A Few Children Left Behind: Discrepancies in K-12 English Education
I got an 88 on this because, admittedly, it was rushed and could've used more external research. read or don't :)
ABSTRACT
In Eodice, Geller, and Lerner’s The Meaningful Writing Project, 20 respondents of their survey asking students to recall a meaningful writing project from their undergraduate career went out of their way to say they simply did not have one. Apathy, and even disdain for writing and language arts has become a real, unignorable dilemma in higher education for students and faculty alike. Since the introduction of Large Language Models (LLMs) to the broader general public, many students have taken its ability to churn out passable, long form writing as a shortcut to not have to come up with any ideas on their own. Many students have grown to lose interest in reading and writing throughout their schooling, and this research dissects what aspects of K-12 English pedagogy cause that to happen. How is it possible for a student to finish undergrad and find themselves having not written anything meaningful in that four year time span? How can education policymakers and individual educators adapt to rapidly changing culture and technology? I have found that an overhaul may be in order, and for better or for worse, the window for that to occur is happening right now.
Last month, Donald Trump slashed the federal Department of Education, leaving states in an unprecedented free-for-all. If states find themselves circumstantially less beholden to federal funding, perhaps this a window for curricular and administrative overhaul in states that will use this change to attempt to brighten the futures of their youngest residents. I argue that the way in which English curriculum is differentiated and the extent to which students learning common-core (non AP/advanced) material are put at a disadvantage is greatly significant. Additionally, the way in which public school students are taught in the express interest of doing well on state standardized tests is preventing them from developing literacy skills that will aid them beyond the classroom and in collegiate settings.
I interviewed 18 upperclassmen undergraduate students from several different states across the US (as far west as Washington and as far east as Massachusetts) about their K-12 English education, and to what extent/how they feel their experiences contributed to their attitudes towards writing in college. I also asked what their own Meaningful Writing project was, and whether or not their K-12 English education contributed to that experience. For each interviewee, I also noted where geographically they went to school, whether their school was public or private, and whether or not they took AP English classes in high school.
DEMOGRAPHICS
My interviewees consisted of ten men, six women, and two non binaries. All are attendees of Drexel University except three, who are students of The University of Iowa, The University of Pennsylvania, and Salisbury University, respectively. 13 of the interviewees attended K-12 on the east coast, three in the midwest, four in the south, and one on the west coast (these add to 21 due to interviewees who moved to a different region of the US at some point during their schooling). 11 of the interviewees went to only public school, two went to only private school, and five went to both at some point. Eight of the interviewees took AP English courses in high school (English Literature and English Language, colloquially referred to as “AP Lit” and “AP Lang”) and ten did not, however one interviewee attended a high school where AP courses were not offered. It is worth noting that the interviewees started kindergarten as early as the 2007-2008 school year, and as late as the 2009-2010 school year, indicating that every subject had completed elementary school and begun middle school in the time between the passage of Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act and the passage of Obama’s replacement, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).
FOSTERING COMMUNICATION SKILLS AND WRITTEN VOICE
The notion that students have been able to get away with submitting mostly (if not entirely) AI generated writing for assignments is indicative of a larger pedagogical problem: students aren’t finding their voice. It’s often that writing conventions are stressed too much and/or for too long, which, especially with present day technology, becomes increasingly less necessary. Multiple interviewees, while appreciating the foundation that the five paragraph essay format laid, felt that they were never encouraged to move the needle past it until college.
“I think in college, they let you use your voice more. They expect you to use your voice more…. not having that foundation of being able to really build your voice from the ground up and be a confident writer all the time has hindered me a little bit. I wish I was more confident.”
Interviewee #1, Jerry, is an avid reader, and cited that English was always his strong suit in school. He went to well-funded public schools in northern New Jersey, and was an AP student. He’s been a daily reader of Pitchfork Magazine since he was 15, and has carried his love of comic books into adulthood. He expanded on the above confession, talking about how he has dozens of concepts for long-form written pieces (mostly about music) in his notes app, but has never worked up the confidence to fully flesh them out. Perhaps if his school had put more focus into building authorial voice and/or allowing students to explore writing about topics they’re passionate about, those concepts would’ve grown into something beyond a loose note in his phone. The Meaningful Writing Project devotes chapters to agency and engagement, and how often students felt their Meaningful Writing Project was meaningful due to feeling as though they had a choice in what they were writing about, and/or investigation of a topic they found personally relevant. 8/18 (44%) of my interviewees cited that their Meaningful Writing Projects were meaningful due to personal relevance or interest, with topics ranging from the intersection of eating disorders and transness to the ways that the game mechanics of Dark Souls make it notably difficult.
