Let's Question Innovation
Research Shows that Mindfulness Programs and Other Innovative Programs in Schools Don't Work
Photo by Julio Lopez on Unsplash
Gooonnnnngggg. Gooonnnnggg.
The teacher rang a gong at the School Board meeting, explaining to the committee and superintendent that she did this daily to reduce stress in her students and to practice mindfulness. She learned how to gong and practice other mindfulness techniques at a recent professional development conference. Everyone clapped and hoped that this well-meaning teacher and her gong were truly going to make a difference in the lives of kids.
I live in one of those high intensity suburbs, where our teens have toxic mental health issues. Those poor kids are in a high stakes death match over test scores and college admissions. Their social lives and bodies are constantly being judged by their peers on social media. Their time is micromanaged to the nanosecond with the need to pack in homework for five AP classes and a varsity sport. A gong is not going to help them.
Recent research confirms my impression about the shallow pond of mindfulness school programs. Gongs, yoga, mediation minutes and other popular mindfulness techniques that have been implemented in schools across the country have no impact on teen mental health. And it’s not just mindfulness programs that are failing our kids; one recent report showed a high failure rate in other “innovative” programs in schools. These poorly tested programs waste teachers’ time, take away from learning real stuff, and waste billions of dollars every year. Can we stop innovating schools?
In a new study published in PsyArXiv by Galla et al., researchers looked at a previous study that found some minor benefits of mindfulness programs on all children (young kids and teens combined). Using the same trials (N=16,558), Galla and his fellow researchers focused just on teens, who have the most stress and can more accurately describe their emotions. They found that the research showed NO IMPACT on teens.
The authors wrote,“Overall, results of our analysis cast doubt about the value of existing school-based mindfulness interventions as a universal prevention strategy for adolescents.”
In this week’s Proof Points column at The Hechinger Report, Jill Barshay reported on a February 2024 report by the Department of Education. This report looked at the 172 grants that the government awarded between 2010 and 2016 to education nonprofits and researchers to develop innovative programs. Only 150 of the 172 grants reported results of their work. Of those 150, 74 percent of those programs failed to show any impact on learning. A few programs even made kids worse off than before.
If you are an education super geek, you can check out the list of programs. Barshay provides a handy .pdf of the winners and losers.
The government spent $1.4 BILLION just on those 172 programs. That’s a whole lot of money that could have gone towards reading tutoring in Newark or speech therapy for kids with autism. It’s money that could have gone to towards SAT prep class or FAFSA training for low income families. It’s money that could have gone towards school lunch programs. Instead, it went to professors and their assistants at education colleges.
There is a finite pot of money for schools. Money that is wasted on gongs and bad ed-tech software gets me really, really mad.
And these innovative programs just don’t waste money. They waste people’s time. There is a finite number of minutes in a school day. The gong time replaces something else. Something else that is more valuable. Because these schools don’t just hit the gong and then go on to talk about the Civil War or ratios. They give whole classes on the topic, assemblies, school rallies and so on.
To be clear, it’s not the fault of schools. Schools have been told to fix an impossible problem — teen mental health. How can they fix that problem when the entire community is telling kids to do more, more, more, while isolating them with devices that make them feel bad about themselves? Schools can’t fix that. So, they do what they can — take deep breathes and think about the sea.
It must be depressing for a smart, caring, experienced teacher to have to implement the latest new program every year. They have to know that this is silly. It must erode morale among staff, don’t you think?
While these innovative programs continue to be rolled out to great fanfare in the press, there’s actually a countermovement in education circles. Reformers are replacing the old “innovative” reading curriculum, which proved to be ineffective, with phonics. (Check out my newsletter on the Science of Reading.) In math, they are going back to worksheets. Drill and Kill is back, baby! It’s a return of traditional education practices. Ironically, today’s innovation is a return to traditional methods. Why did we ever switch?
I believe in innovation. I do. Naturally, we should never stop striving to find better ways to help kids and make good public policy in all areas. I just think we have to be slower to roll out new programs in our schools. We must test these programs more thoroughly before putting them in our schools. We should be skeptical until shown concrete evidence of value. We can’t treat our kids like guinea pigs for researchers’ pet projects. And journalists should not promote these clickbait projects, while ignoring the tried-and-true models.
LINKS
I gave some advice to parents yesterday in my disability newsletter.
Last night, I did a one-hour webinar about options for colleges for autistic kids. Totally fun. I hope you join us sometime.
ICYMI, two silly newsletters about Kate Middleton.
We did spring break in Cancun, where Ian had a mini-seizure. Vacations continue to be tricky for my family. Our trip was mostly lovely despite the mini-seizure and the aftermath of Jonah’s afternoon doing Tequila shots with some Russians. Pictures here, here, here, and here.
Loved this story by Ben Dryfuss about Bruce Willis.
A surprisingly interesting story about veneers for teeth — a common procedure for celebrities. Glad I’m not famous.
So much fun chatting with Rob and Scott from Lawyers, Guns, and Money about the old days of the blogosphere and academia.
Meghan McArdle writes about the return of SATs and ACTs in college admissions.
While I’m really glad the New York Times is finally reporting that school closures were bad for kids, I’m still really pissed they failed to highlight the legitimate concerns of folks like me back in 2020 and 2021. They only published scare pieces. I’m not over it.
A variety of data — about children’s academic outcomes and about the spread of Covid-19 — has accumulated in the time since. Today, there is broad acknowledgment among many public health and education experts that extended school closures did not significantly stop the spread of Covid, while the academic harms for children have been large and long-lasting.
There are many reasons students experience stress and anxiety, not the least of which is because they often are not TAUGHT to be competent readers and writers, yet are expected to be. Competency lowers stress. Educators need to look into a mirror, not a gong, if they truly want to address our adolescents' and young adults' mental health crisis.
Though I haven't volunteered in too many years, I used to be involved in adult literacy tutoring. I did many hours of training in order to serve as a volunteer for adults who wished/needed to learn how to read, and the training always began with an emphasis upon phonics. Kids from culturally-enriched UMC backgrounds can do whole language, because they've already learned phonics through a process of cultural osmosis. But those who are starting more or less from scratch? They need phonics.
Oh, and I used to bring in some real-life, real-world materials: the weekly flyer from the local grocery store, an application for US citizenship... So, you know, a bit of whole language theory, I guess. But always we began with phonics.