A California bill that
would prohibit using students’ personal information for profit is now headed to
Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk.
The California Senate passed the legislation unanimously Tuesday night. The
bill, the Student Online Personal Information Protection Act, would end
targeted advertising on K-12 websites, services and applications. Companies
wouldn’t be able to create profiles on students unless the profile serves an
explicit educational purpose. Companies would be banned from selling student
data, as well.
U.S. Sens. Ed Markey and Orrin Hatch recently introduced a similar
bill as an update to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974
Nearly 90 percent of schools in Washington state aren't making adequate
yearly progress under No Child Left Behind, the state announced today.
Out of 1,916 schools, 1,401 are under some phase of required improvement
under No Child Left Behind. Almost 30 percent of those schools have been
identified for major restructuring. Their options include replacing almost all
of the school's staff or having the state or an outside entity take over the
school.
The numbers aren't dramatically different from last year, but state
Superintendent Randy Dorn said Washington has to look at the results through a
different lens. After the Education Department pulled Washington
state's waiver from No Child Left Behind earlier this year, the state now must
accommodate some of the more onerous provisions of the law in the coming school
year, including paying for transfers to other public schools and tutoring.
In recent months, Dorn asked federal officials if the state could avoid
sending notices home to parents that their child's school was failing. The
Education Department rejected
that request.
But the Evergreen State got a small reprieve. The department gave the state
a “limited one-year waiver” of a requirement forcing districts to provide
parents of students attending Title I schools with notice of public school
choice options at least two weeks before the start of the school year.
Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is suing the federal government over the Common Core, alleging
that the Education Department has violated federal law and the Tenth Amendment
to the U.S. Constitution.
Jindal says that the Obama administration has used federal grants like Race
to the Top “to compel states to enter binding agreements to adopt and fully
implement a single set of federally-defined content standards and to utilize
assessment products created by a federally-sponsored ‘consortia,’” according to
a press release.
“Furthermore, the U.S. Department of Education has made changes to the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act state test review and approval process
that will coerce states to adopt the federal government’s preferred tests or
risk billions in federal funding,” his office adds in a statement.
Jindal alleges that the Common Core testing groups PARCC and Smarter
Balanced are part of an effort to nationalize curriculum — an argument that
he’s making in his own state in a separate lawsuit. And waivers from No Child
Left Behind have allowed states to “unlawfully” waive accountability
requirements in exchange for adopted the Common Core.
LEARNING HOW TO LOSE THE COMMON CORE: Louisiana state
lawmakers are headed to Oklahoma today to learn from Sooner State legislators
about how to successfully ditch the Common Core. Republican Rep. Brett Geymann
tells Morning Education that he and Reps. Lance Harris, Bob Hensgens, Cameron
Henry and Rogers Pope will meet with staff and authors of the Oklahoma bill
that repealed the Common Core. Earlier this year, Geymann and his colleagues
unsuccessfully spearheaded a bill to repeal the standards. And a judge recently
said the Common Core could continue [http://politico.pro/1pX40yN]
in the state after denying a request filed by 17 lawmakers alleging that
implementation of the standards violated state law.
— Speaking of the Common Core, the National Hispanic
Christian Leadership Conference is hosting an event with former Arkansas Gov.
Mike Huckabee today to bolster support for rigorous academic standards. While
NHCLC has come out in support of the Common Core (and Huckabee has called it a
“toxic term” and declared the standards “dead”), the event is about much more
than Common Core. Carlos Campo, chair of the Hispanic Education Alliance at
NHCLC, tells Morning Education the group will push for educational equity and
announce new initiatives to close the achievement gap. The event starts at
10:30 a.m. ET at the National Press Club.
The exemplary manager is often shown delivering a rousing speech that inspires her troops to achieve ever greater heights. But the truth is a lot less exciting than that.
To three highly effective and successful executives, a boring, often-overlooked ability is one of the most vital skills you can have as a manager — the ability to write.
“Written communication to engineering is superior [to verbal communication] because it is more consistent across an entire product team, it is more lasting, it raises accountability.”
— Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz Written communication creates lasting consistency across an entire team because a piece of writing is leveragable collateral from which everyone, from marketing to sales to QA to engineering, can work and consult. Accountability spreads as a manager’s written work product — product requirement documents, FAQs, presentations, white papers — holds the manager responsible for what happens when the rest of the team executes on the clearly articulated, unambiguous vision described by the documents.
