The funny thing is that, while the adults run around and look for a rational explanation for what happened, the kids themselves answered the question two years ago in an editorial in the school paper:
We are a school that puts far more emphasis on the quantitative value of numbers and statistics than on the importance of learning and knowledge. The work assigned in many classes reflects this approach to education. Busywork assignments asking students to perform onerous tasks, such as copying down physics problems verbatim from a Regents review book, send a clear message that deep, conceptual understanding of material is worthless when compared to high scores on a standardized test.Boom, done, QED. The kids knew it two years ago. Not only did they know it, but they wrote a beautiful, expressive, deeply analytical editorial and put it where everybody could see it. They gave the adults in their community every chance to know it too. Obviously, some—maybe even a majority—of the adults in the Stuyvesant community did know it. After all, somebody nurtured those young writers as they thought critically, wrote with voice, and bravely published it all in a school newspaper. Apparently, though, the key decision makers continued their emphasis on quantifying learning through empty performance measures and failed to lead—or even just allow—the faculty to teach a more honest, engaged curriculum.
I've taught at schools quite similar to Stuy, and I'd say a majority of my colleagues have gone for depth over quantity. Great teachers recognize that practice only matters in the context of purpose, and I've had the privilege to work almost exclusively with great teachers. I'm betting this is the case at Stuyvesant too. But the Regents exam, the place in which the most startlingly huge level of cheating came to light, is exactly the place where you'd expect it to if you only realized that the more empty and soulless the work, the more likely you are to inspire a student to cheat on it.
When 9% of your junior class is involved in a single cheating ring, it's not the students who created the problem. They're 17 years old. They're responding to their environment, one they didn't create. If 10% or 20% or 30% of your students are doing something, it's because they're being told to. You may not like the message they're getting, but when something like this happens, you need to tune into the signals you're broadcasting, whether you like what you're picking up or not.
Admission to Stuyvesant is based solely on students' performance on a single standardized test. The top performers on it are admitted, and the rest aren't. Unsurprisingly, it's a test that purports to measure aptitude in verbal and mathematical ability. So when you admit a group of students under these conditions to the "top" high school in the city, you've just told them what it takes to get ahead in life: the score. It doesn't matter if a kid has gamed the test, cheated, or whether he's simply been tutored half to death on the test format. If he scores that magic percentile, he's in.
According to the articles I've linked here, that mentality continues throughout students' time at Stuy. Like I said, I'm sure that many—my guess is most—members of the faculty there actually attempt to push kids away from the pursuit of excellent scores and towards the pursuit of excellence itself, but how effective can they be when a student's access to the school is based on a test score, a student's midlife at the school centers around the Regents, and a student's college access is largely based on SAT and AP test scores?
The school can say all it wants that students should be honest, and they can "redouble" their efforts to teach students to be more honest. They can say that "all students would have to review and sign an honor policy that promises punishment for those who fail to turn in cheats," which they're apparently doing for this year, but the music and the words don't go together. The system tells the kids what's really important, and the adults who offer an alternative simply sound like well-intentioned delusional idealists.
The school needs to reevaluate the work that is inspiring the cheating. If large numbers of students are cheating on an assignment, it's the assignment that needs to change, not the rules that already prohibit cheating. The vast majority of students default to honesty and only cheat when they feel lost, overwhelmed, or confused about the real message of their institution. But any change the faculty makes will quite likely fail to address the deeper issues, which begin with the whole premise on which the school is founded and are perpetuated by a state exam that the faculty can't do away with.
Until our whole institutions are designed around the idea of education as a process of helping minds develop, rather than helping kids perform on an abstract measurement (and the more abstract, the more destructive), we should expect the achievement gap to get worse as more low-performing students are alienated from the system and more high-performing students tweak their test scores ever higher with ever less focus on honesty and excellence.
Lately, "the system" and its emphasis on excellent scores rather than excellence itself has been bothering me a lot.
ReplyDeleteInnately, I am a perfectionist. I always have been, and I always will be. People always tell me how lucky I am that I intrinsically strive for excellence. But lately, I haven't considered this quality of mine a gift; lately, it seems more like a curse.
