Let us be clear about two essentially independent concepts –– assessment and eligibility. Assessment is about measuring the past. Eligibility determines the future. Judging eligibility based on assessments during school years creates self-perpetuating handicaps for the students even beyond those school years. Agreed, working adults become eligible for rewards and bonuses based on assessments. But access to better education is not a reward, it is enrichment. High school is not a time to decide who makes the cut; it is a time to provide opportunities for enrichment.
Let’s look at some approximate numbers. For roughly 3,300 students from grade 8 to 11, and assuming six courses per student, the current system makes approximately 20,000 course recommendations every year. Of these, 1,800 get overridden. So, in all, 9 percent of the recommendations are overridden, and 91 percent are accepted by students and parents. For the school board, a 9 percent override rate is unacceptable and it wants to deny the students this option. 50 percent of this 9 percent achieve grades high enough to prove the system wrong for not believing in them. The other 50 percent get lower than a B grade, but what we don’t know is how many of the recommended students get similar low grades, and how many of those proposed by the new eligibility criteria will get lower than a B. What we also don’t know is how the difference between those recommended and those using overrides varies across subjects. Some subjects, like language arts, require conditional skills and hence the assessment-based eligibility might be meaningful. Other subjects like history and biology require a commitment of time and effort, so overrides with right motivation would work. Administration claims that 10 percent of the students who take a chance with overrides, meaning less than 1 percent of the initial recommendations, ask for a reversal.
Assessment and eligibility are not even the right way to frame this issue. This is about believing in oneself and taking a chance. As adults a 10 percent failure rate is the best our kids will encounter in a real-world scenario. With divorce rates of 50 percent, they will still take their chances with love and marriage. Do we want them to appeal to a marriage counselor for a suitability certificate? With a business start-up failure rate of 90 percent, they will still take chances at being entrepreneurs. Would we want them to appeal to the government before dreaming up a new business idea? We are Americans. We are about success, but more than that we are about dreams and taking risks for a better future. Ironically, this very month, more than two hundred years ago, a few miles away from these schools, an ex-colonel of the Virginia regiment who was assessed ineligible for a commission in the British army overrode all objective assessments and crossed the Delaware River. That night General Washington changed the history of our land.
Alok Sharma
West Windsor
