How online learning has failed the brightest students
In the Pixar movie The Incredibles, young Buddy Pine, born without super powers, turns himself into the evil Syndrome. He secretly creates a robot set to destroy the world and then plans to publicly defeat the robot himself and appear as a hero to all. Great movie. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched it, even without my kids. As Syndrome is explaining his plot to publicly appear to be a superhero he explains, “And when I’m old and I’ve had my fun, I’ll sell my inventions so that everyone can be superheroes. EVERYONE can be super! And when everyone’s super … no one will be.”
That’s exactly what’s happened when high schools and universities went virtual. Those students who always stood out as smart, the high achievers, the ones who put in long hours to earn their A grades, the academic superheroes, suddenly found that ‘everyone’s super’. They hadn’t fallen back to the pack: the pack had miraculously caught up.
It didn’t start with online learning: it began years ago. According to an article on Quartz (https://qz.com/1032183/no-wonder-young-americans-feel-so-important-when-half-of-them-finish-high-school-as-a-students/), 47% of high school students are graduating with an A or A- average, up from 38% some twenty years ago. Yet as high as that percentage sounds, it’s probably higher right now. During the last quarter of the 2019-2020 school year, when students were online and away from their classrooms, teachers were told to go out of their way to help students raise their grades. A Washington Post article (https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/the-year-of-the-easy-b-how-lowering-grading-standards-may-punish-students/2020/05/01/f97cb206-8898-11ea-9dfd-990f9dcc71fc_story.html) states that in one Virginia school district, teachers were encouraged to increase a student’s grade by a full letter if the student could submit proficiency of the subject matter. I personally saw something like this first hand when I heard from students and parents who wanted help completing math worksheets at home to bring up their grade. I declined. I’d like to believe that some of these students completed this work without the help of tutors or the internet. I don’t believe it, but I’d like to.
It would be one thing if students were simply getting smarter and earning these high grades. However, the first article states that the average SAT score decreased slightly over the past decade. The second article tells us that in North Carolina one-third of students who had a B grade failed to score at the proficient level on their statewide algebra final exam. Clearly, students aren’t learning more. They’re just getting better grades on their report cards.
And the cheating, now it’s so much easier than ever before. A quick search on Craigslist under ‘Math Tutor’ leads to numerous ads offering ‘assistance’ with homework, take-home quizzes, online tests, and term papers. One professor at a particular state college publicly stated that he/she believed that one-third of his/her students cheated on the final exam. At another state university a professor referred all students from a particular class to the college's ethics panel because he/she believed everyone cheated. Unsupervised education simply isn’t working.
If you’re in the enviable position of being able to look at your child’s report card and see an A average, you should feel proud. Instead, it’s simply a confirmation that your son or daughter is in the top half of all high school students.
Some students have put in hard work, long hours, and lots of effort to receive A grades. They’re academic superheroes. But now it seems that everyone can be super, and when everyone’s an academic superhero…….