Over the years, I have been writing about misconceptions regarding the schooling process. The purpose of these posts is to explain why I disagree with various comments that I have heard people make about schooling. These are meant as personal thoughts rather than conclusive proof, and I will admit that I'm not always the best at explaining my thoughts. Regardless, I have decided that I should be willing to share these posts when I encounter someone online who makes an argument that I have already discussed.
Even when graduation rates approach 90%, people complain about our dropout crisis. We act as though it is a tragedy every single time someone fails to graduate. Meanwhile, another widespread complaint has contradicted this concern. One of the biggest complaints aimed at our schools is that the schools base expectations off of the average students.
There are some components of schooling that are indeed aimed at average students. This includes such things as the amount of homework to assign. The ideal amount will not be the same for each person, so we look for the amount that should be assigned to the average student. When it comes to what we expect children to learn, aiming for average clearly wouldn't work.
What would happen if the schools aimed for average? Keep in mind that the schools don't graduate children based off of an overall score. Average would mean average in each subject. A student who is average overall will not be able to reach average in every subject. If we targeted median instead of average for six different subjects, each student would have about a 1/64 chance to succeed in all subjects. When you also factor in additional subjects, inefficiencies in the teaching process, averages being above medians, variability in abilities even within a subject, and reasons for failure other than inability, graduation rates would likely be less than 1% if the schools truly aimed for average.
The schools do not aim for average. They aim for attainable. Their expectations are based off the lowest common denominator. They ultimately want all of their students to graduate, so they have to aim for a level that all students can attain. This would be absolutely impossible if they truly aimed for average.
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