Following the citation immediately below are excerpts from a ten page report from a consultant with the South Carolina State Department of Education. The report is attached to the bottom of this page.
Using the Environment as an Integrating Context™ (EIC) for student learning, the South Carolina EIC School Network is changing the way that teachers teach and students learn at ten pilot middle schools in the state.
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Student Achievement
Teacher-developed tests of environmental knowledge were given to all EIC students before and after they completed their community projects. Students showed a gain of up to 15 points on the posttests. The results are encouraging, given the fact each school designed its own tests and that five months elapsed between students taking the pre- and posttests.
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The following are the first-year results for seven of South Carolina’s EIC programs:
· At school A, EIC students decreased their absenteeism by 22 percent and their suspensions by 36 percent from the previous year. All these students were academically low performing, and many of them had serious past behavioral issues.
· At school B, EIC students had half the amount of discipline referrals that the non-EIC students had. Interviews showed that EIC students had an increased interest in learning and an increased respect for their teachers.
· At school C, the entire student population of one grade participated in EIC. These students’ records were compared with their records from the year prior to the implementation of the EIC program: their total number of behavior referrals had decreased by 56 percent, their total number of in- and out-of-school suspension hours had decreased 75 percent, and their absences had decreased by 16 percent.
· At school D, EIC students—who comprised 31 percent of the students in their grade—accounted for only 3 percent of all the behavioral referrals and only 22 percent of the absentees. Sixty-four percent of the EIC students received academic incentive cards (which require a 3.0 GPA), compared to 28 percent of these same students the previous year.
· At school E, EIC students—who comprised 35 percent of the students in their grade—accounted for 25 percent of the students disciplined, 18 percent of the in-school suspensions, and 14 percent of the out-of-school suspensions.
· At school F, EIC students—who comprised 37 percent of the students in their grade—had only 20 percent of the in-school grade-level suspensions and only 8 percent of out-of-school suspensions.
· At school G, EIC students—who comprised 19 percent of the students in their grade—had only 4 percent of the behavioral referrals, 4 percent of the in- and out-of-school suspensions, and 12 percent of the absences.
All ten schools that participated the first school year of EIC’s implementation in South Carolina, showed some degree of improved attendance, behavior, and academic achievement.
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