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Joined: Feb 2010
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New Jersey School District Eases Pressure on Students, Baring an Ethnic DivideBy KYLE SPENCER New York Times December 25, 2015 This fall, David Aderhold, the superintendent of a high-achieving school district near Princeton, N.J., sent parents an alarming 16-page letter.
The school district, he said, was facing a crisis. Its students were overburdened and stressed out, juggling too much work and too many demands.
In the previous school year, 120 middle and high school students were recommended for mental health assessments; 40 were hospitalized. And on a survey administered by the district, students wrote things like, “I hate going to school,” and “Coming out of 12 years in this district, I have learned one thing: that a grade, a percentage or even a point is to be valued over anything else.”
With his letter, Dr. Aderhold inserted West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District into a national discussion about the intense focus on achievement at elite schools, and whether it has gone too far.
At follow-up meetings, he urged parents to join him in advocating a holistic, “whole child” approach to schooling that respects “social-emotional development” and “deep and meaningful learning” over academics alone. The alternative, he suggested, was to face the prospect of becoming another Palo Alto, Calif., where outsize stress on teenage students is believed to have contributed to two clusters of suicides in the last six years.
But instead of bringing families together, Dr. Aderhold’s letter revealed a fissure in the district, which has 9,700 students, and one that broke down roughly along racial lines. On one side are white parents like Catherine Foley, a former president of the Parent Teacher Student Association at her daughter’s middle school, who has come to see the district’s increasingly pressured atmosphere as antithetical to learning.
“My son was in fourth grade and told me, ‘I’m not going to amount to anything because I have nothing to put on my résumé,’ ” Ms. Foley said.
On the other side are parents like Mike Jia, one of the thousands of Asian-American professionals who have moved to the district in the past decade, who said Dr. Aderhold’s reforms would amount to a “dumbing down” of his children’s education.
“What is happening here reflects a national anti-intellectual trend that will not prepare our children for the future,” Mr. Jia said.
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They have had a growing influence on the district. Asian-American parents are enthusiastic supporters of the competitive instrumental music program. They have been huge supporters of the district’s advanced mathematics program, which once began in the fourth grade but will now start in the sixth. The change to the program, in which 90 percent of the participating students are Asian-American, is one of Dr. Aderhold’s reforms.
Asian-American students have been avid participants in a state program that permits them to take summer classes off campus for high school credit, allowing them to maximize the number of honors and Advanced Placement classes they can take, another practice that Dr. Aderhold is limiting this school year. Programs that serve gifted children have increasingly come under fire because they don't serve the "right" racial mix.
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Okay, but I see this as a false dichotomy to some extent-- that is, why is a cap of achievement expected to accomplish the desired outcome in this situation to begin with? Now "everyone" will have the same "at the ceiling" achievement level, at least on paper, right? It also seems to me that this is the wrong approach to the underlying problem in the first place. Parents just need to relax about their kids' college resumes and make choices based on the child's best interests. The district decision to prevent child abuse by limiting access to the peculiar tools that some parents have chosen will harm outliers, certainly. Kids like those of members here will be forced to go elsewhere (if they can afford to). Will it "help" some of those bright and MG youngsters whose parents relentlessly push to make them look PG? Maybe. There are probably more of those kids, statistically speaking. The real answer isn't to keep showing "Race to Nowhere" and slapping band-aids on the problem, however. The real solution is to admit that not all people are capable of elite performance-- and furthermore, that this is an okay thing. Not everyone can-- or should-- go to an elite college. Heck, probably not everyone should go to college at all. Programs which serve gifted children and which also don't achieve perfect diversity probably come under fire precisely because they serve (mostly) parents who want special labels and gold stars and distinctions for their children. Those aren't necessarily the children who truly need differentiated instruction. Maybe their parents "need" those things. The kids, not so much, quite often. There is a stereotype that first-generation immigrants tend to parent that way, but it can appear as a cultural construct in almost any highly-educated population. That still doesn't make those children gifted however. The problem with such gifted programs is that they base admittance on achievement-- not on need-- to start with, and then people wonder why the participants all seem to be of a particular type? Well, they selected for it-- not sure why that is a shock. 
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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Many details are missing in this article, but the problem of stressed out children is much more complex than the school district can hope to address. Are the stressed out students over-stretched, internally-pushed, parent-pushed, etc.? Not all pressure comes from the schools, surely. The schools may perhaps better approach the problem, however, by providing better systems of support and mental health for the students, rather than lowering the bar for the students who actually NEED the extra challenge.
Also, it is extraordinarily difficult to get people to agree on the "correct" entry criteria for non-regular (gifted, advanced, etc.) programs.
