roehlkepartain, Neal, Kielsmeier, and Benson (2006) found that higher levels of resiliency traits are strongly correlated with higher GPAs among middle and high school students. These findings hold true over time, so that students reporting more resiliency characteristics early in the study had higher GPAs 3 years later, compared with students with fewer assets at the start.

Gayles (2005) approached the topic of educational resiliency through his study titled “Playing the Game and Paying the Price: Academic Resilience Among Three High-Achieving African-American Males.” He examined themes of academic resilience using a qualitative, ethnographic approach to data collection. Interviews were conducted with three African American males from non-affluent homes, and all three attended the least affluent high schools in their city. These three students were the only African American males to graduate with honors from their high school and the first to graduate with honors and attend college from their individual families. Gayles’s study concluded that the students did not believe they were successful despite their situations, but rather because education was the avenue that would provide the lifestyle they anticipated in the future. One of the students described achievement as “how bad you want a new life” (Gayles, 2005, p. 257).

In studies conducted by the U.S. Department of Education, Waxman and Huang (1997) assessed inner-city students in the south-central United States. They found that students who ranked in the 90th percentile on the standardized tests in mathematics were highly resilient, reporting significantly higher levels of task orientation and satisfaction, social self-concept, achievement motivation, and academic self-concept than their counterparts who ranked below the 10th percentile.

Hanson and Austin (2003) conducted a longitudinal study of students in California and found that nearly every measure of resilience was positively related to concurrent test scores. The highest increases in test scores occurred in schools where the students reported high levels of resilience. Moreover, resilience development proved to be equally beneficial for successive test score improvements in both low and high performing schools.

In a study to identify the aspects of resiliency most closely linked to academic performance, Solberg et al. (1998) identified six key skills as the foundations of educational resiliency: building confidence, making connections, setting goals, managing stress, increasing well-being, and understanding motivation. Studies conducted by Solberg in Milwaukee Public Schools between 1998 and 2004 show that when students learn about and cultivate these six skills, their school performance improves significantly (Solberg, Carlstom, Howard, & Jones, 2007).

The academic success of Black students, according to Dei (2008), involves the implementation of various strategies to rise above the academic barriers in the school system. He went on to cite four specific conditions that contribute to the educational success of Black students. The first condition is as follows:

The ability of the learner to withstand the politically and culturally mediated experiences of conventional schooling through the development of a critical and strong sense of self, self-worth and purpose, as well as a sense of connectedness and belonging to a community of learners. (p. 355)

The second condition highlighted student support:

How the learner is able to call and rely on wider social responsibilities and mechanisms both inside and outside school and in the wider community in the quest for educational excellence. (p. 355)

The third condition discussed students’ self-identification:

The learner’s strong sense of identity and ability to call on wider social support networks combine to sustain the ability of the learner in identifying with institutional structures for teaching, learning, and the administration of education as working to ensure academic success. (p. 355)

The fourth and final condition described students’ demand for learning:

The learner’s ability to evoke individual agency in calling for accountability and transparency in educational practices. (p. 355)

According to Dei, these four conditions strengthen Black students’ will to achieve academically. It gives students control over their educational experiences by developing self-confidence to rise above the systemic barriers. These conditions promote the importance of inter-dependence and community in the success of Black students and encourage them to arrive at school in search of success.

Achievement Motivation

Student motivation is an essential element that is necessary for quality education. How do we know when students are motivated? They pay attention, they begin working on tasks immediately, they ask questions and volunteer answers, and they appear to be happy and eager (Palmer, 2007). Theories of achievement motivation have been used to explain achievement behaviors. Generally speaking, achievement motivation has been viewed as an individual’s tendency to approach, accomplish, and master various tasks and to rapidly attain high standards (De la Fuente, 2004). Motivation orientation has been explained and viewed as either intrinsic or extrinsic with each having a differing effect on academic performance (Harter, 1981).

