Final Case Study

Lee is currently a student at Ridge Park Charter Academy in Grand

Rapids, Michigan. He is in the fourth grade. The following report will describe

the context of Lees learning situation including school and classroom

context variables, the sociocultural variable of socioeconomic status, and a

variety of neurodevelopmental variables. Data has been gathered from

outside sources and from direct observations for all of the variables.

The school that Lee attends, Ridge Park Academy, has a very unique

context to it. The demographics of the school, obtained from the National

Center for Educational Statistics in 2015, are 57% black, 24% white, 12%

Hispanic, 3% Asian, and 4% other. Although the majority of students are

black, this is still a very diverse school with students coming from a variety

of backgrounds. Ridge Park also clearly celebrates the diversity of their

students, which is evident in their display of flags from all over the world,

with pictures of students of that heritage next to each flag (National Heritage

Academies, 2016). Bode and Nieto (2009) would view this as affirming

language and culture, which extremely beneficial to students of all cultures,

for it helps break down the wall between home and school and make the

students more comfortable in both situations. Although Lee is white,

affirming his own heritage and the heritage of his peers is still beneficial in

that it can open his eyes to other cultures. Besides the diverse student

population, Ridge Park also serves many students that are considered
economically disadvantaged: MI School Data (2016) says that 75.5% percent

of Ridge Park fall into this category.

It is unknown if Lee himself comes from an economically

disadvantaged family, but based on observations and discussions with his

teacher, there are multiple reasons to believe that this is a possibility for Lee.

If this were the case for Lee, his disadvantages compared to his peers with a

higher socioeconomic status could have begun in preschool, because many

disadvantaged family struggle to even afford preschool for their children

(Friedman, 2012). Furthermore, according to the American Psychological

Association (2016), children with a low socioeconomic status develop

academic skills more slowly, which could also be stemming from a lack of

early childhood education. However, despite all of the factors that point

towards Lee being economically disadvantaged, such as his style of dress,

statistics about his school, and his teachers knowledge of his family, Lee

does not seem to show signs of slow development like these sources

suggest. Maybe this could be because Ridge Park is defying the standards

suggested by Fiske and Ladd (2011), who say that many schools are ignoring

the challenges of families with low socioeconomic status. Based on the

website created by National Heritage Academies (2016), it is clear that Ridge

Park offers many programs for poorer students such as free and reduced

price lunches. Maybe, with the help of his school, Lee is overcoming the

potentially negative effects of his possibly low socioeconomic status.

 The variables concerning the school and Lees home are obviously

pivotal, but the majority of the data and observations that were gathered

focused on Lees specific classroom situation. Lees classroom is very unique

in the sense that he is in the proficient class, or the top 25 students in his

grade. The fact that Lee is in this class proves that the socioeconomic status

discussed previously and the neurodevelopmental weaknesses that will soon

be discussed are not extreme hindrances to his academic performance. This

class structure is clearly an example of tracking, for he is grouped with

students perceived to be of similar ability (Bode and Nieto, 2009). Another

important contextual detail of Lees class is the fact that many of his peers

are English as a second language, or ESL, students, but they are almost all

fluent in English at this point in their education. While he does not fall into

this category, this still affects his surroundings, for his peers come from a

variety of linguistic backgrounds, and it has been observed that Spanish is

frequently used in his classroom. Finally, Lees teacher, Ms. V, has had

profound success in the past concerning her students testing scores. She

has raised many of her students scores by over 100% compared to the

previous years, so clearly Lee has a very effective teacher in Ms. V. In fact,

over the past year, Lees own math and reading scores have increased by

256% and 240% respectively.

Much can be learned from the statistics about Lees classroom, but

observations have much to say about his learning context as well. Ms. V.

uses very unique learning tools for her students. The students frequently use
a tool called Versatiles for practicing their math skills. It is a set of tiles

numbered 1-12 that comes with a workbook. The workbook has math

questions and an answer set, and the students need to match the number of

the problem to the correct answer. Once they have solved all the problems,

they flip the tiles and see a pattern. If the pattern matches the solution

shown in the book, they know that they got all of the problems correct. Lee

clearly enjoys using these Versatiles to practice his math, and he gets much

less frustrated using these compared to other methods of practicing his math

skills. The students also use a program called IXL, which is an online learning

tool for math and language arts. It covers a wide range of topics including

fractions, geometry, grammar, and even writing addresses. They need to get

their score up to 100 in order to complete the activity. IXL causes a lot of

frustration for Lee, for if he misses one question, the score drops anywhere

from 10 to 20 points, and he must answer even more questions to work his

way back up. He has often been observed getting frustrated with the

program, which usually includes him working too quickly and not checking

his answers, refusing to do the work at all, or even shutting down completely

and putting his head down while refusing to speak to anybody. This is one of

Lees main challenges, as pointed out by Ms. V. He does this very often, and

because he is already behind in his work, it is very harmful to his learning.