To Horowitz, the distinction between written and verbal communication is stark and in fact is what separates the wheat from the chaff. Good managers want to be held accountable and aren’t looking for ways to weasel out of responsibility. And so, good managers write, while “[b]ad product managers voice their opinion verbally and lament … the ‘powers that be’.”
“There is no way to write a six-page, narratively structured memo and not have clear thinking.”
—Jeff Bezos, Amazon Jeff Bezos values writing over talking to such an extreme that in Amazon senior executive meetings, “before any conversation or discussion begins, everyone sits for 30 minutes in total silence, carefully reading six-page printed memos.”
Writing out full sentences enforces clear thinking, but more than that, it’s a compelling method to drive memo authors to write in a narrative structure that reinforces a distinctly Amazon way of thinking—its obsession with the customer. In every memo that could potentially address any issue in the company, the memo author must answer the question: “What’s in it for the customer, the company, and how does the answer to the question enable innovation on behalf of the customer?”
“Reports are more a medium of self-discipline than a way to communicate information.”
— Andy Grove, Intel
Like Bezos, Grove finds value in the process of writing. The surprising thing, then, is that reading what’s written isn’t important to Grove. The main point of this self-disciplinary process is to force yourself “to be more precise than [you] might be verbally”, creating “an archive of data” that can “help to validate ad hoc inputs” and to reflect with precision on your thought and approach.
Writing, according to Grove, is a “safety-net” for your thought process that you should always be doing to “catch … anything you may have missed.”
Accountability, coherence of thought and planning, and commitment to vision and mission are amazing benefits of what too many consider a ho-hum, even old-fashioned, tool.
CLOSING A FERPA LOOPHOLE: As students head back to class,
privacy advocate Sheila Kaplan is urging parents to demand that schools keep
their children’s personal information private. Federal privacy law, known as
FERPA, gives schools the right to share “directory information” with third
parties, including for-profit companies. That information can include a child’s
name, address, phone number, date and place of birth, awards, extracurricular
activities and even height, weight and student ID number. Schools can also
share student photos. But parents have the right to opt out — as long as they
do it in writing. Kaplan has run an Opt Out campaign [http://bit.ly/1qqmu7t] for the last few years;
she recently ramped it up with a new video. Take a look: http://bit.ly/1q0BH1F.
— Still have FERPA questions? The Future of Privacy Forum
today unveils a website designed to be a comprehensive resource for parents,
educators, entrepreneurs and policy makers. The site, sponsored by a host of
ed-tech companies, explains privacy laws and explores data management issues.
Check it out: http://bit.ly/YzXPH4.
Americans overwhelmingly support high-stakes testing to determine whether
students should advance to the next grade or graduate from high school,
according to the annual PDK/Gallup Poll.
The poll,
released this morning, found that more than two-thirds of public school parents
don’t believe standardized tests help teachers assess their students’ academic
performance. Yet both parents and the public at large expressed very strong
support for using tests for certain high-stakes decisions.
The 46th annual PDK/Gallup poll also documented a shift in concerns about
public schools. A decade ago, nearly a quarter of Americans thought that
discipline issues — drug use, gangs, fighting and the like — were among the
biggest problems facing schools in their community. Today, just 9 percent name
discipline as a major concern. But 32 percent believe lack of financial support
is a big problem for schools. That’s up from 21 percent who cited finances as a
top issue in 2004.
Another notable finding: Support for President Barack Obama’s education
policies is sinking. Just 5 percent of respondents gave him an A for his
“performance in support of public schools,” down from 11 percent in 2011. And
27 percent flunked him outright — up from 15 percent three years ago.
Public school parents are also less enthusiastic about their local schools.
Asked to rate the school their oldest child attends, 67 percent graded it A or
B, which sounds good — but it’s a drop from prior years, when anywhere from 71
percent to 77 percent of parents gave their schools a top grade. In the past,
barely any respondents gave their local school an F; this year, 5 percent did.