The underachievement of youth living in poverty is a persistent issue for educators, researchers, and policy makers (Fine, Burns, Payne, & Torre, 2004; Kozol, 2005). Research on achievement motivation provides some contradicting implications for student academic achievement. Although some studies emphasize achievement motivation as a stable personality trait, others contend that it may be nurtured. McClelland (1961) suggests that achievement motivation is an acquired, relatively stable and general feature of personality that drives individuals to strive for success, whenever their performance on a task can be evaluated against a standard of excellence. However, Castenell (1984) found that the need to achieve can be perceived as a single construct that some people possess and others do not.

The placement of students into appropriately challenging and supportive learning contexts nurtures intrinsic interest and achievement motivation (Dweck & Elliott, 1983; Hoekman, McCormick, Gross, & Miraca, 1999). These studies suggested that the achievement and achievement motivation of students may be nurtured in their environment. Whether or not achievement motivation can be nurtured or is a stable trait, further studies will be needed to explore how culture, specifically the culture of Black students, influences its existence.

Perhaps more so than would be expected upon review of national statistics, Black students also want to be successful in school, and that notion is confirmed by some research. Garibaldi (1992) surveyed 2,250 Black students in schools in New Orleans and found that 95% reported that being successful in school was important to them and felt that teachers needed to push them harder to succeed. His research suggests that Black students desire to be challenged academically and hold values that pertain to being successful in school. When these students do not experience academic success, they may use coping mechanisms to deal with their feelings about school failure. Their feelings of disappointment may be exhibited through them telling themselves and others that succeeding is not important to them.

The lack of academic success that Black students have may be influenced by their school environment and teacher expectations. In cases where students are not encouraged to be successful or educators do not expect them to succeed, they may feel less motivated to achieve. Educators may lower their expectations, and soften the instruction, which in turn may have a negative impact on these students’ motivation and academic achievement goals (Tucker, 1999).

Achievement Values

Achievement behavior, based on the research of Solomon (1982), can be defined as a combination of the value placed on achieving by individuals and their subjective probability or expectancy of being successful. On a much broader basis, Bardi and Schwartz (2003) contend that the relative importance given to achievement values demands that they are ranked as a representation of the value system of an entire social group.

Some research studies have revealed that Black students’ beliefs, values, and attitudes about achievement have some impact on their academic success. Ford (1996) found that Black students’ attitudes toward school and achievement orientation significantly influence their achievement behaviors and motivation. According to Sanders (1998), students’ achievement ideologies or beliefs about the relationship between schooling future success and prosperity have also been found to influence their academic performance.

A study by Ford (1994) concluded that academically successful Black students strongly supported an achievement ideology and viewed school as important. Moreover, Black students were more likely to value academic achievement and educational attainment when they viewed education as an effective means of social and economic improvement. However, they were less likely to place value on academic achievement if they were less optimistic about the role of education for their economic upward mobility.

Personality Traits

According to McAdams (2008), personality is the sum total of the behavior and mental characteristics that are distinctive of an individual, and develop by adolescence in the form of personal narratives that help make sense of identity and self. Personality is also described as a categorized set of attributes that is found in a person that influences and defines the individual’s cognition, motivations, and behaviors.

Personality traits describe relatively stable patterns of behavior, motivation, emotion, and cognition (Wilt & Revelle, 2009) that are not bound to a particular sociocultural context. This does not suggest that every trait will be evident to the same extent in all cultures, nor that every trait can be observed in all situations, but rather that any trait can be observed in a subset of situations in any culture, regardless of time and place. For example, youths vary in their goals and their sense of competence and self-efficiency, in particular domains of their lives, for example, academics and school completion.

Much of the research concerning the impact of personality on achievement of Black students centered on low academic achievement of Black students in comparison with their White counterparts. There is a dearth of research that focuses on personality development, which employs the application of models culturally relevant to Black students. Research on personality has been most often based on the Cultural Deprivation and Cultural Difference models. Based on the Cultural Deprivation model, early childhood experiences contribute to enduring personality formation that inhibits academic achievement in Black students (Murray, Smith, & West, 1989).

