The Matthew Effect

I ended my last post from Why Students Don’t LIke School expressing my frustration that one of our students, who is doing quite poorly in math, could get to our upper school and not know how to do fractions. How could this happen? Why wasn’t something done to address this deficiency well before high school?

While this example concerns math, I believe it points to a bigger problem we have with our weaker students. I am not convinced we are doing enough to help them succeed.

The wide range of capabilities we see in our classrooms could be an example of the Matthew Effect. This term comes from St. Matthew 25: 29 where Jesus says, "For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath"

What this means for us is that the students with strong foundations build upon them rapidly and those without the strong foundations have less to build upon and begin to lag further and further behind their classmates. Thus a wide range of capabilities develops within a group of students while they go through school, and this gap grows and grows and grows to the point we have students in classes who just cannot do the work.

As Daniel Willingham notes in the first chapter of Why Students Don’t Like School, students who lack sufficient background knowledge cannot solve problems, experience frustration, and then stop trying.

I have had more than one conversation with parents who tell me this school is great for bright kids, but for those for whom learning doesn’t come easily, the school really doesn’t do too much to help them.

How can we lessen the Matthew Effect? The answer is not to dumb down curriculum. Rather we should track the knowledge and skills students should learn in each class and determine whether or not the students are deficient in any of them.

“Well”, you ask, “Isn’t that what we do with tests?” Yes it is, but - and I think this is a critical question - what do we then do with the students who do not demonstrate proficiency in the material over which they were tested?

I’m afraid all too often the students get their grades and everyone moves on. As a result students move on to new material without adequate knowledge of the previous material, and they fall behind their peers.

What if we make the students who do not perform well on a test retake it every afternoon after school until they can score at least a high C? They would still keep the original grade. What if we made the retake of the test supercede after school activities? Perhaps those who refuse to study will learn eventually that it's easier to study and get it right the first time.