Giving Compass' Take:

• Education Next explores a new report about how student choice plays a role in classroom engagement and motivation — and why many schools miss the mark.

• The key questions are about content that's useful, interesting and presented by trustworthy teachers. How can we make sure that more K-12 programs follow some of these guidelines?

• Here's how student engagement differs across school types and student groups.

With the caveat that a rich and complete education must include introductions to unfamiliar and challenging ideas, people, and events, we recommend this new report from our friends at the Education Trust, Motivation and Engagement in Student Assignments: The Role of Choice and Relevancy by Joan Dabrowski and Tanji Reed Marshall. It follows up on previous Ed Trust analyses of over 6,800 middle school assignments, which “yielded disappointing results” in terms of student motivation and engagement.

As you likely know, Ed Trust advocates fiercely and effectively on behalf of students of color and low-income children. For those students to achieve at high levels, the authors say, “they must be interested and emotionally invested in their learning.” However, only 10 percent of the 6800 assignments reviewed by Ed Trust in English language arts, science, and social studies “offered students authentic choices in content, process, or product.” In math, only 3 percent hit the mark.

The authors determined “relevance” by focusing on three questions: Is the content useful? Does it interest us? Is it presented by someone we know and trust? By these somewhat vague criteria, only 12 percent of ELA, science and social studies assignments were deemed “relevant”; just 2 percent in math.

“Students should be given choice in their learning and tasks should be relevant, using real-world experiences and examples for students to make connections with their goals, interests, and values,” Dabrowski and Marshall insist.

Read the full article about improving student engagement through choice by Robert Pondiscio at Education Next.