MORE BAD NEWS FOR THE COMMON CORE: The 46th annual
PDK/Gallup poll found that 60 percent of respondents said they opposed using
the standards to guide instruction in their community.The findings echo a poll
released yesterday from Education Next that found growing dislike of the
standards. Overall, Gallup found that 80 percent of Americans have heard about
the Common Core and at least half said they know “a fair amount” about the
standards. Both polls make clear that the high-profile opposition to the Common
Core is taking a toll. Stephanie Simon has the story for Pros: http://politico.pro/1oQ678O.
PARENT REVOLUTION WARNS LAUSD OVER PARENT TRIGGER: The
advocacy group Parent Revolution wrote Tuesday to the Los Angeles Unified
School District, calling the district’s decision to exempt itself from the
state’s 2010 parent trigger law illegal. LAUSD said last week that it is exempt
from the state law for the upcoming school year for reasons having to do with
its No Child Left Behind waiver. Parent Revolution urges the district “to
correct its erroneous interpretation of the law in the hope of avoiding future
litigation” to enforce the parent trigger law. The letter: http://politico.pro/1pIv30J.
Louisiana Superintendent John White tonight hailed a judge’s
ruling that Gov. Bobby Jindal can’t unilaterally withdraw the state from
the Common Core.
The ruling “enables our state to set its aspirations high and to compete
with states across the country,” White said. “Our students are just as smart
and capable as any in America. We've been working for four years to teach them
to the highest standards anywhere. Today's ruling continues that progress.”
White said he just sent a letter to Commissioner of Administration Kristy
Nichols, a close ally of Jindal, letting her know that the transition to the
Common Core will continue as planned and asking for the administration’s
“cooperation in that process.”
That cooperation is unlikely to be forthcoming, as Jindal’s chief of staff
has decried the ruling and vowed an immediate appeal.
PUBLIC SOURING ON COMMON CORE: A new poll by Education Next
finds support for the Common Core has dropped sharply, from 65 percent last
year to 53 percent this year. The poll found an even steeper tumble among
teachers: A year ago, 76 percent backed the standards; now, just 46 percent do.
Outright opposition among public school teachers has more than tripled, from 12
percent to 40 percent. The poll also finds, however, that the public likes the
idea of shared standards — so long as the question doesn’t mention the phrase
“Common Core.” Even Republicans, who express the most antipathy to the Common
Core brand, overwhelmingly like the concept. The poll: http://bit.ly/1mdAfVY.
STUDY: NCLB MAY CAUSE STATES TO REDUCE STANDARDS: Some
states may be dumbing down the skills that students are expected to learn in
order to avoid the penalties of not meeting No Child Left Behind standards, a
study presented at the American Sociological Association's annual meeting on
Sunday argues. For the study, "Are State Assessments Comparable to the
NAEP? Exploring Sociological and Political Factors Related to State/NAEP
Comparability," University of Kansas researcher Argun Saatcioglu compared
fourth graders' scores on state assessments to their performance on the
National Assessment of Educational Progress exam from 2003 to 2009. In general,
Saatcioglu found that there was less correlation over time between state
assessment and NAEP scores in states with higher African-American populations
and larger classes sizes. This, he argued, is a sign that some states may be
requiring students to master fewer skills over time. More on the study in an
ASA press release: http://bit.ly/1kNtIpk.
If you are a social media-holic, chances
are that in the last 2 weeks, you would have chanced upon a video of a
celebrity, or an athlete, or a politician dumping buckets of ice and water over
their heads. I wouldn't blame you if you already started wondering if this is a
collective attempt towards beating global warming! Well, before you stretch your
imagination further, here's what this ice bucket fuss is all about.
A fundraiser and awareness campaign for the
ALS Association, the "Ice Bucket Challenge" has taken social media by
storm since it popped off on July 29, with more than 176,000 people tweeting
about it in the past seven days alone. The rules of the challenge are simple:
once challenged, a participant has 24 hours to either dump a bucket of ice
water over their head, or donate $100 to the ALS charity of their choice. To
enhance the outreach and spread awareness further, every participant must then
nominate three more people to either take the challenge or pay up.
While there are critics pointing out that
the viral nature of this fad appears centered around an aversion to giving to
money, I would say that the campaign has done a fabulous job given that a
growing list of celebrities including business stalwarts such as Mark
Zuckerberg, Bill Gates (see below) and Jeff Bezos have participated in this
social media fundraising initiative. Also, according to the ALS Association,
more than 70,000 new donors have given money to one of its 38 chapters since
July 29, contributing to a grand total of $4 million in donations during this
same period (compared to only $1.12 million during the same period last year.)
leaving little doubt that this initiative has been a massive success!