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If anyone is interested, the summary reports of an internal and external review of their GT program are on this page, which might provide a bit more detail and nuance. http://www.west-windsor-plainsboro.k12.nj.us/departments/gifted___talented/general_information/ETA: note that the district has 30% of students scoring at or above 96th %ile on InView, which is obviously not representative of the USA population. EATA: actually, I think that may be 30% of students qualifying under Renzulli criteria, which include 96th %ile as an option, but probably isn't restricted to it.
Last edited by aeh; 01/03/16 12:43 PM.
...pronounced like the long vowel and first letter of the alphabet...
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Interestingly, the participation ratios are not so skewed as many other programs when you consider that Asian Americans comprise about two-thirds of their student body and make up nine-tenths of the program.
The article can also be somewhat misleading as to the particulars once you read Aderhold's letter, which you can link through the article. For instance, the "no homework nights" were actually supported by 80% of the parents in the survey. Of course, the "no homework nights" were 5 specific nights tailored to give kids a break.
I would agree that some of the measures are designed to lower the ceiling on high ability kids and make lower ability and/or lower achievement kids feel better since they can now say they are also at/near this new artificially lowered ceiling as well. This is really sad for those of our high ability kids who can excel under the old system with one hand tied behind their backs.
I understand they are focusing on the kids who are so stressed but they are disregarding the kids (actually majority of the middle school kids they surveyed) who are never, rarely or only sometimes stressed. Perhaps those always or often stressed kids are the ones who are over competing and need to change rather than changing the opportunities for all the other kids. Having said that, high school appears to be more of a problems as two-thirds of those students are often or always stressed.
Interestingly, they are moving the entry point of their GT math program from 4th grade to 6th grade ostensibly because only 10% qualified under the existing criteria and more would and should qualify if they move the entry point to middle school. On the one hand, Mr. Aderhold describes the math program as intended for the "rare" student, in which case 10% is more than generous. I would think that multiple entry points would make more sense. Our district starts GT math in 3rd grade but some students (granted not that many each year) have entered the program in 4th, 5th, 6th, and even 7th.
Their "right to squeak" initiative gives me the chills. I agree that even students without talent should have the right to continue instrumental music. However, they should be required to put in some minimal effort to practice. Furthermore, they should not have the right to perform every single piece simultaneously alongside talented and hardworking students and destroy the whole concert for everyone else. Yes, these students and their parents should have the right to perform in the concert too but it should not be at the expense of the talented and hard-working students. Before I entered high school, I had to audition to determine which class, part, chair - everyone got to participate but at the level they have earned. I guess our children are so fragile now that we have to guarantee them equal placement regardless of talent and/or achievement or risk them becoming over stressed.
Last edited by Quantum2003; 01/03/16 01:08 PM.
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Oh dear. I read superintendent Aderhold's letter. I thought it was very good in places (e.g. the stress survey, the fear of getting a B, the need to think seriously about what overachievement-of-necessity is doing to kids). Etc. I had a good opinion of the letter initially. Then I got to the part about midterms and finals. They've eliminated them in favor of projects and "common assessments:" High school teachers added that even with the last four days of the school year set aside for final exams, many students had multiple parts for these exams administered during the last full week of classes, meaning that students were assessed continuously throughout the month of June. The logic here seemed off. Why does a final need "multiple parts" if four whole days are set aside for tests in 6-8 classes? That gives 2 finals per day minimum (up to 3 hours per test), which sounds like plenty of time for a comprehensive exam to me. Given that classes like PE won't (or shouldn't!) give a final, and that most kids take ~6 classes, the schedule seems completely reasonable. If teachers are giving constant exams for 2 weeks before finals begin, I suspect that something is wrong with the pacing of the courses and/or with how the kids are being assessed. Aderhold claims that ditching these exams and replacing them with "authentic learning experiences" (whatever that means) will prepare kids for the reality of college. Since when? I took midterms/finals in nearly all my college classes, and had to write 20-page papers for the very few that didn't require them. There was also some flawed logic about exempting A-students from finals (apparently the "vast majority" of seniors fit this description. Emm....). The problem was their POLICY about grades and exams, not exams per se. THEN I got the part about the gifted program in mathematics. First, I got annoyed (because they're going to eliminate it in 4th/5th grade), then I reached edumacator happy-pretend-land and guffawed at the following: Our A&E Math curriculum is “designed to meet the needs of those rare students who have exceptional talents in Mathematics...” Sounds promising, right? Rare students! Exceptional talent! We help them! But... Quite simply, I have not found an educator who has witnessed the testing process in Grade 3 and believes it is developmentally appropriate to begin determining a child’s mathematical