No Child Gets Ahead

WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

from the Jefferson Memorial, taken on a trip there in 2014

There’s something profound about each human being given rights from the Creator—not from some government or other entity in society. Respect needs to be earned. Trust needs to be earned. Ability needs to be proven. And some opportunities come out of those things where we are different. But, under the law we don’t have one class of people treated differently from another class of people—or as the pigs say in Animal Farm, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

We may not have perspective on just how rare this is in human history—and even in our world today—where most societies have been stratified into class designations that simply cannot be crossed. Here we have had the American Dream, where anyone can work their way up as high as they can manage through sheer effort and seizing opportunities.

There’s a cultural shift going on from that concept in our Declaration of Independence to something more akin to leveling downward. Reframed, it is oppressing the masses and advantaging only chosen classes. It is rule by elites. And it is grossly unfair.

There are a couple of stories that hit me personally this month, both school related, and both discriminating against merit—for the sake of “equity.” Not equality.

 

National Merit Commendations

The first story comes out of Virginia. It started out with just one high school, a science and technology magnet school called Thomas Jefferson High School in Fairfax. (ABC News reported it here; the 11-minute news video embedded in the story is worthwhile.) Then, as the story goes on, the investigation expands further. At last count it seems to be at least seven schools, maybe as many as 16, spread across several school districts in Virginia.

Parents picket about the National Merit controversy in Fairfax, January 14, 2023.
Image found here.

Students in their junior year take a test called the PSAT, or Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test. The results get shared in the fall of their senior year. The top 3% of test takers (test takers are generally the college-bound cohort only) get a National Merit Commendation. In and of itself, that is not a big prize. But on a college application it can mean getting into the school of choice, or getting a scholarship worth tens of thousands of dollars.

These schools in Virginia failed to announce the awards in the fall, when college applications and early admissions were underway. Human error, they said, nothing intentional. But the same human error by multiple schools in multiple districts? How does that happen?

It seems connected that Fairfax school district hired an equity consultant, whom they paid $455,000 for about nine months of work, whose final report made the recommendation for “equal outcome for every student without exception,” even if that means being “personally unequal.” In other words, allowing a student an advantage for being smart is “unequitable” to lower IQ students. There’s an investigation to see whether this recommendation played into the problem, because it’s against the Virginia Human Rights Act, mainly because it has affected so many Asian-American students.

I don’t see an explanation for the similar problem in the other school districts. But the unfairness of “equity” doctrine appears to be a likely reason.

Here’s why this personally triggers me. I was a National Merit Commended student. This was decades ago. As I remember it, to be a National Merit Finalist, you had to score in the top 1% of test takers. We had three of those in my high school; I had a lot of really smart friends. To be Commended required being in the top 2%, where I placed. For me, getting that honor made a difference in my future.

I did not come from a wealthy family, nor a family oriented toward education. I grew up being told people like us didn’t go to college. My family was certainly not going to pay for it. I wouldn’t have even seen it as a possibility, except for those really smart friends, all of whom were heading to college and assumed I would too.

They told me there was such a thing as scholarships. I literally thought the scholarship went to the single smartest person in the school only, and that seemed out of my reach. But I tried anyway. In junior high (7^th through 9^th grade) the highest GPA was between me and one other guy; I think we both ended up getting an A- on something for a quarter or two. In high school (10^th through 12^th grade), I was taking difficult courses. AP classes were only available to seniors; I took three. I was putting in typically four hours of homework a night, plus weekend homework. And I was doing a fair amount of extracurricular stuff as well.

my high school, image found here

I worked summer jobs, but once school started, I couldn’t manage to work and still get the schoolwork done. It was intense, and I always had this pressure of, if I’m not good enough, I don’t get any more learning opportunities. It always puzzled me when people would think my ability in school was just a natural gift; it may be, but I didn’t know that. I thought I was a typical B student who just worked hard enough to get As with a huge amount of diligence.

The fall of my senior year I was filling out applications—by myself, because I didn’t have parents who understood how to help or really cared to. And I had an interview for a particular scholarship at the school of my choice, Brigham Young University. The top scholarship, given to one young man and one young woman as incoming freshmen, was named for the current President and Prophet of the Church, which at the time was the Kimball Scholarship. In that interview, the person I was talking with did not guarantee that one, but he did guarantee I would get a scholarship. Until that moment I didn’t know there were other scholarships for the taking. He meant not only was I accepted to the University, but I would have some of it paid for. College became a reality for me after that interview; before that it had only been a hope.

I got what was called a Presidential Scholarship for my freshman year, full tuition. I paid all fees, books, and housing, which I managed to do by working hard all summer—and Christmas holidays—and being very frugal. Keeping that was contingent on keeping my grades high enough; I got an A- in a couple of classes, so the next couple of years I managed to keep a Dean’s scholarship, which paid half tuition. Working two summer jobs plus Christmas holidays I was able to manage, barely.

My senior year I got a special scholarship given to a few top students in my major, paying half tuition. And I worked as a tutor and teacher (unusual circumstance; I team taught freshman basic writing with another undergraduate, under the direction of the writing lab head). I had to take a slightly lighter class load in order to work during school, so it added on an extra semester, during which I paid the painful full tuition.

But I graduated. Without debt. I hadn’t known taking out a loan was possible. Just as well, because English majors then and now don’t make enough to pay back a student loan easily. I did, however, get to work in my field.

