Eat your spinach and do your homework: Rigor is unpopular

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."