Winning in School

As I sit here in the frozen northeast laid up with a badly  sprained ankle, I got to thinking about my last post. In that post, I concluded with the thought that when you try to change the paradigm of school. students who "won" at the old systems would naturally resist any changes. This got me thinking about the concept of winning in our schools.

Even if we don't realize it, much of the current structure of many American schools is designed to guarantee winners and losers. Class rank is probably the easiest example of this, and I'm sure if you think back to your own schooling you can recall an example of how class rank caused friction in your graduating class.

Our culture's obsession with free-market economics has deemed competition to be necessary for a successful society. However, much of the research compiled by Daniel Pink in his book "Drive" suggests that outside of menial tasks, competition (and rewards) lowers achievement. This means that regardless of what we perceive colleges and scholarship committees want, we need to ditch this kind of competition in our schools. Too often we ignore the answer to the question: "Is this best for our students?" and instead lean on the status quo or other less relevant factors.

One thing I like about our move to a standards-based system is that much of our work was based on what is best for students. Gone is the thought that only some students should achieve and that grades should be based on a bell-shaped curve that assumes a percent of the class should fail. Now, the belief and expectation is that every student can achieve high standards. It isn't perfect (nothing is), but I still believe we're on the right track.

Playing School

Today I was reading a post Reed Gillespie wrote last year that does a nice job addressing concerns of allowing students to do redos and retakes, and this part stuck out to me:

"Anecdotally, only rarely did I have any of my high-achievers complain about my retest policy—No, it wasn’t because they didn’t voice their concerns to me. I heard plenty of complaints about my projects, my lectures, my expectations, etc.  Those who did complain most likely were used to an educational system that distinguished between the elite and non-elite." (Emphasis mine)

I have to echo his comments here. The students in the past few years who have complained the most about our switch to a standards-based system are the ones who had become good at "playing school." This new system required them to not just sit back on their socio-economic advantages or good behavior, but to actually master content through a process of constant revision. As one of my colleagues pointed out a few times, they had paid dues into a system that no longer existed, and this sometimes caused friction. 

I am happy to report that with students today who have had more time in our new system (even if it's just a year or two), these occurrences are happening less and less. The lesson to be learned here is that any switch in the way we go about education will at first be met with resistance by those who were "winning" in the old system.