Follow-up On Achievement
In the days after I sent out my last newsletter about scholastic achievement in our district, I saw several people (including school board members and our superintendent) post about a book called “Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic—And What We Can Do About It.” It seemed like an indirect and not-so-subtle response to my critique, so I decided to read it. Here’s my brief summary of the book:
The author, Jennifer Breheny Wallace, conducted years of research including interviews with hundreds of parents and students across the country. She focuses on “mattering” (defined as basically a feeling that you and your actions have a real and positive impact on loved ones and friends) as means to improve mental health among teenagers. The book tells multiple stories about kids (but more often, their parents) that are driven by building a resume and getting good grades solely to get into a good college. The latter half of the book provides examples of alternatives that resulted in improved mental health. One example was a Jesuit school that prioritized community service with personal connections. Another example was a student who found his “why” in becoming an EMT and medical professional. He tried and failed some challenging classes in high school but continued to retake them because he was driven to reach his ultimate goal.
Because this book showed up on my radar in a manner that seemed to chastise me for my views on achievement, I was mentally prepared to disagree with its premise. Instead, I agreed with pretty much all of it. So how can I reconcile the fact that the board member who wants to step away from “achievement culture” and I both seem to agree with this book?
My only answer is that she, and others that drew the same conclusions as her, misunderstood the point of the book.
But let’s first find things that we both probably agree on:
Grades are NOT the end-all-be-all of high school experience
College is NOT the only path after graduation
“Achievement” can take many forms
As a quick review, what set off this debate was when a board member said, “I am one of those parents that is coping with stepping away from achievement culture.” As a standalone quote, you could potentially interpret this as meaning “I’m not prioritizing just my child’s grades,” or “I’m OK with my child not attending college after high school.” But that wasn’t the context of the quote. In the lead-up to this quote, the board member and the college counselor were discussing whether a student should be pulled from a more advanced class into an “easier” class. In fact, the book gave some examples of students choosing to do just that when their schedules were overloaded with AP and Honors classes. But the conversation at the board meeting was almost exactly the opposite. The discussion leading up to this exchange was about making the choice to go to an “easier” class specifically so that the student could do better in that class (and ostensibly get a better grade). So, by “stepping away from achievement culture” for that reason, this board member was actually feeding into the system that she purports to reject.
For me, the main lesson I drew from the book was this: finding your passion and your “why” do more to contribute to your mental health and achievement than anything else. On this, I speak from experience. When I was in high school, I found my passion after taking an Aviation Science class. From then on, I was singularly driven toward my goal of applying to the US Air Force Academy so that I could fly planes. Once I began there, I found my passion in Aeronautical Engineering. I performed very well in that major, earning “Top Cadet in Thermodynamics and Propulsion” upon graduation. I was OK with earning some C grades (in classes like Political Science—which is ironic now that I am running for public office) because my “why” drove my areas of focus at the time.
So, what does this all mean for how we should drive policy in PVPUSD?
Regardless of how we define achievement, our goal should be—at a minimum—for all students to meet minimum graduation standards. Our current standardized testing shows that 20% are not meeting English standards and 30% are not meeting Math standards, even though we have an exceptional 98% graduation rate.
We should do a better job of presenting more options earlier on for post-high school paths to students.
From the top down, we should re-emphasize the importance of grit, hard-work, self-discipline, and intrinsic motivation.
I’ll close again by saying that I am proud member of “high achievement” culture club. If we can emphasize the aforementioned policies, I believe we can bring all students and parents into that club as well.
