This school district is on a crusade to lower academic achievement
Jack Elbaum
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Mandating mediocrity in the name of “equity” is all the rage these days.
Last week, the Boston Globe reported that a significant debate has emerged among those who send their children to Cambridge Public Schools because the district has “eliminated advanced math in middle school with the aim of reducing disparities between low-income children of color and their more affluent peers.”
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What this means in practice is that all students will be relegated to the lowest math class and not take Algebra I until ninth grade.
As I noted in a piece last week on California’s similarly disastrous new math framework, this is no small decision, as one must take Algebra I by at least eighth grade if he wishes to have enough time to take calculus before the end of high school. This is important because it is incredibly difficult to get into a selective college and then excel in STEM majors once there, without ever having taken calculus.
What’s the reason for the change, then? Well, there was no evidence that offering advanced classes for those who were ready was actually a harmful practice. Rather, the Boston Globe reported that the district was “alarmed” that “students in those classes were overwhelmingly white and Asian.”
So, instead of working to help a greater number of black and Latino students excel and eventually join the advanced classes, which would be both desirable and admirable, the district decided to do the exact opposite: Prevent those who are already excelling from doing so anymore. Mediocrity was standardized, and every student was forced to conform to the lowest common denominator.
This doesn’t actually help anyone, though. It clearly harms all of those who would be ahead but for this policy. And it particularly harms high-achieving students who come from low-income families. The reason is that those with money can still pay for outside help to ensure their children remain ahead, but the district just pulled all the support for those who can’t afford private tutors out from under their feet. It also does not help those who were not excelling because having different math classes is not the reason for their current level of achievement. Moreover, once merit is removed as a measuring stick in schools, there will be no motivation or incentive to improve. Consequently, they won’t. It is a recipe for stagnation.
The district seems to prioritize “closing gaps” more than actually raising achievement. So, when the only thing that happens as a result of this policy change is more children doing poorly, the same woke district officials who thought this was a genius idea in the first place will then use it as a pretext for ever-more more backward policy.
It is an absolute scandal that this is what passes for smart education policy these days. And it is precisely why conservatives ought to dedicate far more attention to education than they have in the past.
The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote, “To defend a country, you need an army. But to defend a civilization, you need schools.” This is a challenge of existential proportions, and we must rise up to meet it.
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Jack Elbaum is a summer 2023 Washington Examiner fellow.