Eat your spinach and do your homework: Rigor is unpopular
- Joanne Jacobs
- Jul 14, 2025
- 3 min read
High expectations are more popular in theory than in practice, writes Daniel Buck.
When he recruited new students at schools of choice, parents said they wanted academic rigor and a challenging curriculum. Then the year began, and he started getting emails from disgruntled parents.
Nightly homework? Demanding tests for which students would need to study for hours? Stressful academic gauntlets? The occasional bad grade or negative disciplinary report? You won’t give full credit for late assignments even if they’re good? No thank you. Give my child straight A’s, don’t mess with my evenings and weekends, and tell me all is well.
Many parents don't trust teachers to assign meaningful homework, Buck writes. They've seen too many "projects full of glitter, glue, and razzmatazz without any academic purpose." If homework is busy work, why not let the kids go out and play?
For teachers, high expectations require hard work, he writes. "Grading nightly homework or leaving personalized feedback on essays, planning well-designed lessons, and running an efficient, teacher-led classroom where students are learning every minute" is time consuming.
It's simpler to assign group projects, which require less grading, and spend class time as a "guide on the side" rather than teaching lessons.
Assigning poor grades and disciplining misbehaving students mean filling out more paperwork and dealing with angry parents.
Houston Superintendent Mike Miles has led the district to “significant performance gains,” but is “controversial," writes Buck. "Everyone mouths support for academic excellence but not what it actually requires: tough curriculum, enforced behavioral codes, hard choices, demanding leadership, and retained students."
What's saved Miles' job -- so far -- is standardized testing, he writes. Without rising test scores, the defenders of complacency would win.
"Everyone wants six-pack abs until that means salad for lunch and a workout on your break. ," writes Buck. School boards and other policy leaders need to fight for "eat your spinach" policies.
Tests don't measure "true rigor," argues Jason E. Thompson, a Utah legislator, on The Hill. To thrive in a fast-changing, high-tech world, students need "the ability to listen well, lead wisely and learn from failure." Schools "reward memorization and test-taking, when what’s needed is initiative, discernment and adaptability," he writes.
Educational Testing Service and the Carnegie Foundation are trying to develop tests that measure collaboration, perseverance and problem-solving, Thompson writes. "Some schools are starting to lead the way: integrating project-based learning, mentorship and social-emotional development into their approach."
Back before grade inflation, they used to say that "A" students work in the lab, "B" students run the company and "C" students are wildly successful entrepreneurs -- or abject failures. Perhaps it's true that leadership and social skills are more important to real-world success than AP Calculus or the ability to read Bleak House. But I think schools should focus on academics with lots of teams and extracurriculars to give a wider range of students a chance to shine.
I'm very dubious about the idea that we should reject tests that measure academic competence in hopes students will develop even more valuable skills that we can't measure. If ETS and Carnegie do come up with ways to measure collaboration, perseverance and problem-solving, do we really think the kids who goof off on group projects, don't do homework and can't solve math problems will turn out to be great at the new set of skills? Will students who test badly on academic skills turn out be good listeners and wise leaders? They've had lots of chances to learn from failure before, and it didn't seem to pay off. I guarantee that the uber-competitive students of today will show their discernment and adaptability by learning how to ace "initiative."
Euripides from his play Hecuba,
“One man is much the same as another, but he who is best is trained in the severest school.”
“One man is much the same as another, but he who is best is trained in the severest school.”
A lack of rigor in teacher compensation, competitive employment and hiring standards has resulted in an educator populace whose IQ and functional intelligence is little above average. It is impossible for them to challenge high IQ youth. It’s not that students and parents don’t want rigor, it’s that what passes for rigor now, is pointless and farcical busywork that those that would most benefit see right through.
My son complains about how bad a teacher is, I say to not be negative, meet the teacher, then respond to my son…”yeah, sorry, they are dumb as a brick”.
In the past, average students could still learn a lot, including social skills, from extra-curricular activities, not just sports but arts, music and theater clubs that students often organized and ran themselves. The same was true for colleges back in the days when fraternities and sororities were a big part of the college experience. It's quite true that athletics were and are often overvalued at many colleges, to the detriment of academics. But today's critics of the college and high school "sorting system" like David Brooks ignore extra-curricular activities, and I don't think that's correct.
I suspect that "project learning" and collaboration and all that is a way for getting around the irreducible fact that students differ from each other in aptitudes and attainments.
I have looked for a high rigor school for my children and I usually find “high rigor” means a lot of busy work. I understand repetition cements learning, but too much of demonstrating the same skill you’ve already demonstrated instead of moving on (or having down time). Kids are still required to work at the same pace as the class and gifted kids are bored and busy instead of bored with free time.