Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Quota system would dilute school's quality

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0612/thomasson_dan.php3
Quota system would dilute school's quality
By Dan K. Thomasson
Jewish World Review

One of the nation's top-ranked public high schools has run into a problem it probably never thought it would have to deal with, and many educators believe it portends some difficult times ahead for efforts to promote the nation's best and brightest students.

After several decades of rewarding excellence, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology finds itself with a third of its entering class facing remedial instruction in the very things for which they were supposed to be selected: math and related subjects. The culprit seems to be none other than political correctness, stemming from pressures to achieve diversity in its enrollment.

Administrators at the school in Alexandria, Va. -- appalled by the sudden rise of remedial instruction from just under 8 percent to 30 percent -- have rushed back to the chalkboard to find a solution to what many teachers, parents and national educators see as severely damaging the institution's elite status. It's usually ranked at or near the top by ratings agencies -- No. 2 this year by U.S. News and World Report -- and wealthy Chinese families reportedly search for ways to send their children to Northern Virginia for an opportunity to go to TJ, as it's known.

The magnet school's enrollment lacks ethnic diversity, with over 50 percent of its students of Asian extraction and only a relative handful of Hispanic and African Americans. But it was never meant to be a normal high school. Racial diversity wasn't a factor in deciding 30 years ago to create TJ, at the time merely a good secondary school in a string of them in the central part of the county. It was a roaring success because it was built on an admissions policy based solely on merit without consideration for gender or race. Going there meant a rigorous application process, followed by more rigorous classroom demands that frightened even some of the most gifted students.

But those who graduated from TJ found themselves courted by the nation's elite colleges and universities, from the Ivies to the West Coast. Harvard, it is said, has a quota on how many it will take. Is that an example worth saving and promoting across the country? Of course. And while TJ's mental giants still are being sought after and fought over, the new statistics have raised an element of doubt about how good it really is or will continue to be. If that is the case, it is a tragedy for a nation struggling to meet future needs in strategic areas.

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What really ought to be done is to replicate whatever instructional models are being used at that school and other successful schools, and promote excellence in teaching instead of tenure. Then these sorts of issues would never arise.

In the short term, I'm not so worried about the plight of intellectual giants from wealthy families as I am about promoting more educational opportunity across the board. I don't see it as a tragedy that a few wealthy kids don't get instant ins to prestigious universities and may have to do so more on their own merits without elite-school cred-- and if they're capable of getting into TJ under a merit-based system, I'm sure that any who should succeed will succeed at getting into a good university.

I also don't think that losing a bit of elite status (if slipping from first to second on a ranking really causes that in an important way) dilutes a school's actual quality-- does it in your opinion? Do a bit of quota-based racial and/or economic mixing, and extra remedial classes for students who may have been educationally disadvantaged, really decrease a school's quality, or simply make it more open to serving a wider range of potential students? TJ and similar schools appear to be a valuable resource in short supply. If the students taking those remedial classes are experiencing benefits from the better school environment, is it harmful to anyone that they needed some remediation upon entry? Do disadvantaged students also have the right to a full spectrum of educational opportunities, or do only the intellectual elite with proven academic achievements have the right to seek entry to the better-run schools?

The tension for me is that I have these thoughts, while at the same time disliking over-inclusive GATE programs which may dumb down the content to the point that the programs may not serve the actually gifted children well, as we've discussed in other threads. I guess the reason that I find this situation different is that it's an entire school, and I don't see how including some children who need remedial classes drags down the quality of the non-remedial classes or the school as a whole. I guess it does take some extra resources to teach the remedial classes, but they're still separate.

I'd be interested to learn the extent to which the TJ environment winds up improving the outlook for the kids taking the remedial classes. If there's nothing in it for them in the end vs. their old environments, I'd wholeheartedly agree that the quota is harmful, in taking opportunity away from one group while providing none for another.

It is attitudes like this that make it even more difficult for gifted children from historically under-served populations to overcome society's barriers to their achievement and full participation in elite programs.

My 6 year old son is a profoundly gifted African-American male. He is already choosing to underachieve and hide his knowledge and skills because he does not want his peers to know how much he can do.

