School Is Not So Easy

Gilbert has one of the best school districts in the state, and many people have moved here for specifically that reason. I've been pleased with the education my kids have gotten, but it sure is a different experience than the small schools the Mister and I grew up attending.

Back in the day, when the Mister and I were in high school, life was much simpler than now. (Yes, cars HAD been invented already, thank you very much) There was no such thing as honors classes, advanced placement classes, weighted GPAs, or dual credit classes; and certainly it was impossible to attain higher than a 4.0 GPA. You knew who the smart kids were because they took the hard classes like calculus and physics, and the colleges knew that as well.

Today's high school environment is much different, as this article in the AZ Republic points out, and it brought back a few memories for me:

Class rank is why students plot out schedules filled with honors and advanced placement courses, trying to outmaneuver fellow students in the honors points game. It's why students in the top 10 percent of any class, even freshmen, pay special attention to how class rank is calculated, occasionally protesting if they feel they've been cheated out of even a tenth of a point. In class rank-cognizant circles, there is a certain strategy in knowing what courses other students are taking and how it all adds up.

"The students who are concerned about class rank and want to go into the medical programs, they are competing against all the kids in the country," said Robyne Palmer, guidance counselor at North Canyon High School in the Paradise Valley district. "These kids have a vision, and they know where they want to be.

"The desire to be at the top of the heap means students start strategizing in middle school. Some will take courses that prepare them for advanced placement, or the rigorous International Baccalaureate college preparatory program offered at five high schools in the Valley.

The memories this article stimulated had to do with our second daughter, blessed with more brains than I could ever hope to have. She went to Highland High School, along with over 700 classmates, and continued on the honors track she had begun in the lower grades. It took a few years for me to begin to understand the culture; the honors kids are really a subset (much like the band kids or the drama kids, I think), and even if they don't hang out with each other outside of school, they end up taking so many classes together that they really get to know each other. The competition is fierce, but they are committed to each other's welfare at the same time. As the article states, they do in fact know what classes the other kids are signed up for, and at any given time, can tell you the class rank of the top ten kids.

Our daughter had common sense to go along with her intelligence, and decided that it was worth it to give up a quest for valedictorian to be involved in the yearbook, which is not an honors class and therefore, like the arts, devalues the GPA and thus the class rank. The Mister and I wondered aloud why the hundreds of hours she contributed outside of school in order to be the editor of the yearbook for two years might not qualify as an honored credit, but we didn't speak to those who make those decisions, as our daughter seemed to be at peace with the inequity.

As it turned out, she graduated from Highland ranked ninth in her class, got a scholarship to the University of Arizona, and will graduate this year, with honors (allow me a bit of motherly pride and bragging).

In the meantime, the Mister and I are glad that we went to school back in the day!