So-called ‘compromise’ isn’t — it’s no change at all
By Mike McGann, Editor, the Times
Less than a week from now, the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District Board of Education is slated to vote on revising a policy about ranking Unionville High School students by decile — slices of 10% based on grade point average (GPA).
It’s an issue that’s generated a lot of passion and debate in the greater community (although turn out for last week’s board work session, a handful of parents and only one media member actually at the meeting, might suggest otherwise). The board seems poised to embrace a compromise by eliminating decile and replacing it with GPA distribution.
Generally speaking, I’m in favor of compromise — but this isn’t compromise, it’s a surrender wrapped inside a horse manure rebranding.
To be honest, anyone with half a brain can take the GPA distribution data and figure out where a given student falls within a specific decile. So other than a feel-good for doing “something” it basically amounts to nothing. Worse, it is intellectually and morally corrupt while also teaching poor lessons to students, essentially that life is one big political campaign, where the truth can be rebranded to avoid really dealing with an issue.
By rebranding something unpalatable as something else, yet with the same basic core, one can do wonders. Like, say, I dunno, “racist” becomes “ethnically selective.” Political operatives have been doing this for years now, but one would hope our local school board members would be better than this.
So, in review: from a functional standpoint, decile ranking = GPA distribution.
Which takes us back to the basic argument: does decile reporting hurt more students than it helps?
Well, simple math suggests so. Assuming that roughly 35 students will make up the top decile, and the second, third and fourth deciles (and arguably more) are probably hurt at Unionville. That’s a minor, theoretical benefit for 35 kids with a more likely disadvantage for more than 100. The truth of the matter is that decile is a silly way to rank students — a fourth decile student at Unionville might just be better than first decile students at high schools just a few miles away. With the decile system foolishly driving college admissions (itself a corrupt and horrific process less about educating students than generating revenue) those lower decile but arguably better students suffer.
“Gee, kid, you have a 3.3 GPA at one of the best high schools in America and 1,200 on the SATs — looks like you should go to trade school,” is what this says. Which is, of course, utter insanity.
Worse, it further underlines two continuing points of crisis in the UCF School District: first, that while elite and special needs students continue to get exceptional focus, average students are largely left under the radar, frozen out and basically told they lack worth; second, it perpetuates a seriously unhealthy culture within the schools with students and in the greater community among parents.
On the first point, I can’t tell you how many times the point has been made about how UCF “is amazing with gifted students, amazing with special needs students, but tends to forget the rest of the students in the middle.”
While I don’t think this is the intent of the board or the administration, it is often the outcome.
Those students not among the elite, are left to feel unimportant or with a less than bright future — even if they have skills, talents and abilities not well reflected by GPAs. Eliminating decile rankings entirely — as the administration wants — is a good first step to helping Unionville’s average students (who might well be considered exceptional elsewhere) to aspire to the right college or university for them.
On the second issue: As great a school as Unionville High School is and a as great community as Unionville is, the unhealthy, excessive focus on academic achievement is a problem. We all want our kids to do well, to learn and to grow. But it shouldn’t become a blood sport.
But then you hear stories of students getting a C in a single class as a freshman and deciding their life is over is over at age 15 because their GPA has taken a fatal hit. And you hear about kids bursting into tears when they get an 89 on a test. And you hear about kids are doing three to four hours of homework and studying a night to maintain nosebleed GPAs. These are symptoms of a serious problem.
All too often, pressure is placed on kids to achieve more as a boasting point for parents, as a validation of their exceptional parenting.
Unionville is one of the few high schools where a student (and his parents) might feel shame for a 3.5 GPA — which to be blunt, is nuts.
And lastly, some of these mind-boggling GPAs come from either parental micromanagement of students, or worse, the parents actually doing some of the school work, rationalizing it as helping their kids get along.
We don’t allow our kids to fail — they don’t learn from adversity and fight their way back, a crucial life skill. We create gorgeous student records and college applications for kids woefully unprepared for the realities of life.
As one sports team coach told me some years back, “these kids don’t know how to cope with failure.”
Like it or not, it is failure that defines us — and how we learn and recover from that failure — not success. When we create a system that makes failure of any kind — heck, a B grade for the year — unacceptable, we do a terrible disservice to our kids.
Ending the decile reporting and not offering a GPA distribution is one step toward creating a healthier school and community.
It’s long overdue.