Throughout high school, I have completed all my homework with great care, I have studied extensively for tests, and I have even done additional work and/ research to further understand various topics. As my time at Staples progressed, the work became more abundant, the tests became more frequent, and the topics became more challenging and sometimes, abstract. Despite this intensity increase, I was still determined to put extreme effort into all of my classes, because that is who I am.
Then came junior year. My “need for excellence” actually started to seem like a curse, rather than the gift. Junior year is arguably one of the most stressful and hardest years of one’s academic experience. Nonetheless, I went into junior year excited for the challenging year, and ready to give it my all.
But it was not that easy. The amount of work I got was extreme. Not to mention, the topics I learned were harder than freshman and sophomore year. I really tried my best to put the effort I thought I needed to achieve “excellence,” or at least someone near excellence. In order to do so, I sacrificed many things, such as sleep. I had numerous sleep-less nights perfecting papers, and studying for tests.
However, while I was up late many of my classmates were asleep. While I was doing the 60 page text book reading my peers were sleeping, since they got notes from students who took the class in previous years. As the year progressed I felt resentful of their sleep. While I was carefully completing the worksheets, many were filling in answers quickly before class. But they would still get credit for it, since they did it.
As I did all my work to the best of my ability, I saw many “playing the system.” By that I mean, doing whatever they can do to get a good grade. At first, I was bothered by the fact that people could do so well by “playing the system” and not sincerely trying their hardest. However, after many sleepless nights, I thought that maybe playing the system is the only way to do well. I began to understand where my peers were coming from.
I think it is interesting that you point out the fact that if many people are doing something, it is not their fault, but it is the “system’s” fault. With the current education system in place, it is almost impossible to truly achieve excellence and “excellent scores” (although it is not impossible). This is not a blow to Staples High School and its teacher’s whatsoever, but to the American education system in general. The widely accepted notion is that the better you do on AP or IB tests and SAT or ACTS, the better college you will go to. Thus, if students want to go to prestigious colleges, they must achieve these high statistics.
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ReplyDeleteHowever, most students are not “geniuses” in every subject: excellence is correlated with persistent practice. There are not simply enough hours in the day for us, the high school students of America, to achieve excellence and excellent scores. Thus, the majority of high school students default to “playing the system,” doing whatever he or she can to get the best scores. Thus, if a 60 page reading is assigned, but not imperative to acing a test, why read it?
Although I used to be slightly resentful of the people who “play the system” I began to realize that it is the only way to “achieve.” Even by the end of my junior year, I had to skip readings and homework assignments, something I would never have done in previous years, in order to “achieve.”
Like you pointed out in this article, educators know what is going on. However, in reality, teachers teach the curriculum they are given, they do not make it. Especially at the AP and IB level, teachers really have no control over the curriculum. I have had many AP teachers complain about the way they are teaching to the test, but they have to, it’s their job. Interestingly, I did not notice this problem until junior year, when I began to take AP courses. During freshman and sophomore year, when I took courses created by the Westport School District, I saw few people “playing the system” and genuinely striving for excellence.
Although originally I thought “playing the system” was immoral, it seems like the only way to survive. As you said, until the American education system changes as a whole, this behavior will not change.
America needs to refocus its education system on excellence based on performance and effort, not based on standardized test scores.
PS—This response is in no way meant to criticize my peers or Staple’s teachers! The intention of this response is to show, in my opinion, the negative affects the current educational system has on students and teachers.
Jill, wow, that's really thoughtful, and you confirm something that has always strongly concerned me: our embracing of the AP system. Because AP classes are geared towards the material on a single test, they lose a lot of the authenticity and student-centered qualities that you find in a class developed by a teacher or department for their own students.
ReplyDeleteEven in AP, though, teachers do have control over what kind of assignments they use to cover the material. Are they doing "drill and kill" where you use worksheets and memorization to cover material or a more authentic approach where you develop your own stance on the material and you acquire skills and content knowledge in service of using them for a purpose? I think some AP curricula allow for that second possibility more than others.
I love how you put sarcastic air quotes on "achieve" when you contrast grade achievement with the true achievement of real knowledge and mastery.