Maybe it's not the schools

Charles Murray, the co-author of The Bell Curve, has written a series of three articles for the Wall Street Journal on the part intelligence plays in the classroom. In my opinion, it is the brilliant exposition of a serious flaw in our educational system.

Here’s what I understand his studies to show:

There is a wide range of levels of intelligence in the American classroom.

Half of all children are below average in intelligence. We are not from Lake Wobegon (where all the children are above average).

“Our ability to improve the academic accomplishment of students in the lower half of the distribution of intelligence is severely limited “

A good teacher may be able to bring up the grades of a motivated intelligent (IQ above 100) student, but even an exceptional teacher is not able to impact the ability of the student with an IQ much under 100.

“Some say that the public schools are so awful that there is huge room for improvement in academic performance just by improving education. There are two problems with that position. The first is that the numbers used to indict the public schools are missing a crucial component. For example, in the 2005 round of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 36% of all fourth-graders were below the NAEP's "basic achievement" score in reading. It sounds like a terrible record. But we know from the mathematics of the normal distribution that 36% of fourth-graders also have IQs lower than 95.”

Food for thought!