What caught my attention however is the reason behind the
euphoric and emotional response to this campaign. I believe that the brains
behind this campaign have taught us four important lessons on how to run a
successful viral social media campaigns:
1)Relate to a Cause -The objective behind the campaign was to help
raise awareness about amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou
Gehrig's disease while raising funds. History says that any marketing campaign
that is associated with a cause which strikes an emotional chord with the
target audience does well.
2) Be Simple -The Ice Bucket Challenge is very simple. All it needs for one to
participate is a smart device and a social media account - which is just about
everyone these days. Leaving aside the cost of the ice and the amount involved
in donation, the entry to be a part of the awareness campaign is essentially
free, and the humiliation factor is extremely minimal.
3)Have Fun - When you're interacting with your social community it's
important to have fun, so long as your business type allows it. Therefore, it
should be no surprise that people enjoy entertaining and fun-loving engagement.
The Ice Bucket Challenge did enough to tickle people's senses.
4) Endorsers - Any successful viral campaign gives the end users a voice and an active
role in the campaign and the Ice Bucket Challenge did exactly that.
This is not rocket science. A vast majority
of marketers already know this, but even the best ones have a hard time
actually getting it right!
Have you taken on the "Ice Bucket Challenge" ? Would be happy to hear
your thoughts.
A ‘CONSUMER REPORTS’ FOR THE COMMON CORE: A new nonprofit
funded with $3 million from the Gates Foundation and the Helmsley Charitable
Trust launches today with plans to review textbooks and other instructional
material for fidelity to the Common Core. EdReports.org will start by bringing
in teams of classroom teachers to evaluate K-8 math materials. The curricula
will be judged by how well it matches the Common Core and assesses student
learning and by whether it offers teachers guidance in reaching children at all
levels.The group will post its ratings online and invite response from the
publishers. Up first: Pearson’s enVision Math, McGraw-Hill’s Everyday Math,
Houghton Mifflin’s Go Math and more than a dozen other widely used curricula.
EdReports will turn to high-school math and language arts in future years.
— The project is led by Eric Hirsch, formerly of the New Teacher
Center, and Maria Klawe, the president of Harvey Mudd College. They
say they hope districts will turn to their ratings to guide purchases.
“Hopefully with great materials, great teachers and great standards, we will be
able to move the needle on student achievement,” Hirsch said. Incoming NEA
President Lily Eskelsen Garcia supports the effort; she says curriculum ratings
could improve Common Core implementation “by shining a light” on quality
materials.
NASHVILLE — Convinced of wins during last week's elections in Tennessee, a group led by the billionaire Koch brothers has vowed to continue to spend aggressively in the state in pursuit of derailing Common Core academic standards here.
The Tennessee branch of Americans for Prosperity, a political and lobbying arm founded by conservatives Charles and David Koch, claims it spent $500,000 over the last six weeks targeted at "bringing the issues with Common Core to light" in Tennessee — "and this is just the beginning," the group's state director Andrew Ogles said in a statement Wednesday.
The organization, which set up shop in Nashville last year, pointed specifically to results in Williamson County's school board and state legislative races as evidence the public is "opposed to this one-size-fits-all takeover of the education system."
There, six new candidates were elected to the 12-member board, including four who ran on anti-Common Core platforms that countered the pro-Common Core position of superintendent Mike Looney. Victories came even though Williamson County Schools again boasted some of the highest test scores in the state.
Americans for Prosperity, a 501(c)(4) organization, says its efforts were all aimed at "education advocacy." As such, the organization isn't authorized to donate individually to candidates nor required to file financial disclosures with the state election commission.
The group assisted candidates without asking citizens to vote for the candidates. The primary tactic: depict Common Core as a federal overreach of President Obama's administration, a message often shared and advanced by tea party sympathizers.
Efforts included mailed pieces mentioning Beth Burgos, a family doctor who knocked off incumbent Eric Welch, that urged people to thank her for efforts to "stop Obama's radical agenda."
"Should Obama exert even more control over our schools?" another piece of literature distributed reads. Different versions had various candidates saying no.
