In a City Journal review of the new Malcolm Gladwell book, Outliers: The Story of Success, Laura Vanderkam praises his prose and calls it an "engaging" read. But she also quite bluntly calls out the author on his insistence that "it's the best students who get the best teaching and the most attention." She strongly disagrees - calling this "patently untrue." And what does she use to back up her argument?
"A recent study from the Fordham Institute found that in the era of No Child Left Behind, teachers say they focus far more on their slower students than their quicker ones. Few American elementary schools group students extensively by ability, leaving the brightest students coasting through without ever doing the hard work that would allow them truly to excel later on. Many get bored and underachieve."
That's right! Fordham's "High-Achieving Students in the Era of NCLB" indeed found that low-achieving students receive much more attention from teachers than do advanced students. Read more about it here.
Overall, Gladwell's Outliers is an exploration of the complex forces that makes some people wildly successful -- including "hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies." Extremely hard work is also a key factor in the mix, he says. As Vanderkam notes:
"Gladwell devotes a particularly thought-provoking chapter to the KIPP schools-charter schools for low-income kids that specialize in extending the school day and ending summer vacation-as an example of how we might introduce a "Chinese" work ethic into American inner cities."
Along these lines, Gladwell and Vanderkam might want to check out yet another top-notch Fordham publication: "Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism." The book profiles 6 wildly successful inner-city schools, including a KIPP school, to find out what makes them work so well.