“It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Most of last Monday’s Souhegan School District meeting followed a predictable and uneventful script. However, once the $6.32 million budget was overwhelmingly approved, the meeting turned its attention to a sober philosophical debate over the wisdom of having adopted the concept of heterogeneous grouping as opposed to the more traditional ability grouping at the new high school.
The article’s chief architect, Mr. Lee Slocum, sought to garner public support for the more conventional ability grouping approach. While much of his presentation was anecdotal, he did cite statistics suggesting brighter students perform better when grouped with other intelligent and highly motivated classmates … while concurrently having no adverse affects on the performance of “average” and “below average” students. He also questioned whether heterogeneous grouping didn’t have the ultimate effect of reducing academics to the lowest common denominator.
Mr. Slocum, in his search for academic excellence, failed to make his case for several reasons. Although not openly discussed, throughout segments of the Amherst/Mont Vernon community the new high school is sacrosanct and to criticize it tantamount to heresy. However, it was his lack of concrete data beyond simply regurgitating a litany of
well-known problems with the American educational system that undermined his effort. At no time was he able to convincingly demonstrate any sort of cause-and-effect relationship between the school’s grouping policies and a failure of Souhegan students to get a first-rate education.
In an articulate rebuttal, Dr. Richard Lally, the district’s superintendent, made an ardent plea to give the new system a chance. His testimony, while punctuated with empirical data, highlighted a variety of heterogeneously-based programs at the high school, detailing how each focused on raising academic performance, not leveling it. Dr. Lally’s presentation was also supported by a handout on the failures of ability grouping policies, made available to voters as they entered the meeting. Standing beneath a copy of the global goals for the high school, he made a convincing case for the heterogeneous grouping students as the most effective path toward optimizing academic excellence for all students.
As two individuals each presented different means for reaching a common goal, I was stuck by several thoughts not being addressed.
The world beyond one’s high school is comprised on an almost infinite number of heterogeneous groupings of people. One’s success in life is often dictated by his/her ability to function effectively in those diversified environments, independent of their intellectual capacity.
However, in the world-after-Souhegan, rightly or wrongly, individuals will be measured by common yardsticks. Therefore, I trust within the heterogeneous groupings at the high school, all students are being treated equally.
When Dr. Lally referred to the pitifully few American high school students taking such challenging math and science courses as calculus and physics, he indicated such statistics would be one of the metrics used to evaluate Souhegan’s long-term success. Isn’t it appropriate for the school board and administration to publish their proposed educational measurements for the high school … now … opening them up for public comment and contemporaneous evaluation.
Whatever the outcomes of such public policy debates, and whatever their personal feelings, hopefully teachers and administrators at Souhegan and at other schools across the state will point to such open dialogues as positive examples of direct democracy in action … encouraging each student to become actively involved in shaping and governing the society in which they will live.
Finally, and on a disappointing note, less than six percent of the 7,118 registered voters eligible to participate took the time to attend the meeting and help shape the school’s future.
Nevertheless, while the amendment went down to a resounding (248-48) defeat, the process still represented a victory for the citizens of Amherst and Mont Vernon. For the first time since the opening of the new high school, the philosophy of its operation took center state and was seriously debated in an public form of more than a handfull of voters. One wonders if more such public dialogues over the nature and role of our public institutions wouldn’t also prove healthy … particularly before spending votes are case.
