An Effort to Close Achievement Gaps at Scale through Student Mindset Interventions Geoffrey D. Borman Professor of Education and Sociology Director, Interdisciplinary Training Program in the Education Sciences University of Wisconsin—Madison Research on this paper was supported by grants from the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education (R305A and R305C050055) and the Spencer Foundation. Findings and conclusions are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the supporting agencies.

Overview Madison Writing and Achievement Project (MWAP) ◦Motivation & Background ◦Study Design MWAP Findings through

A Pattern of Disengagement African American students lose ground academically as they progress through school (Benson & Borman, 2010; Jencks & Phillips 1998; Phillips, Crouse, & Ralph 1998; Fryer & Levitt 2004; Downey, von Hippel, & Broh 2004) Overall, student GPA, motivation, and achievement goals seem to decline during middle school—with especially acute drops for minority students (Shim Ryan & Anderson 2008; Anderman 2003)

Defining Stereotype Threat “Our reasoning is this: whenever African American students perform an explicitly scholastic or intellectual task, they face the threat of confirming or being judged by a negative societal stereotype—a suspicion—about their group's intellectual ability and competence…. And the self-threat it causes—through a variety of mechanisms—may interfere with the intellectual functioning of these students…But as this threat persists over time, it may have the further effect of pressuring these students to protectively disidentify with achievement in school and related intellectual domains.” (Steele & Aronson, 1995: 797)

Model of Stereotype Threat (Hanselman, Bruch, Gamoran, & Borman, in press) -Group identity is challenged by salient negative stereotypes -Increased vigilance -Physiological stress -Decreased working memory -Distraction from school -Diminished task performance Threat Stress Responses Performance & Learning Stereotype Salience & Group Identity Hanselman, P., Bruch, S.K., Gamoran, A., & Borman, G.D. (in press). Threat in context: School moderation of the impact of social identity threat on racial/ethnic achievement gaps. Sociology of Education.

Self-Affirmation May Mitigate Threat Threat Stress Responses Performance & Learning Stereotype Salience & Group Identity Reducing the experience of threat Reducing stress responses to threat Self-affirmation intervention

Graphical Representation of Self-System (Sherman & Cohen, 2006) Global Self-Integrity Roles (e.g., student, parent) Central beliefs (i.e., ideology, political beliefs) Goals (e.g., health, academic success) Values (e.g., humor, religion), nation) Group identities (e.g., race, culture, nation) Relationships (e.g., family, friends)

The Intervention

Replicating and Scaling-up Cohen, Garcia, Purdie-Vaughns, Apfel, & Brzustoski, 2009 Statistically significant positive impacts on the GPAs of African American students randomly assigned to the self-affirmation writing intervention Limited to a few classrooms and a few hundred African American and European American students Average effect across 7 th and 8 th grades cut about 40% of the Black-White school performance gap on GPA Sherman et al.(2013) found similar impacts for Latino middle- school students

Schedule of Self-Affirmation Exercises ( )

Cohen et al., 2009 and the Madison Writing and Achievement Project MWAP 2011 Cohen et al Participants: Schools111 Students Teachers444 Self-affirmation: Administrations45 Word Count7962 (40)(25)

External Validity: Analytical Sample is 57% of the Population Count% Official 3 rd Friday 7 th Grade Count % Consent & Assent Before Exercise % Analytical Sample 96857%

Internal Validity: No detectable pre- treatment differences by condition Condition6 th Grade GPA Self-Affirmation 3.24 Control 3.26

Impacts on African American and Latino Students’ GPA by Term 7 th Grade8 th Grade Marginal Effect d d Term *0.13 Term **0.15 Term **0.22 Term ** ***0.23 Full Year 0.06* *0.19 (Impact models estimated with multilevel school fixed/random effects and random student- level effects; covariates (X ci ) include: 6 th grade GPA, potentially threatened status, gender, free/reduced lunch, LEP status, & special education status)

Self-Affirmation Impacts GPA at the end of 7 th Grade and Through 8 th Grade Predictive Margins for GPA by Term: Model includes 6 th grade GPA, Gender, LEP, Special Education, & FRL Status

Self-Affirmation Negates the GPA Decline for “Potentially Threatened” Students (Model also includes school fixed effects; covariates (X ci ) include: 6 th grade GPA, gender, free/reduced lunch, LEP status, & special education status) * p <.05

Summary of Findings All students show declines on GPA over time across 7 th and 8 th grade Threatened Latino and African American students’ GPAs decline more than those of their white counterparts The self-affirmation treatment effect is limited to threatened students The primary benefit of self-affirmation is to mitigate declines, over time, in GPA By the end of 8 th grade, control students grades in their four core classes fall from 2 “Cs” and 2 “Bs” to 3 “Cs” and 1 “B” whereas treated students’ grades remain the same The 8 th grade impact, expressed as an effect size, is equal to about 1/5 SD

Further Questions What are some of the possible psychological “gaps” and mechanisms that self-affirmation may address? To what extent do the student-level impacts vary across the 11 schools, and what contextual differences may explain the variation? How was the intervention implemented in this district-wide scale up, and what challenges and successes resulted?