junior varsity 2

I found this article in my latest lunchtime trolling of the NY Times Education section and was quite fascinated by what it had to say. The premise of the "great middle" is something that I haven't heard called by that name before, but is not a completely unfamiliar concept. I think the parents worrying about these average students are the same kind of parents that worry that kids shouldn't get cut from teams, and that every team in a competition deserves some kind of award. In fact, the article mentions this kind of coddling in detail:

And it instituted a policy prohibiting students from being cut from the orchestra, band and most sports, adding "junior varsity 2" teams to accommodate extra players.

"Junior varsity 2"? Really? There are other ways of promoting involvement in sports and the concepts of dedication and teamwork. There are any number of house and association leagues in which kids can participate with similarly talented kids, often with friends who are also involved just for the fun of playing organized sports. Being a member of a "junior varsity 2" team is not likely to boost the morale of a mediocre athlete, nor is it likely to be a conduit through which an otherwise unheralded prospect will be brought into the varsity fold. Measures such as this one, and the practice of rotating first chair in band and orchestra, simply diminish the innate value that positions of status have. If everyone gets a crack at being first chair violin, being first chair isn't that special anymore, is it?

While I would usually find the same to be true for A.P classes, the statistics would seem to indicate otherwise.

Even as the number of A.P. exams taken by Port Washington students nearly doubled, to 1,134 last year from 603 in 2002, the average overall score climbed to 3.30 from 3.04. At the same time, the percentage of students accepted to four-year colleges during that period also rose, to 82 percent from 74 percent, according to district records.

I am impressed with the way the school district has been able to effectively double the number of kids taking the test AND manage to raise the average score. A common principle in testing is that the more students who take an advanced test, the lower the average will go. Port Washington must be doing something right. On principle, though, I reject the notion that the "great middle" needs to be pushed into A.P. classes. The drastic effects of such A.P. cramming are evident in student reports like this one:

Joe Barrett, 17, a senior, said his United States history teacher went to the opposite extreme in the 2007-8 school year, presenting "elaborate PowerPoints with music videos to keep people interested."

"At the beginning of the year, it was funny, but then it just got tiresome because there wasn't a lot of content," complained Joe, who earned the top score of 5 on the A.P. exam in the class last May. "I definitely could have learned more and faster. I felt like we skipped a lot of history."

From a policy perspective, I think the solution isn't cramming more students into A.P. classes, but rather removing A.P. as the default level of honors classes. Certainly a measure of students in the "great middle" would benefit from taking a level of class higher than the standard offering, but not quite at A.P. level. Setting high expectations of all students, not just the "gifted" ones, could also do a world of good in increasing the quality of instruction without the need to push students into A.P. classes.