Learning events such as these can provide a lot of important insight into

Lees neurodevelopmental strengths and weaknesses.

 After analyzing both a learning event, and IXL assignment focusing on

finding the order of events in a paragraph, and a learning artifact in the form

of a grammar worksheet, along with some more information about the two

that was received from Lees teacher, some possible neurodevelopmental

strengths and weaknesses have become much more visible for Lee. First,

various strengths have been revealed. One possible strength found from

analysis and observation is that of memory, especially short-term memory.

This was very visible in the learning event, because Lee excelled at saliency

determination, recoding, and detail processing in this activity. When reading

paragraphs including details about events, he was very easily able to point

out which sentences had the important information in them, and which

sentences were unhelpful, and this demonstrates strong saliency

determination. His recoding skills were also visible, because Lee was easily

able to simplify the events from the paragraph and match them to the

shorter, summarized forms in the events to be placed on the timeline. Lee

also demonstrated strength in detail processing in both learning events. In

the timeline activity, he easily picked up on key words suggesting order, and

appeared to be fully understanding the paragraphs he read. On the grammar

worksheet, Lee was able to identify figurative language in sentences with

little to no difficulty, which also indicates strength in detail processing. From

this analysis, it is likely that Lee has a neurodevelopmental strength in short

term memory.
 Besides short term memory, Lee also appears to be demonstrating

strengths in many aspects of receptive language, which he uses for good

reading comprehension as well as the decoding of printed words (Barringer

et al., 2010). In the first learning event, it became evident through

observation that Lee excels at semantic understanding and sentence

comprehension. Lee easily picked up on the use of ordering words, such as

before and after, and he understood what these meant in the ordering of

events, which shows a strength in semantic understanding, since he

comprehends the meanings of key words. Also, he visibly comprehends the

meanings of sentences, which is evident through his ability to explain what

each sentence means in his own words. The second learning artifact also

illustrates Lees language strengths, once again in sentence comprehension

specifically. This became especially evident in the Figurative Language

section of the worksheet. Barringer et al. (2010) says that one positive sign

of language strength is when a student comprehends abstract and

figurative language, and Lee clearly does this based on the worksheet. He

was easily able to identify the figurative language in each sentence, and he

even explained the meaning of the idiom with no troubles. Clearly, Lee also

demonstrates possible strengths in receptive language skills.

The final possible strength that Lee demonstrated from these activities

was in temporal-sequential ordering, which was evident from the first

activity. He easily became aware of the order of events in the paragraph,

which shows a possible strength in sequential awareness and perception. He

is also able to remember the order of events in that paragraph, showing a

strong sequential memory. Finally, he was quickly able to reorder the

answers onto the timeline to match the order of events in the paragraph,

showing strong sequential output skills.

Despite the possible strengths found from this analysis, there are also

some key possible weaknesses found from these activities, the most

important being attention. Through observation of Lee while he was

completing the timeline activity, some possible mental energy control

weaknesses became very evident. He was doing very well at the beginning

of the activity, but as he progressed through the assignment, it became

obvious that he was struggling with alertness. He continually closed his eyes

and had to hold his head up with hand. This demonstrates the type of brain

drain that Barringer et al. (2010) discusses, because this activity could be

an academic task that requires sustained effort. His sleep and arousal

balance could also be affecting this, and more evidence of a weakness here

has been discovered through discussion with Lees teacher. She says that he

often falls asleep in class, especially during class discussions or independent

work time. Lees sleeping patterns at home are unknown, but if they are

irregular, this could definitely be a culprit for this possible mental energy

control weakness. Also related, Lees performance declined a bit during the

first activity. It took him longer to read the paragraphs and answer the

questions as the assignment progresses, possibly indicating some mental

fatigue and a performance consistency weakness. This possible weakness

could also provide a possible explanation for Lees periodic behavioral

inconsistencies mentioned earlier in the case study. He appears to get easily

frustrated with his work when he gets questions wrong, and often slams his

fist on the table or kicks the table legs. Barringer et al. (2010) describes a

similar situation to this, when a student displays defiant and aggressive

behavior when feeling mentally exhausted. Because Lee has a possible

weakness in mental energy controls, it could also be connected to his

behavioral problems as well.