Some Black students have personal traits that foster their academic success. Studies suggest that academically achieving Black students appear to share certain personality characteristics. Floyd (1997) examined factors leading to academic success in a group of Black high school students. She found that academic success is influenced by the development of certain personality traits. Persistence and optimism were identified as personality factors critical to the school success of these students. Participants of the study indicated that they used these personality traits in the face of challenging and stressful school experiences. These students also reportedly exhibited the personality trait of conviction that enabled them to hold a belief that their academic efforts would pay off.

Shade (1978) provided an early analysis of the personality characteristics of academically successful students. She reported that these students tended to be controlled, cautious, and constricting in their approach to the learning environment. Her research found that Black achievers manifest high levels of aspiration and have a perception of themselves involving the belief that they will accomplish the goals they set for themselves. As compared with low achievers, these students have been found to be more goal-oriented and exploring (Henderson & Long, 1971). Some research suggests that achieving Black students tend to be highly creative and shrewd in learning situations (Greenberg & Davidson, 1972).

Gordon’s (1995) study of academically resilient Black high school students revealed that these students exhibited personality traits such as sensitivity, sociability, inner control, cooperativeness, cognitive superiority, and biculturality. Ford (1992) conducted a comparative study of achieving and underachieving academically gifted Black students. She found that the achieving Black students were more likely to hold an internal locus of control than underachieving students. Academically successful students frequently attributed their success to themselves.

Success in school plays an important role in affecting students’ immediate and long-term opportunities. A myriad of factors have been identified as being related to academic achievement, two of the most fundamental being intelligence and personality (Chamorro-Premuzic & Furnham, 2005). Although the direct relationship between school success and personality traits has been extensively studied, the results are not as straightforward as they are for the relationship between intelligence and academic achievement.

Design of the Study

This study quantitatively examines the seven SLCs and their impact on the academic achievement of African American students in Grades 4 to 10. Although data were collected on students in kindergarten to third grades, these data were not included in this study. This decision was based on the rationale that students in 3rd grade and below have not had sufficient time to fully develop their SLCs. In addition, it was only by coincidence that no student in Grades 11 to 12 were represented in the study.

Throughout the fall of 2011, a two-part teacher survey was employed as the framework for this study; the teachers were also graduate students at Cleveland State University. In Part 1, teachers observed the SLCs of students in their classrooms over the span of an 8-week period. However, only the reported SLCs of African American students are used in this study. In Part 2, the teachers reported individual final grades in specific subjects for the period, but again only the grades of African American students were of interest for research purposes.

The SLCs were discussed in the graduate classes and defined in writing for the participating teachers; however, the teachers were unaware of the ultimate purpose of their observations of students. They were also unaware that only African American students were of interest for this study. Next, the teachers were informed that they would be asked to complete Part 2 of this study weeks later, but were not informed that matching student grades for the term to reported SLCs was the culminating goal.

Overall, this study examines the predictability of students’ grades (variable X) when SLCs (variable Y) are known. Also, this study examines the predictability of SLCs (variable Y) when students’ grades (variable X) are known. If the predictive values are equal, then changes in one variable should be strongly predictive of changes in the other. Or more long term, if improvements can be made in SLCs, then improvements in students’ grades should also be observed. However, making improvement in neither SLCs nor students’ grades is a research objective at this time.

Participants

Teachers from the Cleveland, Ohio area, who are pursuing Masters of Educational Administration degrees at Cleveland State University participated in the administration of the surveys. Participation in the survey administration was voluntary, and 21 graduate students from one class were given surveys along with instructions on proper administration. Five of the graduate students did not return the surveys. Sixteen graduate students returned surveys; however, three were eliminated because no African American students were in their classes. Thirteen graduate students returned surveys that were useful for this study.

Subjects

The subjects of the surveys included 157 public school African American students in Grades 4 to 10 from the Cleveland, Ohio area. There were 70 males and 87 females.

