Kevin Drum is a respected writer and blogger. He doesn’t usually write about education.
However, he has heard the claim that the best way to improve academic performance is to make school harder: higher standards, harder tests.
The San Jose school district tried this approach. It said that every student must take college prep classes. This is what Drum found:
“Do high schools with higher standards get better performance from their students? If you require everyone to take college prep classes, will more kids go to college? The San Jose school district has long been a poster child for this notion, but guess what? It turns out it was all a crock:
“San Jose Unified has quietly acknowledged that the district overstated its accomplishments. And a Times analysis of the district’s record shows that its progress has not, in fact, far outpaced many other school systems’….In 2000, before the college-prep program took effect, 40% of San Jose graduates fulfilled requirements for applying to University of California and Cal State University. In 2011, the number was 40.3%.”
Reality is a hard and pitiless teacher. Someday our policymakers will understand that saying something should happen will not make it happen. Like, for example, passing a law in 2001 declaring that all students would be proficient by 2014. Didn’t happen.
More on this story from Matt Di Carlo, who reminds us that it I’d always wise to be cautious and skeptical.
I would add that it is always wise to doubt miracle claims. They have an annoying habit of falling apart under scrutiny.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
An interesting follow up would be to look at those 60% who didn’t go on to college, in 2000 and 2011. I would guess that more of the 2011 cohort actually had worse outcomes (educationally, socially, mentally, etc.) because of the increased pressure and the greater likelihood of burning out and/or feeling like a failure when they couldn’t keep up with college prep work.
“Harder” shouldn’t be conflated with “more challenging” – different students need to be challenged in different ways.
The so-called “A-G requirements” (the University of California college prep curriculum) were adopted for all students when Linda Murray was the district’s superintendent. She is now a Senior Policy Advisor with The Education Trust-West. Here is her bio from the EdTrust-West website (the website offers no documentation for the district’s “demonstrated major successes”):
Dr. Linda Murray is currently serving as Superintendent-in-Residence for the Education Trust-West (ETW) and is responsible for helping lead the practice work of the organization in California. The work is centered around high school reform to ensure that all California graduates are college and work ready. Prior to joining ETW, Linda served as Superintendent of Schools for the San Jose Unified School District for eleven years from 1993–2004. In 1998, under her leadership, the district raised its graduation requirements to meet the UC/CSU entrance requirements, and since then the district has demonstrated major successes, particularly for poor students and students of color. In addition, in 2002, the district adopted, as part of its mission, creating a college going culture in all schools K-12. Not only are San Jose students academically prepared, students and families are involved in programs and activities throughout elementary, middle and high schools that are designed to help them prepare for a college future.
Someday our policymakers will understand that saying something should happen will not make it happen.
So true; and seemingly so self-evident. Yet all around me I hear the most absurd statements (mostly from “reformers” who have never spent a day in a classroom with real children) about what students should be able to do. I can say that “all elephants will learn to fly by June.” That doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.
Well, we may not be able to prepare everyone to succeed in college – a preposterous notion anyway – but we sure can funnel them into indebtedness as they’re starting out in life. Student loan debt, now exceeds credit card debt in the US.
I’ve seen the benefits of a college education for myself, my children and my students. I am always proselytizing for my students to develop their minds and skills. Nevertheless, higher education is facing an immense wave of crisis over its identity, purpose and financing in the coming years. Unless working people can regain some of their lost power and voice, and shift more of the national income from capital to labor – and that also means teachers reclaiming their power and reasserting the humanism that is at the heart of public education – many college degrees may turn out to be depreciating assets, with high financing and opportunity costs.
Does anyone have information on ThinkCerca?
Berating teachers for their “low-expectations” is crazy. The mob of students DRAGS DOWN teachers’ expectations. Teachers who don’t want every day to be a pitched battle eventually relent and lower expectations so as not to be drawn-and-quartered by the mob. Good teachers find ways to nudge the mass of students toward higher standards. Imposing impractically lofty standards on kids results in mass failure, revolt or both. Education “experts” like Dr. Linda Murray don’t get this. The standards must be in the “proximal zone of development” for the kids; if the kids’ level of development is low, the standards cannot be very high.
I attended a high school in the Eighties that required all students to take four years of a foreign language. Admirable, the ed reformers would say. But the result was that yahoos who had zero intention of acquiring any German knowledge populated my German classes in eleventh and twelfth grade, tormented the teacher and prevented real learning from occurring.
First, establish a rigorous, rich elementary system that churns out whip-smart ninth graders. Then –maybe –elevate high school standards. Paul Krugman lambastes Republicans who are not reality-based with respect to economics, global warming, etc. but education is an area in which many Democrats as well refuse to be reality-based.