"We didn't know anything about it," Burgos said of the ads. "I caught some flack from that. Other people liked it. But I knew nothing about it. It was crazy when it hit my mailbox, too."
Welch called the organization's efforts "pretty preposterous" and not based in reality.
"It's disappointing that those who have never lifted a finger in support of our schools now feel entitled to dictate how the highest-performing school system in the state is run," said Welch.
Tori Venable, communications director for Americans for Prosperity Tennessee, said she could not say how much of the $500,000 spent on anti-Common Core efforts statewide went directly to Williamson County. In a news release, the organization made clear that efforts are now geared toward January when state lawmakers reconvene in Nashville.
Americans for Prosperity currently has a statewide radio ad running in Tennessee aimed at Common Core. She suggested more mail pieces could be on the way.
"The goal is to get it repealed," Venable said.
Common Core critics failed in Tennessee with that objective last spring. Instead, lawmakers struck a compromise with Gov. Bill Haslam, a Common Core supporter, that delayed state-administered testing on Common Core standards for at least one year. The state had been set to transition to the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers exam this year, but will soon reopen bids from other test makers.
Nationally, the political landscape has only gotten rockier since that time when it comes to Common Core, with Oklahoma and South Carolina some of the latest to repeal the standards. Tennessee has phased Common Core standards into the classroom gradually since 2011.
The non-profit Koch Institute, a separate organization founded by Charles Koch, hosted an education forum in Nashville last month that touted the need for Tennessee to adopt a school voucher system next session.
THE MINERVA MODEL: In its September education issue, The
Atlantic takes an in-depth, exclusive look at the Minerva Project. The
for-profit university startup just launched its inaugural class of 33 students,
who reside in a San Francisco building while taking online classes using Apple
laptops they provide themselves. Lectures are banned. And don’t associate
Minerva with MOOCs — the startup is selective and the classes are small, not
massive and open. Each class is a seminar with little respite or time for
doodling. Students are expected to remain engaged for a full 45 minutes, answering
questions and taking pop quizzes at any given moment. It’s kind of intense. And
while there were some glitches (laggy video and the system crashed once) during
a demo class, Minerva works well overall. Founder and CEO Ben Nelson thinks it
has the potential to replace the modern liberal-arts college. Read more: http://theatln.tc/1uQQIEO.
PAID BY THE GRADE: Imagine a world where kids are paid to
go to school. An acceptable attendance record gets you $40 a month. An A on a
report card gets you $30. Taking a college entrance exam like the ACT banks you
$50. And parents are awarded, too. Adults get a $150 monthly bonus, up to
$1,800 a year, just for working full-time. Would that kind of system fight
poverty? The Memphis Family Rewards Program wants to find out. “I had my first
baby when I was 14 years old. You know, that’s kind of the whole story right
there,” said 35-year-old Tamica Gordon-Cole. Three years ago, Gordon-Cole was
one of 600 people (most of them single mothers) selected for the program. Now,
she’s surrounded by nine children — five of them her own kids, four young
relatives who might have been placed in foster care if she hadn’t taken them
in. They live in a subdivision with perfect white railings and faux granite
countertops. Their neighbors: Other families drawn from housing projects around
Memphis.
— Similar experiments have been conducted by former
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The World Bank has hailed the success of
similar programs in Mexico as “powerful proof that well-designed public
programs can have significant effects on critical social indicators.” But the
Memphis Family Rewards Program has its critics. Even the program’s caseworkers
admit they’d like to be paid just for doing their job. But the program’s
participants say it’s not about the cash incentives — they were working anyway.
The program gives them another weapon in their ongoing battle to keep their
kids off the streets. POLITICO’s Glenn Thrush writes for POLITICO Magazine: http://politi.co/1oI2cEP.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob Astorino on Tuesday touted the 62,000
signatures he gathered to form a Stop Common Core ballot line as the
"single largest petition operation in New York State history."
Formation of the ballot line required only 15,000 signatures, but Astorino
said in a press release that the campaign gathered its 62,000 signatures from
across all 62 counties in New York.
Astorino began working to form the Stop Common Core ballot line in early
July, and unabashedly admitted that it was an attempt to pull typically
Democratic voters away from voting to re-elect Governor Andrew Cuomo.
"This is an opportunity for people to either make a statement or to
truly vote for me — either one," Astorino said in July.
