Deleveling Your Children

There are few certainties in life, but there are some. Among them these days is that new words and phrases will regularly emerge from the political sandbox. I recently encountered a fun one:

Deleveling.

Also known as detracking, it is:

the process of consciously avoiding placing students with different needs in different "levels" of courses. The intent is to keep all students, regardless of strengths, needs, and identity in courses together. These inclusive classes have the same high expectations for all learners. To account for variability within the class, students are provided additional supports and/or challenges if they need them.

Billed by the linked page (that offers enough other "woke" words to signal its progressive bona fides) as being an antidote to one-size-fits-all education, but as is so often the case, this is Orwellian doublespeak, where black is white and up is down. It is an absolute and irrefutable reality that there is a range of cognitive ability across individuals, that some have higher IQs than others. Gifted programs and competitive schools within broader public education systems are an acknowledgment of this truth. It is, naturally, offensive to the relativists that populate the ranks of the woke, and they pretend or insist that such differences are born of disparate opportunity or insufficient attention.

This is what gives rise to the notion that everyone should go to college, that high achievers should be put in the same classes as low, and that gifted & talented programs should be abolished. It also papers over the Left's massive and decades-long failure to educate kids in the public school systems it has dominated. Worse, in placing the underprepared in classes they will struggle to handle, it sets them up for soul-crushing failure. A proper educational system will teach kids up to the best of their ability, but the only way that can work is if disparate levels of ability are acknowledged and planned for.

There is a detachment from reality in the notion that all kids can achieve the same level of proficiency, if only the weaker students are given more "support." To repeat - cognitive ability varies across individuals, and you cannot 'teach up' someone with an 85 IQ to 120 or 130. All the practice and training in the world will not turn Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger into Reggie White, or your average duffer into Tiger Woods.

Is it fair that some kids can handle calculus by the tenth grade, but others may struggle with trigonometry even as seniors? I don't know that the word "fair" should be used in this context. It's just reality, and what should strike us as 'unfair' is denying stronger students the ability to achieve their potential, while placing excessive demands on the cognitively weaker kids. The former can lead to detachment and boredom, with potentially troubling consequences, while the latter can harm fragile young egos rather than boosting them.

I can already hear the screams of "racism!" from those who'd defend this "one size fits all" notion, but I have nowhere in this article made any mention of or allusion to race. The criticism of public education will nevertheless be conflated with disparaging innuendo, no matter that alternatives such as New York City's Success Academy charter schools, which are over 90% nonwhite and which vastly outperform the traditional public schools. No, the real racism lies with those who think that they have to dumb down curricula, do away with smart-kid programs, and employ affirmative action to "do right" by minority kids in the public schools.

Meanwhile, many rich and powerful parents wouldn't be caught dead sending their kids to the schools they so publicly defend against change and school-choice programs.

Meanwhile meanwhile, subjects like math are being reimagined with DEI parameters, which only a woke-lunatic could do, because math is math, especially at the elementary level. The three Rs are being back-seated to social justice inculcation and an obsession with teaching pre-pubescent children about matters sexual.

Meanwhile meanwhile meanwhile, math scores have dropped precipitously from their already-dismal levels, because progressive monopolization of public education produced sucky outcomes even before the teachers' unions won the lockdown wars.

Meanwhile meanwhile meanwhile meanwhile, other "competitor" nations are teaching their kids better. Since they're not obsessed with "woke," "green," "diversity," "inclusion," "equity," and other matters properly left for adults to debate, they have the classroom time and focus to teach kids math, science, language skills, and useful knowledge such as history, geography, civics, and the like.

The nation will not improve, nor will its children prosper, if all are homogenized down to the lowest level of intellect.