• Special Coverage: America at War • Post Magazine • Magazine Discussion Transcripts • Live Online Transcripts • Talk: Message Boards • Subscribe to washingtonpost.com e-mail newsletters • mywashingtonpost. com -- customized news, traffic, weather and more

Post Magazine
This Week:
Lessons of September
With Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, Nov. 12, 2001; 1 p.m. EST

Like most other areas of American life, the education world has been rocked by Sept. 11 and its aftermath. Sunday, in an Education Review, The Washington Post Magazine looked at the situation from the perspective of a student, a teacher and a school in the shadow of the World Trade Center. And columnist Jay Mathews wondered if the national resolve that has been mustered to fight terrorism could be a model, of sorts, for improving public education.

Mathews was online Monday, Nov. 12 at 1 p.m. EST, to field questions and comments about his column, about the Education Review and about schools in general.

Mathews covers education for The Post.

A transcript follows.

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

Jay Mathews: Hi. It is a busy day, so I will try to get an early start. I am delighted to answer questions about Sunday's Education Review, as well as anything else on your mind. Some may wonder about my story in today's paper on elite high schools and college admission, and that too is fair game. ---jay

Corvallis, Ore.: Shouldn't it be a student's right to know how they rank relative to other students long before it is too late for them to correct. In other words why don't we have national tests in each class subject, rewards for doing well and a report top the student on their national ranking. I don't think they should have to wait until they apply for a job to discover these facts.

Jay Mathews: You raise a fascinating approach to this problem that I don't recall ever hearing anyone mention before. As you know, the most competitive high schools now refuse to rank students because they are afraid that will hurt those who don't make the top ten even more. Many fine educators support the sort of national tests you propose, and for several good reasons. But given the strength of American commitment to education as a local, rather than a federal, responsibility, I don't think your idea will go very far. If we had such a national test, we would have to have a true, detailed national curriculum, and I don't see much support for that, even though the idea has merit.

Jonesboro, Ark.: My daughter was home sick on Sept. 11 and watched the terror over and over and had it on every room in the house. She was on the phone with me while I was at work and she got dressed and came up to the office. She suffers from clinical depression and now she has had to be institutionalized. Do you think this had an impact on her mental well being and what can be done to help her?

Jay Mathews: I am very sorry to hear about your daughter. But you have taken me far outside of my area of competence. I suspect the professionals who are helping her now would have a much better idea of the harm that may have come to her from watching those awful images and what to do about it. I hope she gets better.

Chicago, Ill.: I think you do a great job in your columns. A few comments and questions off recent pieces:

1. Will the resolve about terrorism translate to public education? I'm sorry to say that I doubt it. Any parent, such as myself, can't discuss schools in a dispassionate way, because we're too concerned about our children. Not that that is a bad thing, but it makes it difficult to discuss things objectively. Also, there's the whole who's-going-to-pay-for-it argument, which takes on a greater resonance if you have a lot of people in your district who send their kids to private schools or are retired.

2. Regarding your columns on AP classes. There's no doubt many schools, especially those that consider themselves elite, artifically limit the number of kids in them. When my parents wanted to accelerate me in math my sophomore year (not the greatest decision, given my grades!), they practically had to have a steel cage match with the superintendent. On the other side, there was a combined AP history-English class my junior year, which I would have done well in, but the class was limited to the top 30 students (out of 700), no matter what other qualifications you had. I was told by the English department chair that that was done "to keep it exclusive." All they needed was a bouncer and a velvet rope.

3. I also liked your recent piece about how elite high schools can have students shut out of elite colleges, and how that doesn't have to be a bad thing. It seems to me, 10 years into the workforce, that at a certain point college matters less. I went to a commuter state school, but employers seem to care less about that than about my experience. Having an elite degree and getting a grand job right out of the box isn't required to prevent you from a career selling Slurpees.

Jay Mathews: Three solid hits for you. The Yankees will be calling. On no. 1, I sadly agree, but think if we keep pushing we may get some people to see such activities are counterproductive. For no. 2, too too true, and for no. 3, i would be very grateful for an email to mathewsj@washpost.com with your story and thoughts on how college influenced or did not influence your life. I am doing a project that motivates me to collect such good insights.

Woodley Park, Washington, D.C.: I absolutely agree with your article and my sibling suffered at college admissions because of graduating from magnet school in New York City, but you have misleading numbers in the article. You say: "In Jefferson's Class of 2000, for instance, 12 were accepted at Harvard, 12 at Yale and 18 at Princeton. But that was far fewer than the 91 who applied for admission to Harvard, the 62 to Yale or the 104 to Princeton."

What is missing from the picture is that a good number of this students, perhaps 20-40, applied to ALL THREE colleges, and another good number applied to exactly two of the colleges, so we are not talking 267 DISTINCT students and admission rate of barely 16 percent, but much lower number of DISTINCT students and, therefore, higher admission rate to elite colleges, perhaps as much as 30-35 percent!

