The writer argues, that this is how real-life success works, because “academic excellence is not a strong predictor of career excellence. Across industries, research shows that the correlation between grades and job performance is modest in the first year after college and trivial within a handful of years.”
Gifted article link:
Referencing this essay by organizational psychologist Adam Grant:
Why not just outsource the whole thing and have the team of dedicated hire employees go to HS for the student- sit in classes, do the homework, write the papers, giving the kid time to pursue their passion and potential?
The linked opinion by David Brooks is mostly advocating SES-based affirmative action in place of race-based affirmative action, rather than helping students good in only some subjects, or anything related to the claimed low correlation between academic and career performance, which seem to be digressions to his main point.
I added the referenced link to Adam Grant’s essay - which I should have from the start.
Among all the familiar/expected points the opinion piece had made about affirmative action, this one point had grabbed my interest, because it doesn’t just question the predictable “reasons behind” academic excellence (based on upbringing), but it’s actual value.
Getting straight A’s requires conformity. Having an influential career demands originality. In a study of students who graduated at the top of their class, the education researcher Karen Arnold found that although they usually had successful careers, they rarely reached the upper echelons.
“Valedictorians aren’t likely to be the future’s visionaries,” Dr. Arnold explained.
“They typically settle into the system instead of shaking it up."
few more articles on the topic:
The system built on a definition of “merit” where David Brooks has a NYT column is truly, as he says, “bonkers.”
The study by Karen Arnold followed only 81 valedictorians. With such a small sample size, is it any surprise she didn’t find many in the “upper echelons?” Was there a different class rank that sent a higher percentage into the “upper echelons?” I doubt it.
A big caveat is that, depending on the definition of “creativity” there is anything from a weak correlations with GPA to no correlation. So it’s hard to compare different research because there are so many ways by which creativity is defined and measured.
What is clear, though, is that the extreme focus on GPA does not encourage creativity, if for no other reason that it raises the cost of taking risks. Students are learning to the test all the time.
AP classes are the worst in that. The students are literally learning to the test. They are learning to provide the correct answers on a multiple choice test, rather than trying to achieve an actual understanding of the material. They learn material and very often cannot actually do anything with what they learned, because all they learned to do was provide correct answers to standard questions in the subjects that they learned.
My wife was very often frustrated that so many students who passed AP Calc BC with good grades had no real understanding of what a “variable” actually was. I have taught students who supposedly had learned intro bio three times, and they really did not understand basic processes - they could regurgitate the info, but did not understand what was actually going on.
Well - even a smaller sample size are my personal relations, but this “spoke to me”. I can definitely see how those who I know intimately, do well in their professions, highly valued, and quickly advanced, for the expedience, accuracy and quality of their “work” - but never being given the reigns to chart a new path for the enitre organization in ever changing environments.
I agree.
But how many DO master the material, and ALSO/still prepare for the test?
A blanket assertion of “most/few” is hard to back up with facts, if you imply that that the test doesn’t assess mastery - or lack of?
Tests demonstrate mastery of the material taught, whether or not that material includes actually understanding the concepts and ideas behind what is taught.
Then I’ll rephrase: How would one be able to assert how many/few have “understanding” if understanding is not regularly tested?
And how many pass the tests with great results because they DID have understanding, and NOT because they only were taught to the test?
I follow your argument, but I struggle how it’s quantified/qualified?
AP tests have free response questions in addition to multiple choice questions.
However, there is a general problem with testing in that tests are supposed to be a proxy measure of learning. But when the test is consistent over time (as is necessary for standardized testing that wants results to be comparable over various test administrations), teachers and students have incentive to optimize learning for the proxy measure instead of the originally intended learning goals.
When I was in high school, I prepared for AP tests and Achievement tests (later renamed SAT II and SAT subject tests before being discontinued) by just taking the associated high school courses, with no external preparation. I did less than 15 minutes of preparation for the SAT. About the only indication I noticed of teachers specifically teaching to any of these tests was English teachers who would give vocabulary words each week to learn (the SAT then was mostly vocabulary, presumably a proxy measure of how well read you were, but which was gamed by learning lists of “SAT words”).
But based on what people post on these forums now, lots of students spend hundreds of hours doing test-specific preparation for the SAT, ACT, and AP tests (and SAT subject tests before they were discontinued), not including any test-optimization that teachers may have added in their AP courses (i.e. instead of “learning this”, “learning how to answer the type of questions on this that will be on the test”).
Clearly the study didn’t follow Jeff Bezos…
To be honest, I don’t know.
In order to check compare fairly, as @ucbalumnus writes, you have to have standardization. However, standardization makes it very difficult to test for innovation and originality.
This would be the argument for getting rid of a core curriculum, that a scientist doesn’t need English or a foreign language, that a historian probably won’t use that math.
This would have made both my kids happy, but I’m glad they each had to learn subjects they weren’t thrilled about and it turns out in life that the engineer does have to write reports (and she knows the difference between there, their, and they’re when many of her co-workers do not) and the history major needs a little bit of math to understand her taxes and paychecks.
Will they cure cancer or invent a new monetary system? I don’t know, but they’ll be able to write about it if they do --and in cursive, if need be.
I don’t think it was being suggested that one’s studies should be narrower, but rather that the admission/HS-graduation focus on the average of all grades across all subjects tends to select students who are good at optimizing their (temporary) recollection about any topic, but necessarily focused within well-defined boundaries in each.
At the same time those who might be truly exceptional in a particular discipline, diving very deep in just a few topics, but applying creative thinking and attempting nouveau approaches, are not furthered as they should - because they don’t bother to apply themselves vigorously in other subjects just to chase the 4.0 average.
A common theme at CC is that you can get a great education at most schools.
And yet we constantly have these authors harping on how income inequality should be addressed by allowing “X group” more opportunities at selective schools and more access to elite institutions.
So if someone is economically disadvantaged, is attending Harvard their only pathway to success? They cant be successful attending Univ of Maryland or Indiana?
Let’s address income inequality by giving them more spots at Ivy League schools? But dont we also say it doesnt matter where you go, it’s all about skill level?
Grades arent a predictor of success but the school you go to is?
This entire discussion about affirmative action and college admissions is really about 30-40 schools. And yet so many people make it sound like this cruel world is handing disadvantaged students a short stack because they cant get a bump to attend Yale.
Limited income students can be successful from these schools, they just can’t afford them (because they don’t come close to meeting full need for most students, which describes the vast majority of colleges).
URMs and limited income students are the only groups that Dale and Krueger data show outcomes are generally better if they attend an elite institution (partially because they are affordable).
The disadvantages accumulate over these students’ entire childhoods…poor nutrition, poor healthcare, broken families, poor k-12 education, etc.
If they don’t have the grades/profile to get accepted to a meet full need school (maybe 125 of 3000 4 year schools, plus a few that meet full need only for residents, or for students coming thru a college access partner), it can be difficult for them to find an affordable college situation. Living at home and commuting to a CC or a 4 year college is not always an option either.