In response to Astorino's statements, Jenny Sedlis, executive director of
StudentsFirstNY, called the formation of the ballot line in opposition to new
academic standards a "cynical ploy to exploit confusion about the Common
Core."
Sedlis also said the Stop Common Core effort shows Astorino is "not
serious about the challenges facing public education," or "about what
it takes to be governor."
Astorino's release said the signatures gathered
came from "Democrats, Republicans, independents, teachers, parents and
students," and that the number of supporters sent a "loud and
clear" message to Cuomo of a lack of support for Common Core
Critics of the new framework for Advanced Placement U.S. History say they’re
not appeased by a letter from College Board President David Coleman asserting
that their critiques “are based on a significant misunderstanding” of the
course.
In his letter, circulated Monday and first reported by Education Week,
Coleman takes a conciliatory approach; he praises his critics as “patriots who
care deeply about what students learn.” He describes the new framework as
flexible, noting that teachers are free to introduce additional material,
including topics required by state history standards.
In response, critics released their own letter calling Coleman’s defense of
the course “misleading.”
“Mr. Coleman insists that ‘the new framework does not remove individuals or
events that have been taught by AP teachers in prior years,’ “ they write.
“Unfortunately, facts are stubborn things. The redesigned framework omits
Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Dorothea
Dix, William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Roosevelt, Jonas Salk, Rosa Parks, Dwight
Eisenhower, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and many other notable American
heroes.”
The letter was written by Larry Krieger, the author of AP U.S. History test
prep guides, and Jane Robbins, a senior fellow at the American Principles
Project. It was provided to POLITICO by Joy Pullman, a research fellow at the
Heartland Institute.
The critics note that the course framework — which used to be just five
pages long — now runs to 98 detailed pages. Given that length, they question
how teachers will find time to address extra topics in class. In any case, they
argue that teachers and students will have little incentive to deviate, since
the AP exam will be based on the framework.
College Board spokeswoman Carly Lindauer said the new course does not
downplay positive moments in U.S. history, as critics have charged. On the
contrary, she said, it “emphasizes the American founding documents … and
recognizes American heroism, courage and innovation.” Given the growing
controversy, however, she said a revised framework would soon be released, with
key points clarified “to avoid any further confusion.”
In another attempt to quiet critics, the College Board released a full practice exam for the new course. Critics
are in the midst of analyzing the questions. — Stephanie Simon
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CBE’S TIME TO SHINE: Competency-based education isn’t a new
idea, but it’s getting newfound attention in the midst of an increasingly
volatile debate about rising college costs, limited access and dubious quality
in higher education. The concept has long languished under a system that grants
degrees based on how much time students spend in the classroom, not how much
they’re learning while they’re there. Republicans and Democrats in Congress
can’t seem to find much common ground on HEA reauthorization, but they’re
coming together on this one. Lawmakers say competency-based education could
have far-reaching consequences — possibly revolutionizing higher education as
we know it. Even the White House agrees. “Folks get that there really is this
tension between innovation and integrity and you have to find that balance,”
said Amy Laitinen, deputy director for higher education at the New America
Foundation. “And I think experimentation is the way to go.” Allie Grasgreen
reports: http://politico.pro/1kqCObq
— Bills have been pitched in Congress and the Education
Department is prepared to clear an untold number of colleges to experiment with
different CBE models while retaining their federal aid eligibility. But
innovation isn’t easy. Many institutions that might want to participate won’t
have the software or infrastructure to do so. And as lawmakers have
acknowledged, much of the heavy lifting will show not just what works — but
inevitably, what doesn’t.
At 13, they were viewed by classmates with envy, admiration and not a little awe. The girls wore makeup, had boyfriends and went to parties held by older students. The boys boasted about sneaking beers on a Saturday night and swiping condoms from the local convenience store.
They were cool. They were good-looking. They were so not you.
Whatever happened to them?
“The fast-track kids didn’t turn out O.K.,” said Joseph P. Allen, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia. He is the lead author of a new study, published this month in the journal Child Development, that followed these risk-taking, socially precocious cool kids for a decade. In high school, their social status often plummeted, the study showed, and they began struggling in many ways.
