“Today, we live in a society
structured to promote early bloomers.
Our school system has sorted people by the time they are 18, using
grades and SAT scores. Some of these
people zoom to prestigious academic launching pads while others get left
behind. Many of our most prominent
models of success made it big while young—Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon
Musk, Taylor Swift, Michael Jordan.”
“-- David Brooks, The Atlantic
Is there a way past and apart from horse racing as the way
to show ability and achievement? Santa
Monica High School has decided that on one educational platform there is. Since 2022-23 the school has suspended Honors
courses for freshman and sophomore years, breaking the tradition of
double-track or ability grouping. The impetus
to toward improving equity, cooperations, and participation with blended
classes, leading to better class diversity.
Reports are that the opting out of Honors and the practice of de-tracking
and blending abilities classes at the lower half has increased enrollment in
Advanced Placement college-level courses in the junior and senior years, which
is also the college track. “It’s about
saying all students are capable—and we’re going to meet them where they are,”
said Sarah Rodriquez, one of the school’s English teachers. The goal is to
close the achievement gap between those culturally attuned and those less so, which
could be called the color and class gap, in which Honors divides and
stigmatizes the non-Honors student.
The School District decided that designating Honors for a
set of courses unfairly selected-out students of color and unpreferred class,
leading to keeping the courses “blended” to avoid discrimination bias-positive
for better-performing, more academically fit 9th and 10th-graders. Any preference for one group, it was
reasoned, was in itself a denigration for less-preferred groups. The priority of “honors” conferred a dishonor
to those excluded. As the school
district’s credo reads, “Extraordinary achievement for all students while
simultaneously closing the achievement gap.”
This high tide raises all boats strategy could be called “Survival for
all, with the chance of fitness for everyone.”
The same idea is the force behind Prom as an event for
singles or groups expanded beyond the couples model. Anything that signals “There’s a system
working against us,” however much it may advance those with elite skills and
aspirations, needs to be closely examined for this bias. But our meritocracy assumes that individuals are
responsible for their own success, and that talent plus hard work will
eventually sort out the herd into its proper hierarchy by earned merit.
Also in 2022, Culver City California elected to institute a
level field by eliminating the Honors label.
Following were Sequoia Union and San Diego districts.
Against this move to flatten the field is a wave of
opposition, both parents and students, who see the move to subtract Honors as a
detriment to the intellectual achiever. Brainy and intellectually advanced
students are not at the top of the high-school hierarchy and are at risk of
bullying in early high school, so that the Honors separation provides some
privilege in the form of protection, by conferring separate status in a
faster-paced classroom covering a wider scope of material.
“Comparing ourselves to others is an elementary human
activity and we cannot avoid making comparisons and being compared. There is a tradeoff: favorable comparisons
make us happier (at least in the short term), but unfavorable ones drive us to
make things harder,” notes Peter Erdi in his book Ranking: The Unwritten
Rules of the social Game We all Play (2020), p.40-41. Wikipedia’s
definition of competition “is a rivalry where two or more parties strive for a
common goal which cannot be shared where one’s gain is the other’s loss. The
rivalry can be over attainment of any exclusive goal, including recognition.”
Sports is the poster example of achieving a clear goal. Academics, the realm of the rational mind on
a lifelong development arc, has a foggier profile. Equality of opportunity faces a continuing
debate about how to define, refine, and implement this difficult concept.
Is this a way around the traditional contest to showcase
performance and achievement through competition of student against
student? The bias toward using
competitive scores to gauge ability and bring out the best is long-standing as
an efficient methodology. But of course,
this also means that “winners create losers.”
Horseracing has the long history of this measure to set records as well
as stud prices. But as Laura Hillenbrand’s
Seabiscuit: An American Legend (2016) details, the toll of the
racetrack can be one of injury and even death.
Still, pace handicapping has been a long-standing way of
equalizing each competitor’s chances of winning, as in horse racing. Extra weight is assigned to extra-capable mounts
like Seabiscuit. Better-performing
horses carry extra weight to make the race a fairer contest, as well as more
challenging for the betters. Like
affirmative action, race handicapping is the method of calculating advantage
and the exact disadvantage needed to equalize that advantage. (At one time West Point worried about a pro-bias
toward height as an unfair factor in promoting cadets.) Active in chess, golf, basketball, track and
field, cycling, sailing, and auto racing, this practice considers time,
distance, and points as adjustable aspects to equalize ability record. Similar logic could be applied (if we could
find an equitable formula) in academics to equalize opportunity.
Countries famous for their educational elitism, such as
England, Singapore, and Japan, are also known for the winner-take-all
mentality, high-stress lifestyles, and even suicide on failing to make the
grade that will set the course for a lifetime. Are these consequences just a natural part of
being in the ring, or should they spark concern about the wages of competition
itself?
Many schools are also doing away with the SAT (Scholastic
Aptitude Test) as a measure of ability that used to be standard for college
applications. The SAT/ACT (American
College Testing) was conceived as a way to level the field for smart students
without the class advantages of a literate background. Are they waking up to the inefficiencies of
ranking tests in their ability to predict future performance by present and past
measures? While high SAT scores are
useful for college entry, and essential for upper-echelon schools, effort and
motivation are better predictors of long-term career success. Clearly, more ongoing studies of the social
psychology of social status in education will be in order. The national race to the top for elite
college entry is just one example of how motivating this status can be.
Just a sampling of the competitions open to high schoolers
are the Congressional App
Challenge, the National Economics Challenge, the MIT Think Scholars
competition, and the Computer Science Olympiad.
It doesn’t get more competitive than that.