If the interviewees didn’t cite a lack of confidence in their own authorial voice, they expressed concern for the lack of drive or knowledge in their peers. Jerry goes on to say:
“I think a lot of the kids our age who are just using ChatGPT for essays when they're not too busy to write an essay, [do so] partially because they never really found their voice as a writer, so they just don't feel like they can do it. I think that confidence is way too important to not be covered.”
Another interviewee, Jake, expressed an adjacent concern for his peers.
“I remember watching students present and they just wouldn’t be able to effectively communicate a point. It would just be 15 minutes of nothing.”
In addition to an increased emphasis on vocabulary and syntax, both my research and the research done by Eodice et al. suggest that the way to mold students into more impassioned and effective writers is to integrate personally engaging topics into curriculum. Once students are able to comfortably write and argue points about topics they are familiar and/or interested in, it is likely that they will then be able to effectively apply those skills into writing on topics that they may deem less interesting. How to get students to find drive and motivation in academic settings, though, is to emphasize building taste and appreciation for literature in their earliest years.
TASTE FORMATION AND FOSTERING APPRECIATION FOR LITERATURE
Eight of my interviewees are STEM students, and half of them expressed either a lifelong or significantly long distaste for reading and writing. While some may think that that’s due to their brains being wired “more logically,” none of them felt that was necessarily the case. Those that expressed that distaste either claimed that they had a turning point that got them back into reading, or feel as though their distaste could have been remedied if they had been able to foster a taste in books during their childhood. For example, Lianna, a UPenn nursing student from Atlanta, was disillusioned from reading throughout most of high school. Even when it came to required readings for school, she had to resort to spark notes to do her assignments in between long, late night work shifts: “I had a lot of stuff that was going on outside of school in 11th and 12th grade and so I was not worried about reading a book because I was like trying not to be homeless,” she said. Lianna started medically transitioning around this time as well, which is actually what got her back into reading. She recounted,
“Especially being gay opened [reading] back up for me. I had a class where there was a lot of reading associated with queerness and I was like ‘Wait, this is fire, I love reading and learning things.’”
The rest of the interviewees that expressed they were driven away from an appreciation of literature still largely felt like that to this day. A non-STEM student that otherwise enjoys writing and does it as a hobby admitted that he didn’t remember the last time he’d read for leisure, and while it may have not come up in every interview, he is likely far from the only one. Another interviewee, Andrew, was only able to begin reading for pleasure after getting into Game of Thrones in high school. He claimed he wished that his school pushed students to find books they legitimately liked, or to even allow them to integrate those chosen books into what they were doing in class.
One positive memory from my personal English education happened in fifth grade. My class of ~25 students was divided into reading groups of four or five students based on “reading level” (one interviewee recalled they’d had a similar experience around the same time). This was never overtly disclosed, but as an observant kid, I picked up on the groupings fairly easily. I remember the small groups being an abundantly effective tool for learning, as the small groups allowed for both an involved discussion of what we were reading, as well as integrated a social aspect in a similar way a book club would. If that format of curriculum could be adjusted where the students get a sampler of five or so grade-level books (perhaps with one or two of them being disclosed as “above grade level”) and choose which one seemed the most interesting to them to decide groupings, it would solve the flaws presented in the version I experienced. Not only would it allow the students to cultivate taste and identify what aspects or genres of books appeal to them, but also allow for the student to decide consciously if they want to be challenged as opposed to the teacher deciding for them. There is no doubt that the intellectual hierarchy students are placed in from a young age have damaging, long-term effects, so mitigating the perpetuation of that hierarchy wherever possible is conducive to students gaining and maintaining positive attitudes towards literacy.
HIERARCHY AND SOCIOECONOMIC DISCREPANCIES IN EDUCATION
In 1909, while he was the president of Princeton University, President Woodrow Wilson said the following in an address to the New York City School Teachers Association:
“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”
While par for the course for the unwavering acceptance of class division in the early 20th century, this ideal remains at the core of how education is conducted to this day. For the most part, capital and resources allow wealthier students to be put at an advantage from kindergarten all the way to college. The students who have the money for one parent to stay home or a full time nanny are put at an advantage by being able to develop early childhood skills sooner than children who were taken care of by older siblings or were put in overcrowded daycares with little individualized attention available. Kids are not born smart, they are born into circumstances that set them up for success. There is a reason the Ivy League is often called the “playground for the rich.” The students that are born surrounded by these advantages are plucked into specialized “gifted and talented” programs as early as the first grade. Those that are on that specialized track often remain on that track throughout K-12. The school system as it has stood for over a century is dedicated to better servicing those that are already advantaged, leaving the rest to either submit to discouragement, or fend entirely for themselves.