The other aspect of attention where Lee demonstrates a possible

weakness is in his production controls, specifically in the area of self-

monitoring and reinforceability. The timeline activity demonstrates the

possible weakness in self-monitoring, because twice Lee clicked submit

before checking over his work, and ended up getting the question wrong

because of easily fixable mistakes. He did not take the time to check over his

answers even briefly before submitting them, which definitely could indicate

some production control weakness. From the learning artifact, similar

evidence has been found indicating this possible weakness. Related to self-

monitoring, Lee also made some seemingly careless mistakes on this

worksheet when he switched the definitions of the homonyms, and mixed up

the antonym and synonym in the dictionary usage section. Both of these

would have been very easily fixable, which could be another indicator of a

weakness in self-monitoring, since he did not take the time to check over his

work for mistakes. The issue of reinforceability comes in with Lee forgetting
the instructions for the figurative language section. It is likely to be from a

production control weakness in reinforceability. If he has continually forgotten

to underline the figurative language from this section, which was learned to

be true from his teacher, then it is possible that it is just difficult to reinforce

rules such as this for Lee because of this weakness in the production controls

of attention.

Obviously all of these strengths and weaknesses are tentatively

described, and many of them need further observation and information

gathering to confirm or deny their existence, but they also bring up many

new questions about Lees neurodevelopmental variables. The main aspect

that did not seem to fit with a specific variable took place during the IXL

activity. Lee was able to order events when there were words involved, but

as soon as years came into the paragraph, he often struggled to order the

events, and he tended to just put the answers in order that he read them in

the paragraph, even if the years proved that the events happened in a

different order. It is unclear which neurodevelopmental variable this issue

could be related to, however. When reading the paragraph, he seemed to

completely ignore the numbers, so maybe it could be related to detail

processing under the processing controls of attention. Maybe it could also be

a different aspect of temporal-sequential ordering, since knowing the orders

of years is also related to this. However, it seems as though, since possible

strengths in temporal-sequential ordering were found, and no other signs of

weakness in processing controls, that neither of these variables would be the

culprits. Maybe this could be a sign of confusion in some type of math skills,

but what to call these skills or how they could be related is unknown.

In conclusion, much has been learned about Lee and the variables

affecting his learning situation through this case study. It appears as though

his positive school and classroom environments and strengths in memory

and language are helping to overcome his possible low socioeconomic status

and weaknesses in mental energy and production controls. Furthermore,

Lees visible improvement in behavior and test scores show that, despite

some of his evident behavioral challenges, he appears to be well on his way

to overcoming them and continuing to excel in school.

References

American Psychological Association (2016). Education and socioeconomic

status. Retrieved
from http://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/factsheet-
education.aspx

Barringer, M., Pohlman, C., & Robinson, M. (2010). Schools for all kinds of
minds: Boosting
student success by embracing learning variation. San Francisco: John
Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Bode, P. & Nieto, S. (2012). Affirming diversity: The sociopolitical context of

multicultural
education. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.
Fiske, E. B. & Ladd, H. F. (2011). Class matters: Why wont we admit it? The
New York Times.
Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/12/opinion/the-
unaddressed-link-between-poverty-and-education.html?
pagewanted=all&_r=0

Friedman, H. S. (2012). Americas poverty-education link. Huffington Post.

Retrieved from
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/howard-steven-friedman/americas-
poverty-
education_b_1826000.html

MI School Data. (2016). Ridge Park Charter Academy. Retrieved from

https://www.mischooldata.org/Legislative/LegislativeDashboard2.aspx

National Center for Education Statistics. (2015). Ridge Park Charter

Academy. Retrieved from
https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/schoolsearch/school_detail.asp?
Search=1&InstName=Ridge+pa
rk&SchoolType=1&SchoolType=2&SchoolType=3&SchoolType=4&Speci
ficSchlTypes=all
&IncGrade=-1&LoGrade=-1&HiGrade=-1&ID=260020801135

National Heritage Academies (2016). Ridge Park Charter Academy. Retrieved

from
https://www.nhaschools.com/schools/ridgepark/en/pages/default.aspx