capabilities at this point.... Asking 8 or 9 year olds to take a high stakes test that questions deep mathematical thinking often yields a success rate below 10 percent. Clearly, Mr. Aderhold has different definitions for the words rare and exceptional than my DH and I (we were thinking 2-3% for a program like this one), or, say, the world's various public health authorities (imagine if a disease like diabetes, which affects ~10% of the US population was called "rare.") Oh no. Aderhold is clearly saying that putting even 10% of students into a program for rare exceptional talent was too low. Solution: Get rid of it!I then learned that per the district's own previous policy, 3-5% of students were expected to qualify for this program. So I guess they didn't like their own policy. After reading the article in the Times, I was sympathizing with the "whole child" side of the debate. After taking a closer look, I no longer feel that way, and strongly suspect that the school board is trying to water things down by replacing finals with projects (which reward students who can't remember all those bothersome facts about functions or the Magna Carta and maybe even draw conclusions from facts) and by pretending that >10% = rare. IMO, if they want to cut the stress, they need to pace courses properly, cut the homework load (including AP summer work; how many college classes require students to teach themselves the first 2 chapters over the summer??), be honest about the 3-5% thing, and lobby the college admissions committees to stop rewarding MORE activities and MORE AP classes and MORE A++++s and MORE overseas voluntourism internships and etc. Meh.
Last edited by Val; 01/03/16 01:23 PM.
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The district's internal and external reviews also found that the district scores about 1 SD above the mean on nationally-normed instruments (InView, SATs, ACTs). So that a program designed for the top 4% should actually accommodate ~10% of their school population. I actually think this means that the core curriculum of the district should include a more challenging range (hence the external review recommendation for total school clustering), so that in-class differentiation and ability/achievement grouping will capture a larger percentage of students.
On the elementary/middle school advanced math program, the internal review board based their recommendation to delay the program to middle school on statistically insignificant differences in grades in high school math courses between students who entered the advanced math track in 4th grade vs 6th grade (perhaps because there is a natural ceiling on grades--can't get higher than an A, right? Both averaged low 90s.)
I agree that some parts of the superintendent's letter definitely struck a sympathetic chord. For example, the dramatic reduction in children assigned to basic skills level instruction in reading and math when more objective criteria were instituted. (Apparently, children reading at grade level were being perceived as behind.)
The majority of the changes appear to have come straight out of recommendations from the internal and external review committees.
...pronounced like the long vowel and first letter of the alphabet...
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Aeh, I see your point. The thing is, though, identifying rare students with exceptional talent requires above-level testing. SAT and ACT score averages reflect high-school-aged students only, given that the test companies don't report scores for students aged <13. I don't think it's possible to infer that 10% or more of 9 year olds have exceptional math talent based in 11th & 12th grade SAT scores. In addition, the SAT and the ACT aren't tests for math talent (at least, certainly not at the high-school-age level). They're tests for college readiness. In other words, they're grade-level tests (really, below grade level, given that they test 9th - 11th grade math concepts).
As for the InView test, my understanding is that it's a group-administered test that doesn't test all cognitive areas. The Hoagies site states that it has a "hard ceiling" of 141, which makes it not very good at discriminating between the really talented ones and the ones who are merely very good (in addition to having only a single section for quantitative reasoning).
The district in question used to administer a group of above level tests to find kids who were exceptionally talented. This approach is also used by CTY at Johns Hopkins and other talent search organizations. In Plainsboro, there were 4 or 5 tests and a whole lot of questions in different areas, and they all focused on above grade-level concepts. The fact that a small percentage of kids passed those tests tells me that the tests were probably doing their job properly.
As for ending a gifted program because lots of program and non-program kids got As in high school, I don't really understand that reasoning. Surely, the purpose of the GT program is to stretch the minds of the students and to expose them to ideas that will help develop their minds, not to ensure that they get the highest grades in high school classes?
Last edited by Val; 01/03/16 07:36 PM.
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Their "right to squeak" initiative gives me the chills. I agree that even students without talent should have the right to continue instrumental music. Will they create a "right to fumble" and open the football team to all comers? No. Sports are one thing Americans are hard-headed about.
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Their "right to squeak" initiative gives me the chills. I agree that even students without talent should have the right to continue instrumental music. Will they create a "right to fumble" and open the football team to all comers? No. Sports are one thing Americans are hard-headed about. Though I have no opinions to share on the OP, I wanted to chime in and say that I have actually used the football analogy several times while advocating for "differentiation" in the early elementary years for my child 
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