I had tried to get a grant at one point. I got $100 my freshman year, which covered part of my books. They considered the family income too high to get more. I don’t know our exact income then, but my dad retired, when I was 25, and was at that time earning $33,000 a year, his highest ever. I did a calculation online once, and that was about $60,000 in 2012 dollars. Not poor enough, apparently. But none of it went to me. My parents did sometimes give me food from their pantry. And a couple of the years they paid my long-distance phone bill so I could call home.

The point is, I was not privileged. My dad was the son of immigrant parents. I was the first—only—in my line to go to college. My kids are the first grandchildren to graduate from college (and beyond, for all of them); the youngest grandchild, my niece, graduated last year, so she is another breakthrough.

There were so many opportunities I didn’t have, because I didn’t even know they were possible—until friends showed me otherwise. I’m so grateful to them. Teachers too, several of them who were so encouraging to me, this girl who would otherwise have just disappeared from the world where learning is life.

These “equity” experts springing up all over are discriminating against people like the person I was—people who are smart because they work hard and do all the schoolwork and take the harder classes to soak in all the learning they can. How unfair to deprive someone like me—because my caramel colored skin is apparently not the right color, indicating the right ethnicity, to be granted privileges. 

 

No Gifted Classes

The second story is out of California. In Culver City they have removed Honors English classes. Because of equity. Because they didn’t get the specified quota of black and Hispanic students in those classes. So all students now take the same level of English classes. The Wall Street Journal first carried the story: “To Increase Equity, School Districts Eliminate Honors Classes.” I first saw it on The Blaze.  (New York Post reported a New York school cancelling AP classes last year; and the local CBS station reported a similar attempt in San Diego, also last year.) 

empty classroom,
image found here, associated with this story

There’s a not uncommon supposition that the smart students are going to do well enough even if you ignore their education. Why give them special treatment? I found a similar prejudice against gifted students when we moved here to Texas in 1998. Our boys had been in a gifted magnet elementary school and then gifted program in junior high, where we had moved from, and our daughter was ready to be tested for acceptance into the gifted program. We had expectations for what a gifted program meant. It absolutely does not mean giving more meaningless practice—busywork. They need less practice, not more.

Gifted students are a type of special ed. They get bored easily when kept from pursuing what interests them, and that can lead to various forms of problem students. They can get disruptive (mine didn’t). They can get sneaky about doing what they wanted and avoiding what the class was doing (we got a fair amount of that). They need meaningful challenges and natural ways of learning, as opposed to rote and boring typical school with a lot of sitting still.

The teachers we had where we moved from were exemplary. Still, there were challenges to get a certain child to do assigned “projects,” even though he loved the learning and was soaking it in. In Texas, in a district that was highly rated, according to information from the real estate agents, I was told some unhelpful things:

·       “We only take the top 1%, so even though your children were in a program, they probably won’t make it here.” (My children had already proven themselves capable of doing gifted work, for several years, and yes, after jumping through all the hoops, they did get in, partway through the semester.)

·       “We use the best teaching methods for all the students.” (Which means, they don’t even know the best teaching methods, which probably should be used for all students, but are absolutely required for gifted students.)

When I inquired of the high school why my child would have to drop out of foreign language, music, and the highest level of math, because they were considered elective courses—and the single gifted class offered was yet another elective, so he couldn’t take that either—they just told me, “Plenty of our students have gotten into the college of their choice.” OK, but that is irrelevant to my question, and people this dense should not be trying to educate anyone, and certainly not my children.

There had been some good teachers—a middle school orchestra teacher who was stellar. And some teachers who cared and really wanted to try. We tried coming up with creative solutions—like me coming on campus to teach my son writing in the library, at no cost to them. But they didn’t allow such things.

When my daughter got placed as the only gifted child in first grade at her school, they switched sides of the room, putting her in the group that did their math work a little faster. That was the sum total of their gifted program.

After two years of that public school nonsense, we homeschooled. And it was an adventure not to be missed.

When homeschool kids graduate; our daughter is middle of the back row in dark blue.
(this was Deseret Homeschoolers of SE Texas in 2010)

But, as a taxpayer, I am concerned with how much the local school district leans toward “equity.” And even one of my favorite new school board members recently said that the underprivileged poor kids are the ones who really have his heart. Of course they do. But why isn’t there also a heart for gifted students—kids like mine?

 

What Outcome Do We Want?

When you’re looking for a definition of what kind of education to give every child, it should not be producing a common factory unit with no differences. It should be:

Providing each child with the education they need to reach their potential.

The starting point is, find out where they are, and from there help them progress as fast and as far as they are willing and able. The ending point will be as individual as the students are.

“Equity” in the classroom fails everyone: the 70% who feel imprisoned in boredom hell, because they are kept from learning at a faster pace; the 20% who have the learning well-paced for them but are distracted by the bored students around them; and the 10% who can’t keep up. And everyone is leveled down to that slow level, if you don’t allow different outcomes. It’s a purposeful failure to all the students. And that’s evil—even before you add in the SEL, ESG, LGBTQ, and whatever indoctrination some elite power is inculcating into students on a given day.

If the public schools can’t provide each child with the education they need in order to reach their potential, then the least we can do is let the free market do what it does: provide better quality at lower cost. We should let the money follow the child, so at least those with caring parents won’t be trapped in a failing government institution that is designed to keep every child from getting ahead.