We thank the universe every single day for putting him into a school environment where his teachers recognize the unique challenges he faces and work hard to support him rather than writing him off.

If 30% of the student body requires remediation, then that means 70% does not, and I don't see how the 30% affects the 70% in any way. If Harvard only accepts a certain number of TJ students, then obviously they'll be picking from the top 70%.

I went to a public high school in a blue-collar exurb. Any macro-level study of the school would suggest that its primary contribution to the community came on the football field, as test scores were atrocious, truancy was high, ESL was in high demand, etc. But the school also had a robust AP program, a commitment to excellence in the arts, etc. The end result was that while probably more than 60% of my school required remediation in some way, those students and their needs had no impact on the quality of education available to me.

Not true- if your high school follows NCLBI, as most do, then alot of the money that could be spent on AP classes or enrichment for the top kids will get funnelled to the lower kids.

Here is the original opinion piece upon which the posted editorial is based:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...al-math/2012/05/25/gJQAlZRYqU_story.html

here is a piece about the demographics for the class of 2016: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...ons-data/2012/04/17/gIQA6RdtOT_blog.html

Here is another piece, which is interesting mainly because it shows that the change in admissions policy hasn't changed the number of under-served minorities who get into the school: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2011/02/americas_best_high_school_soft.html

Well...it's possible that the difference is that the kids who got in under the old model might have been smarter. I agree with you about the tenure point, but replicating a model won't change the fact that only a small number of people have highish or better IQs. IMO, we'd do better to ensure that free school breakfasts and lunches have high nutritional content (substitute fresh fish, fruits and raw or steamed vegetables for pink slime hamburgers and french fries, for example, and get rid of soda in school).


I'm surprised to see this; this idea underlies the philosophy that gifted kids are elitist products of pushy parents, and that the school system doesn't need to focus any resources on them as a result. Gently poking here: perhaps your son's school feels the same way?



What you wrote is something of a myth.

Most people know that our school system spends billions and billions of dollars on disadvantaged students and next to nothing on high achievers. This is the first part of the myth: speaking from the perspective of educational resources and budgeting, the kids at the biggest disadvantage are the gifted ones.

It's less well-known that very little changes in spite of all that money being spent. I've seen this through seeing the results of education grants that get funded and in my own experience.

For example, I ran a program that devoted a lot of its funding to a project to get disadvantaged students ready for college. The people in charge of that project were talented and enthusiastic and worked hard. But in three years, exactly ONE out of a hundred or more made the jump to freshman-level college-level courses. This was a huge deal and this guy was touted as proof that "the program worked." IMO, it was great for him, but there must be a better way overall. We probably spent $300,000 or more getting one kid ready for freshman-level courses. This project really opened my eyes to the low effectiveness of this approach and the fact that it allows us to feel good while cheating our brightest students. Now I see this kind of (failed) romantic idealism all over the place.


I see "inclusiveness" of this type as dragging the school down because almost a third of the student body doesn't belong there. I predict that people will start to complain that those AP courses that intimidate the gifted students aren't "accessible" to the remedial students. Standards will have to go down to accommodate them. After all, it's not fair to give so much to privileged kids, is it?

This was precisely the argument used at a high school in Berkeley two or three years ago when they cancelled early morning science labs for AP students. Apparently they weren't fair to some of the disadvantaged students.

As you point out, there are kids who deserved to go to that school and can't because their slots were taken by remedial-level students in the name of diversity. Why do our schools take the position that it's okay to definitely harm gifted kids on the off chance that we might help some other students? And why do we let them do it?

From what I have read about this specific school and this specific admissions policy is that this is less about opening a high school for the gifted to the masses and more about whether the school mission be modified to make it a high school for the gifted versus a STEM high school for the gifted.

I suspect that "remedial" courses at this high school are not what most people think of when they think of "remedial."

The answer is that they're generally not really in the business of educating gifted kids.

Plus, gifted kids confuse them.

Bureaucracies generally don't like things that confuse them.

JonLaw, yeah, you're probably right.

Momof1, I found the following in the Washington Post. It's written by a man who teaches physics at the school: