{"id":12235,"date":"2017-04-12T08:12:45","date_gmt":"2017-04-12T12:12:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/?p=12235"},"modified":"2025-05-21T06:52:25","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T10:52:25","slug":"do-adverse-childhood-events-affect-student-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/do-adverse-childhood-events-affect-student-performance\/","title":{"rendered":"How do adverse childhood events affect student performance?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Cognitive outcomes vs intersectional traumas<\/h1>\n\n\n
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We talk with legendary awesome stats guy Mark Olofson — now Dr.<\/em> Legendary Awesome Stats Guy Mark Olofson — about his research into adverse childhood events and school performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s some pretty important stuff, about how the intersecting traumas that affect students have some long-reaching consequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Who is Dr. Mark Olofson?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

You may remember Olofson from his awesome work on our podcasts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Data shows #vted leads the nation in educators on twitter<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

How does data-mining affect edtech?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

From arduino learner to teacher<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

and from his Science Saturdays column<\/a>, here on this fine blog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what you might not know is that for the past four years, Olofson has been doing some pretty beefy and hugely important research into adverse childhood events, and how they impact students’ school performance. So we sat down with Olofson and got the straight story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do adverse childhood events affect student performance?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Olofson:<\/strong> I\u2019m Mark Olofson. I’m the research fellow here at the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education and I just successfully defended for my PhD in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Vermont. That is who I am and what I just did. I get to be a PhD.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Interestingly enough, first PhD in my family from either side. Both my mom\u2019s side and my dad\u2019s side, so that\u2019s fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Olofson:<\/strong> My research looks at adversity, and development, families and neighborhoods, and school climate, and how all these things intersect and play out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I do is I measure cognitive outcomes in young adolescents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why this research?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Olofson:<\/strong> I used to teach middle-grade and high school science and mathematics. I worked at an alternative school. I did some student teaching at a really<\/em> alternative school. I worked at a bilingual school and something that really hit me pretty deeply was this idea that kind of no matter what I do in the classroom as a science teacher, as a mathematics teacher, kids come into the classroom with a whole bunch of other stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think in some places we think about this as are students ready to learn, are they ready to “do school”, but that didn\u2019t really ring true for me. It seem like there was some deeper issues going on, and that simply a before-school program for 20 minutes to do some mindfulness and meditation — these type of things weren\u2019t really going to address the problem as I see it.<\/p>\n\n\n

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We know that a solid two-thirds of a kid\u2019s academic performance can be great. It can be predicted with them walking in the door. If we just know their home conditions, their socioeconomic status conditions, demographic conditions, all these different things. We can do a pretty decent job of predicting their academic outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That idea has really stuck with me and led me to get more into:<\/p>\n\n\n\n