One interviewee, Sabrina, found that this divide was relevant to each interview question I asked, recalling noticing the gifted/non-gifted divide from a very early age. She moved around a lot as a kid, going to kindergarten and first grade in Virginia, and spending the rest of her schooling in different parts of northeast Pennsylvania, but the division remained prevalent at every school. She claimed that in high school, there was almost an exact racial divide, with all of the white students being placed in the AP courses. Her experience in the “regular” level classes were largely negative, feeling as though they were stuck with the teachers that refused to do anything beyond the bare minimum, with some refusing to answer students’ questions if they pertained to too “complex” of a topic. She felt largely underprepared when it came time to begin college, but she had one teacher that neglected that status quo and put in noticeable effort for these non-AP students. “If I didn’t have that one chill teacher in high school I wouldn’t be an English major,” she confessed.
Interviewee Lianna discussed that she was often pulled out of class in elementary school to learn at an accelerated, individualized pace, but that caused boredom once she’d hit middle school and there was no longer someone to facilitate that individualized study. She doesn’t blame this on anyone, but acknowledges that making that distinction at all may have been unnecessary in the long run. “Resources are stringent. It’s hard to cater education to each person individually,” she said.
The AP curriculum, though, presents itself as a double edged sword. While the carefully crafted, nationally standardized curriculum has allowed for students to take those conventional skills they learn with them into college (and allows them to earn college credit while still in high school), the caveat lies in what the school needs from the students: high test scores. As much as my AP student interviewees claimed they got a lot out of AP Lang, the looming threat of the end-of-year exam remained a chip on their shoulder.
LEARNING FOR TEST SCORES VS. LEARNING FOR SKILLS
The No Child Left Behind Act is by and large the cause for many of the systemic issues laid out thus far. While the act had many equally vague and ambitious goals for the American public school systems and the outcomes of its students, the main effects of its implementation have now affected the entirety of Gen-Z as they finish school and prepare to enter the workforce. The capital B Big Number goal was for “100% proficiency by 2014.” What constituted proficiency? Bush left that up to each individual state, but the expectation was for proficiency to be measured via statewide standardized testing. Federal funding was dangled over the heads of public school teachers and administrators, and a Catch-22 arises. If states set relatively low expectations for “proficiency,” they’ll get funding (in theory) but their students’ curriculum will either worsen or remain stagnant. If states set higher standards for “proficiency,” they risk their funding. Regardless, administrations are backed into a corner where they’re forced to put full emphasis on these tests, and teachers feel compelled to comply out of fear of losing their job should funding run dry. A kindergarten teacher interviewed for an educational policy journal said the following about the implementation of NCLB:
“Teaching kindergarten used to be fun. We played games with the kids, and had [learning] centers for imaginative play like dress up or sand-play. Just about all we [the teachers] can do anymore is teach and test their checklist of skills . . . you know . . . pretty much just reading and math. Nobody cares whether it’s developmentally appropriate; they just care that the kids pass the test.”
Nathan, an interviewee of mine, consistently described how prevalent standardized testing was throughout his schooling, particularly with AP courses in high school. He recalled the curriculum was used by his teachers as a rigid rulebook as opposed to a guide. The classes pertained much more to test strategy than they did to writing or literature as a subject.
“I was not taught how to write, I was taught how to answer a test question”
Advantaged/higher income students maintain on this advanced/AP track as well because of their access to and time for test preparation. Regardless of their innate intellect and tact for these subjects, they remain reliable test passers.
CONCLUSION
If there’s any beacon of hope, it’s educators. While their jobs are more difficult than ever, and it seems as though they’re quitting in droves due to that fact, people become educators because they’re passionate about it (considering it's never really been all that lucrative of a profession). Every single interviewee, even those that were most discouraged, were able to cite at least one teacher that left a positive, lasting impact on their life. If that passion – and sometimes subsequent rage – can be channelled into continued impact and meaningful reform (if even on just the district level), perhaps there can be an effective counter to the ongoing attack on the sanctity of American public schools under the guise of helping children. Meaningful writing and meaningful education sticks with people their entire life, and it’s imperative those experiences remain intact and abundant.