Equity Punishes Our Best StudentsExcellence should be the standard.
Auguste Meyrat
Mar 7, 2023
Something to keep in mind when discussing education is that each case really is different. Each district, each campus, each class, and each student—each brings its own set of challenges, and each requires a specific approach from a teacher. If educators are forced to have a one-size-fits-all mindset for students, not only do many students fall short of their potential, but achievement gaps between students actually become wider.
The equity agenda in schools has been a failure. Although the goals of closing achievement gaps and bringing every student up to grade-level standards are commendable in themselves, the fashionable means of achieving these ends and the aspiration to “equity” have devastated the quality of public education for all students. In trying to make America’s public-school students equally excellent, educators have lost sight of what makes students excellent in the first place.
Equity advocates have conducted a war against tracking, i.e., grouping students by ability, specifically blaming advanced academic programs that cater to high achieving students for achievement gaps and poor outcomes. Since advanced classes are dominated by white and Asian students, while more black and Hispanic students fill up on-level classes, activists argue tracking results in unequal, and therefore racist, learning outcomes. It thus follows that removing these advanced classes kills two birds with one stone: ensuring more equal outcomes (i.e., “equity”) and boosting the general average of students’ academic performance.
According to a recent report from RealClear Investigations, this has become an increasingly popular rationale and method for implementing the equity agenda in schools. Against the wishes of most parents, school leaders have dissolved advanced programs, lowered academic (and behavioral) standards, and imposed diversity quotas for campuses. While this has made classrooms more racially diverse, it has also unfairly punished high achievers and created classes of wildly different ability levels.
More tragically, it has made the learning gap worse. According to assessment data for students in these equity-focused schools, “divergence between the high and low performers widened significantly” and “scores for the weakest students fell in both subjects and in both grades.” While it is true that the high achievers who are kicked out of advanced classes boost the general average of classes and diversify class makeup, on-level class issues persist after eliminating tracking. Troublemakers continue to disrupt classes, low achievers continue to underperform, and the achievement gap stubbornly refuses to go away. Moreover, the high achievers—if their parents haven’t pulled them out of public schools already—will eventually see little point to working and either do the bare minimum or start disrupting the class out of boredom.
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Source:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/equity-punishes-our-best-students/