Jay Mathews: I thought of that, and I accept your analysis, but take it one more step for me. (This is the level of math that makes my head swim, so maybe you can crunch the numbers.) It is highly likely that many of the TJ kids admitted to Yale, Harvard and Princeton were the SAME kids also. Joe Superstar collecting trophy admission letters from all three schools. I think the chances of duplication there are as great as duplication in the application process, so doesnt that leave us with the same tough situation?

Mt. Lebanon, Pa.: To the Lessons of September, maybe we should add the Lessons of November. Perhaps we should educate our young to forget political solutions to critical problems, Congress and the Administration are far more interested in rewarding the likes of IBM and Exxon than they are in providing the rest of us a safe, secure, reliable, and convenient air transportation system. Isn't it time to throw the old, outdated, puerile, and nonrealistic civics texts, as well as those that still preach their contents, from our public schools? Thanks much.

Jay Mathews: I agree with you that many of the textbook are pretty bad, although there are some exceptions that sadly don't get bought as much because they are out of the mainstream. But I have been in many , many high school civics and history classes in the last ten years and a very high percentage of our teachers are telling kids in absorbing detail about how corporate interests---as well as lots of other interests, like environmentalists---game the system. Particularly in the Washington area, for obvious reasons, the quality of government classes is very high. And if you look at the public opinion polls, if anything the average American assumes that the fix is in even more often that it actually is.

Arlington, Va.: In your story today you allude to reports that schools are stacking their AP programs to maximize college admissions for certain students. Are any local schools implicated?

Jay Mathews: The author of that study does not name names. But I do. If you will go to our Education page, click on K-12, and then click on the Challenge Index, and look at the most recent list of area high schools, you can identify some likely culprits. A high school that is in the middle or lower reaches of that list, and yet has a very low percentage of free and reduced lunch kids, say, less than 10 percent, is likely to be restricting access to its AP courses and/or tests. There are some exceptions to this rule. Some of those seemingly low-poverty schools have other problems. But it is a pretty good measure. IF you are concerned about an actual school, ask them what percentage of their AP tests are scored at 3 or above. If it is more than 85 percent, then they are more than likely restricting access in ways that hurts motivated college-bound kids.
I can say, however, that such restrictions are not a major problem in Fairfax and Arlington Counties, and several other districts here are doing a much better job than they have in the past.

Chevy Chase, Md.: Will your story in today's Post drop the bottom out of attendance at elite private schools? Or will parents continue to insist that private schools can trampoline a kid into a college he would otherwise not have a chance of getting into.

Jay Mathews: I suspect your very fine and amusing questions was delivered with some portion of your tongue in your cheek. NOBODY, certainly not me, is going to have any impact on the lure of those schools as long as they send a few kids to Yale every year. But that's okay. They help kids become better people, and that is the point. So do lots of schools we have never heard of.

Washington, D.C.: Your article today about magnet schools reminded me of something that happened to me in high school. I was in an honors math class, and the teacher wasn't that great. One of my classmates saw that she probably wouldn't get an A in the class, so she switched to the "regular" version of the class. She got an A, and kept her 4.0. I got a B, my only one in high school. Since my high school didn't weight grades, she was automatically eligible for several scholarships that my measly 3.94 didn't let me apply for.

Unfortunately, your article suggests that her behavior is the way to go, which is too bad. I agree with the student in the article who said that it's always better to be in the most intellectually stimulating environment possible, even it if means you're not number one.

Jay Mathews: Thank you for the fascinating story. How long ago did that happen? These days, the tale would turn in a different way. For instance, you would probably be in an AP course, not an honors course, and get an extra half or full grade point in a weighted system, so your B would be near equal to her A. And secondly, selective colleges look at course selection carefully. If they have Freda with all As but no AP courses, and Fred with all As but a B in one AP and a C in another AP, they will take Fred over Freda every time. They want kids who take academic risks. They dont want wimps.

Silver Spring, Md.: Regarding today's story -- would you pull your son out of a school like Montgomery Blair and send him to a neigborhood school instead?

Jay Mathews: Never in a million years, for just the reasons that John Hoven cited. All three of my children have attended schools that i think are among Attewell's 217 schools. Two were private, one was public. They did get lower grades in some courses than they would have at less challenging schools, but they were much readier for college and for life. If you saw my column on this last week---check out the prompt next to my hideous photo on our Education page---you will see how strongly i feel about this.

Arlington, Va.: Jay,
With Sept. 11 and this morning's plane crash, what is the mindset of kids these days? Kids take in their environment but aren't necessarily resilient to emotional trauma. How have schools helped the children cope?

Jay Mathews: They are doing their best, but this is way beyond anything teachers of this generation have encountered before. It is not quite up to a full war---friends and relative of nearly everyone being killed---but it is more than we are used to. The teachers are pretty good at being comforting, but parents really have to do the work here, but listening quietly, encouraging kids to talk, or not talk, as they feel like, and now being too overtly stressed out ourselves.

North Tonawanda, N.Y.: A recent book by a former Duke University admissions counselor makes prominent mention that Duke and other elite colleges maintain a profile of every high school in the country. The author goes on to note that elite colleges visit those schools that typically provide the highest number of applicants and students. These items strike me as most troubling -- surely if Duke can acquire and maintain such information about US schools, educators would have such information at their own fingertips, and yet this doesn't seem to be the case. Also, it seems that elite colleges serve only to feed the current stereotypes if they shill for applicants where they're already in demand. What are your findings on the author's comments?

