Our friend Greg Forster wrote a post last week about Checker's and my National Review Online essay in which we report on the findings of Fordham's high-achieving students study and argue that "excellence" (defined as the progress of our top students) is being sacrificed for "equality" (defined as the progress of our lowest-performing students or, in today's parlance, "narrowing the achievement gap"). Greg thinks our evidence doesn't back up our argument:
If the kids at the bottom are doing better while the kids at the top stay the same, is the whole population getting more excellent or less excellent?
Is the whole population getting "more excellent"? No, the whole population is making incremental progress. That's surely good. But excellence is something else entirely. According to Webster's, it's the quality of being "superior, eminently good, first-class."
Greg's definition equates "excellence" with a narrowing of the achievement gap. That's breathtakingly radical. Who knew that Greg had become such a lefty!
Update: My lefty friend Greg now calls me elitist.