It was their early rush into what Dr. Allen calls pseudomature behavior that set them up for trouble. Now in their early 20s, many of them have had difficulties with intimate relationships, alcohol and marijuana, and even criminal activity. “They are doing more extreme things to try to act cool, bragging about drinking three six-packs on a Saturday night, and their peers are thinking, ‘These kids are not socially competent,’ ” Dr. Allen said. “They’re still living in their middle-school world.”
As fast-moving middle-schoolers, they were driven by a heightened longing to impress friends. Indeed their brazen behavior did earn them a blaze of popularity. But by high school, their peers had begun to mature, readying themselves to experiment with romance and even mild delinquency. The cool kids’ popularity faded.
B. Bradford Brown, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who writes about adolescent peer relationships and was not involved in the study, said it offered a trove of data. The finding that most surprised him, he said, was that “pseudomature” behavior was an even stronger predictor of problems with alcohol and drugs than levels of drug use in early adolescence. Research on teenagers usually tracks them only through adolescence, Dr. Brown added. But this study, following a diverse group of 184 subjects in Charlottesville, Va., starting at age 13, continued into adulthood at 23.
Researchers took pains to document the rise and fall in social status, periodically interviewing the subjects as well as those who they felt knew them best, usually close friends. About 20 percent of the group fell into the “cool kid” category at the study’s outset.
A constellation of three popularity-seeking behaviors characterized pseudomaturity, Dr. Allen and his colleagues found. These young teenagers sought out friends who were physically attractive; their romances were more numerous, emotionally intense and sexually exploring than those of their peers; and they dabbled in minor delinquency — skipping school, sneaking into movies, vandalism.
As they turned 23, the study found that when compared to their socially slower-moving middle-school peers, they had a 45 percent greater rate of problems resulting from alcohol and marijuana use and a 40 percent higher level of actual use of those substances. They also had a 22 percent greater rate of adult criminal behavior, from theft to assaults.
Many attributed failed adult romantic relationships to social status: they believed that their lack of cachet was the reason their partners had broken up with them. Those early attempts to act older than they were seemed to have left them socially stunted. When their peers were asked how well these young adults got along with others, the former cool kids’ ratings were 24 percent lower than the average young adult.
The researchers grappled with why this cluster of behaviors set young teenagers on a downward spiral. Dr. Allen suggested that while they were chasing popularity, they were missing a critical developmental period. At the same time, other young teenagers were learning about soldering same-gender friendships while engaged in drama-free activities like watching a movie at home together on a Friday night, eating ice cream. Parents should support that behavior and not fret that their young teenagers aren’t “popular,” he said.
“To be truly mature as an early adolescent means you’re able to be a good, loyal friend, supportive, hardworking and responsible,” Dr. Allen said. “But that doesn’t get a lot of airplay on Monday morning in a ninth-grade homeroom.”
Dr. Brown offered another perspective about why the cool kids lost their way. The teenagers who lead the social parade in middle school — determining everyone else’s choices in clothes, social media and even notebook colors — have a heavy burden for which they are not emotionally equipped. “So they gravitate towards older kids,” he said. And those older teenagers, themselves possibly former cool kids, were dubious role models, he said: “In adolescence, who is open to hanging out with someone three or four years younger? The more deviant kids.”
Dr. Allen offered one typical biography from the study. At 14, the boy was popular. He had numerous relationships, kissed more than six girls, flung himself into minor forms of trouble, and surrounded himself with good-looking friends.
By 22, he was a high-school dropout, had many problems associated with drinking, including work absenteeism and arrests for drunken driving. He is unemployed and still prone to minor thefts and vandalism.
But as Dr. Allen emphasized, pseudomaturity suggests a predilection; it is not a firm predictor. A teenage girl from the study initially had a similar profile, with many boyfriends at an early age, attractive friends and a fondness for shoplifting.
Yet by 23, Dr. Allen wrote in an email, “she’d earned her bachelor’s degree, had not had any more trouble with criminal behavior, used alcohol only in responsible ways and was in a good job.”
Dr. Mitchell J. Prinstein, a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who studies adolescent social development, said that while teenagers all long to be accepted by their peers studies suggest that parents can reinforce qualities that will help them withstand the pressure to be too cool, too fast.
“Adolescents also appreciate individuality and confidence,” he said. “Adolescents who can stick to their own values can still be considered cool, even without doing what the others are doing.”
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