Jay Mathews: Elite colleges do not, i repeat, do not have profiles on every high school in the country. (Other than the College Board's Guide to U.S. High Schools, which anyone can buy for $125 and which give only about four or five lines on each high school, mostly attendance and course offerings.)
There are 25,000 high schools, and when I researched this a few years ago, it was clear only about 2,000 to 3,000 high schools ever get any kids into the elite colleges that try to be the most up to date on high school conditions. They do visit more often the schools that are most likely to send them applicants. That makes sense. They are trying to serve the kids who are interested in them. But some do try to reach out to schools that never send anyone to such colleges, and are delighted when they get a solid application from a school they have never heard of . In the admissions race, the kid from an unknown high school has a significant advantage, all other things being equal. Sadly, they rarely are.

McLean, Va.: Regarding the first question, a Nobel prize awaits whoever devises a test that can accurately rank students. Further, I suspect that such a test would be so costly and time-consuming to grade as to render it impractical. It's this sort of thinking that distracts parents and educators from helping students acquire critical thinking and reasoning skills and mastery of basic facts, namely more money for schools, implementation of well-understood teaching methods, smaller class sizes, less television and more involved parents.

Oh, that'll never happen, we'd all have to roll up our sleeves and get to work!

Jay Mathews: I like your attitude and your thought. You are absolutely right. Better that all the Nobel wannabes go looking for that cure for cancer.

TJHS / PSHS Former Student: I am the person who sent you the e-mails last week on leaving TJHS to go to PSHS. Even if the most challenging course load might make you the most acadimically prepared student for college, it will not necessarily make you socially, emotionally, or mentally ready for college. High school children need adults to bring balance in their lives, and not force these children to commit too early to a life plan, often on that has been chosen by their parents and not themselves.

Jay Mathews: I am very grateful for this question, and your help in deepening my understanding of these issues. I could not agree more with what you have said.

The B in the honors math class: It was ten years ago in a Howard County high school. Many other schools were weighting grades then, but ours did not. I took several AP classes, but that one math class was my sophomore year and not Calculus (took that later).

Jay Mathews: Thanks! You are very kind to clear that up for me. Have you checked to see if they are weighting now? The Attewell paper, by the way, for you who are interested goes into the consequences of grade weighting in great detail. I couldnt see a news angle to that part of the paper so I did not mention it, but grade weighting fans and opponents would learn much from it.

Northeast: How does the role of the textbook differ from the the role of the teacher in educating students?

Jay Mathews: The textbook is, in a well taught classroom, background material, something that gives the student the basic facts and concepts. Some very mature and motivated students can take a textbook and learn a subject, but most of us need a teachers to get us past the more obscure facts and concepts and tell us the key thing----what in that mass of works and pictures is important, and how does it relate to my life and my world? That takes stimulating questions and discussion, encouraging students to critique the textbook and the teacher, and making the learning process come alive. Give me a choice between a great textbook and a bad teacher or a bad textbook and a great teacher, i will pick the latter.

Jay Mathews: Thanks for the excellent questions. And please remember I need all the help i can get. My email address is mathewsj@washpost.com. If you think the paper or I have messed up, or you have an idea, or a question, please contact me.

washingtonpost.com:

That wraps up today's show. Thanks to everyone who joined the discussion.

Stay tuned to Live Online:

American Airlines plane crash in Queens, N.Y. at 2 p.m. EST
Travel Talk at 2 p.m. EST
Lord of the Rings: Michael Dirda at 2 p.m. EST
Tell Me About It: Carolyn Hax at 3 p.m. EST
America at War: Human Rights at 4 p.m. EST
Live Online Special Coverage: America At War

Did you know that you can follow more than one Live Online discussion at the same time? Just open another browser window and toggle back and forth between discussions! And, if you miss one, catch up with the Live Online transcripts.

Keep up with the latest in news, sports, politics and entertainment with washingtonpost.com e-mail newsletters.

NEW! Personalize your Post with mywashingtonpost.com. Get customized news, traffic, weather and more.

washingtonpost.com:

That wraps up today's show. Thanks to everyone who joined the discussion.

Stay tuned to Live Online:

American Airlines plane crash in Queens, N.Y. at 2 p.m. EST
Travel Talk at 2 p.m. EST
Lord of the Rings: Michael Dirda at 2 p.m. EST
Tell Me About It: Carolyn Hax at 3 p.m. EST
America at War: Human Rights at 4 p.m. EST
Live Online Special Coverage: America At War

Did you know that you can follow more than one Live Online discussion at the same time? Just open another browser window and toggle back and forth between discussions! And, if you miss one, catch up with the Live Online transcripts.

Keep up with the latest in news, sports, politics and entertainment with washingtonpost.com e-mail newsletters.

NEW! Personalize your Post with mywashingtonpost.com. Get customized news, traffic, weather and more.

   |      |