No Way to Level the Playing Field
One for the first things an aspiring civil engineer learns how to do when seeking a flat surface upon which to construct a road or a building, is to balance cut and fill. Analyze the topography in three dimensions and determine where to cut down the hills and fill in the valleys. Anyone who’s walked a rail trail in New England will observe how cut and fill works in real time. In the 1800’s we dug away at our craggy hills and filled our steep slides in order to create gentle inclines so railroads could run smoothly at a negligible grade. In the physical world, cut and fill is the great leveler.
In the social world, leveling the playing field is not nearly so precise, nor do the results provide the kind of progress that nineteenth century railroads proclaimed. When we cut back the advantages afforded those at the privileged end of society, the resulting excess does not necessarily raise those at our lower rungs.
The Cambridge Public Schools have eliminated advanced math classes for middle school students. No algebra for eight graders. Superintendent Victoria Greers states, “We have a huge focus on addressing both the academic gaps and the opportunity gaps in our community.” That may be a noble sentiment, but it is playing out in ways that are disadvantaging all.
Students in advanced math classes tend to be affluent compared to the student body as a whole. Eighth grade algebra is not so important in itself, but students who complete it, can then track to advanced math classes in high school: classes that help boost SAT scores, enable AP exams, and embellish applications to top tier colleges. Therefore, parents with a long-view of their children’s opportunities are choosing to either provide additional math instruction outside of school, or pull their children out of the Cambridge Public Schools completely. After all, they tend to be affluent, so many can afford private school.
With the top-level math students creamed away, the students who remain are robbed of the opportunity to study with — and be challenged by — prime peers.
If the issue was simply, does Cambridge teach basic math to all or advanced math to some, the answer would be obvious: everyone deserves to be taught basic math. But that’s not the question in the City of Cambridge, where the average annual expenditure per pupil is over $35,000 (the highest in Massachusetts, by at least 20%). Cambridge has plenty of money to teach every student at their highest level. The public schools choose not to do that, under a mistaken notion of equality.
I had two children who graduated from the Cambridge Public Schools, about fifteen years ago. Way back, in elementary school, their classes were pretty much 50–50 mixed by race and socio-economic status. Their third-grade teacher had a big sign in front of the room that said, “Equity is not giving each child the same thing. It is giving each child what they need.”
My children went on to middle school, where they studied algebra. By the time they entered high school, the racial mix of the school was 80/20 non-white to white, yet by the time they were juniors and seniors, their advanced classes were 80/20 the other direction. This was not a desirable reality in a school system that strives to provide everyone the opportunity to excel, and fifteen years later, those proportions have hardly budged.
The beauty of the Cambridge Public Schools two decades ago was that every student could get a good education to prepare themselves for whatever future awaited, whether that be auto repair or Ivy League.
It’s terrible that, despite good intention and extravagant resources, we have still have such academic gaps in our community. But it is horrific that the way of dealing with that gap is by eliminating opportunities for academic achievement.