Survey Instruments and Data Collection

The survey instruments were designed by the researcher and were titled Survey of SLCs (Attitudes, Behaviors, and Skills—Part 1), Survey of SLCs (Report of Students’ Grades—Part 2). The instruments were given to participants separately, and with approximately 2 weeks in between. Part 1 allowed for each teacher to make observations in classes of up to 30 students for a 6-week period of time. The teachers were directed to assign numbers 1 to 30 to students for later identification and matching. Part 1 collected information and data regarding the following:

School district name

Grade level of students

Subject taught

Pseudonyms for teacher identification

Students’ gender

Students’ race

Teacher rating for each student on observed SLCs. The rating scale was based on (Good = 3, Average = 2, or Poor = 1)

Self-respect

Command of standard English

Goal-setting ability

Self-motivation

Time management skills

Consequence awareness

Respect for others

Part 2 of the instrument was used to gather data on what letter grade each student earned for their respective courses. As teachers in each class had assigned students numbers from 1 to 30, they were able to report what grade each student earned for the term. Students’ letter grades were reported as either A = 4, B = 3, C = 2, D = 1, or F = 0. Because the teachers reported all information using the pseudonym they created, all students, SLCs, and grades were able to be matched. To insure precision of the information, Parts 1 and 2 of the instruments were compared to confirm the teacher pseudonyms, grade levels, subjects taught, students’ gender, students’ race, and students’ assigned numbers. To solicit the most honest data, no demographic information was collected on the teachers. All of the information and data reported was confirmed.

Administration of Survey

Parts 1 and 2 of this survey were completed by 13 teachers representing eight school districts in the Cleveland, Ohio area, in the fall of 2011. In these districts, the school year began in late August 2011. In most cases, the end of first grading term occurred in late October 2011. Part 1 of the instrument was administered at approximately 6 weeks into the grading term, and Part 2 was administered 2 weeks later or after the completion of the first grading term.

The administration of Survey Part 1 was done 6 weeks into the new school year. This time period allowed for the teachers to gain detailed knowledge and insight of the SLCs for each student in their class. In instances where teachers taught self-contained classrooms and multiple subjects, the teachers observed and assessed the SLCs in only one subject area. In instances where teachers taught multiple classes, but the same subject several periods per day, the teachers observed and assessed only one class period of students.

The participating teachers typically had been with their students for 6 weeks before Part 1 of the survey was distributed and administered. The researcher believed that the 6-week period would be sufficient enough in length for the teachers to become familiar with SLCs for each student.

The teachers were given 2 weeks to complete and return Part 1 of the survey. The teachers were informed that at a later time, they would be asked to complete Part 2 of the survey, but they were not informed as to what information would be collected or when it would be administered. The teachers were asked, however, to assign each student in the survey a number that could be used to identify that same student for Part 2 of the survey at a later date.

Part 2 of the survey collected data on the actual grades students earned in their respective classes. In each case, students were assigned letter grades with A = 4 representing the highest achievement and F = 0 representing the lowest. For this part of the survey, teachers were reminded to make sure students and grades corresponded from both surveys.

Data Analysis

Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient will be used to model the linear correlation (dependence) between variables X (grades) and Y (SLCs). Linear Regression will be used to model the relationship between a scalar dependent variable X (grades) and one or more explanatory variables denoted Y (SLCs).

Results

Tables 1 and 2 show the student distribution by grade level, as well as the distribution by academic grades earned. As can be seen in Table 1, the numbers of African American students per grade level were randomly distributed, with a low of 2.5% representing Grade 4 and a high of 20.4% representing Grade 10. Table 2 illustrates a quite normal distribution of earned grades.

Table 1.

Grade Level Distribution.

