Table of Contents
Executive Summary
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6

Chapter 7 Contents
	What Is the Economic Composition of the Student Body?
	What School Resources Are Available to Support Science Learning?
	What Is the Role of the School Principal?
	What Are the Schools’ Expectations of Parents?
	How Serious Are School Attendance Problems?
	How Safe and Orderly Are Schools?

Reference 1
Reference 2
Reference 3
Reference 4
Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C
Appendix D
Appendix E

 

 

© 2001 International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA)

 

 

 

 

 

 

How Safe and Orderly Are Schools?

Discipline that maintains an orderly atmosphere conducive to learning is very important to school quality, and research indicates that urban schools have conditions less conducive to learning than non-urban schools.(5) For example, urban schools report more crime against students and teachers at school and that physical conflict among students is a serious or moderate problem. Among the Benchmarking participants there was considerable variation in principals’ reports about the seriousness of a variety of potential discipline problems.

The frequency and seriousness of student behavior threatening an orderly school environment are presented in Exhibit 7.7. The three types of behavior are violating the dress code, creating a classroom disturbance, and cheating. Violation of dress code is likely to reflect, at least partially, whether there is a uniform requirement. For many countries, violating the dress code was not reported to be a serious problem; on average internationally only six percent of the students were in schools where it was a serious problem. Dress code violations were more frequently reported in the United States, where 42 percent of students were in schools where this occurs at least weekly, compared with 24 percent internationally. This was also a frequent problem in Texas and in Rochester, with 79 and 59 percent of students, respectively, in such schools.

Classroom disturbance was a more frequent problem in schools in the United States, as well as a more serious one. More than two-thirds of U.S. eighth-grade students were in schools where disturbances occur at least weekly, and 11 percent where these are a serious problem. Benchmarking jurisdictions where classroom disturbances were both more frequent and more serious than in the United States generally included Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, the Delaware Science Coalition, Guilford County, the Michigan Invitational Group, Montgomery County, and Rochester.

The frequency and seriousness of student behavior threatening a safe school environment are shown in Exhibit 7.8. The five types of behavior are vandalism, theft, physical injury to other students, intimidation or verbal abuse of other students, and intimidation or verbal abuse of teachers or staff. As in other reports of student behavior, cross-national comparisons are difficult because of differing perceptions of what constitutes a serious problem. However, with only a few exceptions, the overwhelming majority of students attend schools judged to have few serious problems. The incidence of such student behavior was generally low in most countries. The exception was intimidation or verbal abuse of other students. Some countries had relatively high percentages of students in schools where this occurs at least weekly; in Canada, the Netherlands, and the United States, more than 40 percent of the students were in such schools. Among Benchmarking participants, intimidation or verbal abuse of other students was a frequent and serious problem in Idaho, Maryland, Oregon, Pennsylvania, the Delaware Science Coalition, the Fremont/Lincoln/Westside Public Schools, the Project SMART Consortium, and Rochester. Vandalism was a frequent and serious problem in Rochester.