Top Students, Teachers Agree Schools Lack Challenge

Why do U.S. high school students drag the bottom in global comparisons? Many students work, yes. But large numbers of the brightest students say that they find school unchallenging. And their teachers agree that schools lack rigor and students are unmotivated.

That is the consensus among top students polled over the last decade by Who’s Who Among American High School Students, which annually surveys 700,000 college-bound teenagers with high grades. Given these discouraging reports from high-achieving students, “we certainly can’t blame our poor international showing on a few students at the bottom,” said Paul Krouse, the poll’s publisher.

* Each year since 1993, fewer than three in 10 (28%) top high school students said their schools were very academically rigorous. In 1997, a Who’s Who teacher survey reported that only 27% of teachers thought schools sufficiently challenged students.

* More than half (54%) of the teenagers polled since 1994 said they spend only an hour a day or less on homework. More than half of teachers (57%) said that over the course of their careers they have seen students become less studious.

* Even top students are dodging homework and using shortcuts. Throughout the 1990s, the poll found, almost 80% of the top teenagers admitted cheating in school. And two-thirds of both students and parents agreed with the statement that “cheating is not a big deal.”

* Almost half of teachers (44%) in 1997 said that unmotivated, uninterested students are the biggest threat to schools.