Grade level for all Black students 4th through 10th in the sample
Grade level	Frequency	Percent	Valid percent	Cumulative percent
Valid
4	4	2.5	2.5	2.5
5	25	15.9	15.9	18.5
6	9	5.7	5.7	24.2
7	33	21.0	21.0	45.2
8	29	18.5	18.5	63.7
9	25	15.9	15.9	79.6
10	32	20.4	20.4	100.0
Total	157	100.0	100.0

Table 2.

Academic Grade Distribution.

Academic grade for all Black students 4th through 10th in the sample
Earned points/grades	Frequency	Percent	Valid percent	Cumulative percent
Valid
0 = F	15	9.6	9.6	9.6
1 = D	32	20.4	20.4	29.9
2 = C	55	35.0	35.0	65.0
3 = B	32	20.4	20.4	85.4
4 = A	23	14.6	14.6	100.0
Total	157	100.0	100.0

Table 3 illustrates the correlations among the seven SLC variables as well as their individual, zero-order correlations with grades. As can be seen, the SLC variables are moderately to strongly inter-correlated, ranging from a low of .48 (the correlation between “goal setting” and “self-respect”) to a high of .84 (“goal setting” and “self-motivation”). The SLCs are also moderately to strongly correlated with grades, “time management” having the highest correlation (.81) and “Standard English” the lowest (.50).

Table 3.

Correlations.

	Correlations
	Grade	Time management	Self-motivation	Goal setting	Consequence awareness	Respect for others	Self-respect	Standard English
Pearson’s correlation
Grade	1.000	.810	.794	.765	.596	.575	.528	.500
Time management	.810	1.000	.789	.739	.596	.538	.510	.490
Self-motivation	.794	.789	1.000	.844	.624	.507	.553	.552
Goal setting	.765	.739	.844	1.000	.589	.527	.482	.538
Consequence awareness	.596	.596	.624	.589	1.000	.583	.589	.656
Respect for others	.575	.538	.507	.527	.583	1.000	.500	.487
Self-respect	.528	.510	.553	.482	.589	.500	1.000	.502
Standard English	.500	.490	.552	.538	.656	.487	.502	1.000

Results of the multiple correlation analysis (with the seven SLCs as the independent variables, and grades the dependent variable) are presented in Table 4. Fully two thirds (R² = .67) of the variance in grades is explained by the seven SLCs. This is an unusually high level of predictability and rivals traditional educational predictors such as socioeconomic status (SES) and prior achievement. It is well worth pointing out that the adjusted R² is virtually identical with the unadjusted R², indicating that there would be little reduction in the strength of the relationship upon replication of the study. The important point to note, however, is that academic achievement is here being predicted not by prior achievement (where the correlation would be expected to be high because one is merely a predictor or current achievement from prior achievement), but by attitudes, behaviors, and personal skills.

Table 4.

Linear Regression.

Model summary
R	R ²	Adjusted R²	SE of the Estimate.
.819	.672	.669	0.674
Predictors: (Constant) behaviors
Coefficients
Model	Significance
(Constant)	.00
Behaviors	.00
Dependent variable: Grade, p = .005.

The seven SLCs also have high internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alpha = .91). This is again an unusually high level of reliability for a seven-item “test.” A principal axis factor analysis adds even further support to these results, with the first factor accounting for approximately 60% of the total variance, and no factor loading less than .50.

This model is highly reliable and significant, p = .00. The significant level is 0. The adjusted R² shows that 66.9% of the variance in academic achievement (as measured by grades) is explained by the seven SLCs.

Discussion and Conclusion

The analyses of the seven SLCs and their influence on the academic achievement of African American students are both striking and extremely informative. Students who were reported to demonstrate the SLCs performed higher academically than those students who did not. As a result of this finding, three important questions have emerged: (a) Can these SLCs be taught to students who do not possess them? (b) How can we best teach students to obtain these characteristics? and (c) At what grades should they be taught? Continued exploration and answers to these questions could significantly improve the achievement levels of urban students for years to come.

As this study and many others have shown, urban students are not predestined to academic or social failure. High achievement and school success remain well within reach of these students, given appropriate circumstances. For human beings, most attitudes, behaviors, and skills are learned as a result of interactions with others within one’s environment. Moreover, positive attitudes, behaviors, and skills can be further developed and sustained throughout one’s life when they are encouraged, nurtured, and reinforced on a consistent basis. It is the position of this author that all seven of the SLCs can be encouraged, nurtured, and reinforced for urban students in schools, thereby establishing a foundation for greater academic success.

The SLCs could be introduced and discussed as early as pre-kindergarten with increasing emphasis through Grade 12. At all grade levels, these characteristics could be taught and practiced not as a new curriculum, but rather as attitudes, behaviors, and skills that are incorporated as daily expectations of all students. Because the mastery of these characteristics offers benefits to students beyond academic achievement, they could be reinforced and practiced as behavioral expectations in all settings throughout the school day.

Training faculty members to incorporate the teaching of these characteristics could be accomplished through on-site staff development at minimal to no additional costs. Faculty members could assume responsibility for developing and sharing activities that directly correspond to each of the seven SLCs. Also, individual classrooms could become demonstration sites for peer faculty members where manuals of successful practices are compiled and organized for distribution. The encouragement of these characteristics and their incorporation as expectations need not be costly, nor time-consuming. However, they would need to become a significant feature within the school culture.

In the past, our most frequent responses to low student achievement in urban schools have been to intensify end of grade testing, develop more stringent teacher evaluations, and to increase graduation standards. Although those practices are well intentioned, none have led to improved academic outcomes among urban students. All of those endeavors have minimized the most critical factors; the students themselves. Academic achievement is not something that can be inserted into students, accomplished by punitive threats or purchased for students. Similarly, at-risk students will not succeed academically when they actively resist learning. For those most at risk of school failure to become successful learners (and thereby successful members of society), they must accept that they share in the responsibility for their own learning and achievement.

The reality for impoverished students, many of whom are at risk of school failure, is that they must learn to do more with less. These students simply must work harder to achieve than students who have more economic, social, and familial support. However, a more important reality is that when at-risk students make a commitment to academic excellence, economic, social, and familial disparities need not be barriers to high achievement.

This study illustrates that regardless of race, family background, or economic status, high levels of academic achievement are possible for at-risk students. For most at-risk students, school success is not contingent upon innate intelligence or ability, but rather is the result of a desire to learn combined with appropriate attitudes, behaviors, and skills in the classroom that allow for learning to take place.

The results of this study strongly confirm the relationship between the seven SLCs and academic achievement. Although there is much educators can learn from this study, perhaps most important is the understanding that all of these characteristics can be developed and would be unrestricted by financial concerns. For example, there is no amount of money sufficient enough to teach students the importance of self-respect, the importance of self-motivation, or the importance of setting goals for learning and for life.

The poorest student in America can choose to live his or her life with self-respect and to show respect for others. Respect for self and others is not measured by dollars, but rather by demonstrated attitudes and behaviors. However, those measures of respect are prerequisites for success in school and life beyond the classroom. Those same considerations can be applied to the development of goal-setting abilities, self-motivation, time management skills, consequence awareness, and the use of Standard English. The development of those characteristics is not contingent upon budgetary allocations, but instead upon school and classroom practices that nurture, encourage, and reinforce them.

Finally, this research has important implications with regard to the “achievement gap.” For decades, voluminous studies have repeatedly shown that urban Black youth consistently demonstrate lower academic achievement than other groups of students. However, no credible studies have ever suggested that there is an intelligence gap, but rather a gap in the ability to demonstrate academic achievement. Therefore, given the high academic performance of urban students who demonstrate the SLCs, there is evidence that supports the idea that there may be less of an “achievement gap,” but more of a “gap in attitudes, behaviors, and skills that lead to achievement.”

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

Frederick M. Hampton is an associate professor of education at Cleveland State University. His primary research, national presentations, and published works continue to explore methods of improving the overall school success of urban students. He is a former elementary school teacher, principal, and director of Community Education.

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