High Expectations Are Good — Even for Kids Who Fail to Meet Them
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder argues that maintaining high expectations benefits all students, even those who don't yet meet them, because the alternative is far worse.
Key Takeaways
- Lowering expectations helps no one - Students who aren't meeting standards need more support, not lower bars
- Failure is part of learning - Students who fall short of high expectations still learn more than students held to low ones
- Expectations communicate belief - High standards tell students you believe they're capable of more
Transcript
The thing about high expectations is some kids will not meet them, right?
That's kind of baked into the idea of high expectations is the fact that they're high, right?
Not everybody is going to meet high expectations.
And as educators, it has long been axiomatic that we need to have high expectations for all students, but that's difficult for us because we know, we're not allowed to say this out loud, but we know in the back of our minds that not all students will meet those expectations.
And lately, it has become popular to see that as a bad idea, to see high expectations as a bad idea because Inevitably, some students are going to fail to meet them and oh, then they're going to feel like failures and then they're going to be worse off.
They're going to get discouraged and everything's terrible, right?
I think what we miss when we think that way is the fact that even if students fail to meet our highest expectations, they are better off for having tried.
Like if you have a student who is assigned a research paper and they don't do it at all and your district requires that their grade be a 50, on that research paper, even though they didn't attempt it, well, that student gets nothing of real educational value from those 50 points.
But if you have a student who attempts the paper and really struggles with it and puts in the work and doesn't get a great grade, maybe they get like a D, on their research paper.
So not much better numerically than the 50 that the other student got, but that student has gotten something extremely valuable.
That student has had high expectations put on them.
They've been told you can do amazing things.
You can do this incredible research paper and their research paper may not be the best in the class.
It may not even really be good enough, but they have done something that otherwise they would not have done.
They're equipped for adulthood.
They are equipped for further education in a way that they would not have been If we had said, well, this kid's kind of below grade level, maybe they missed some school due to the pandemic, maybe their family's poor, maybe we don't need to have high expectations for this kid.
Maybe actually we're oppressors for having high expectations of this kid and for being willing to give this kid a zero if they don't do the assignment at all, if they don't do the research paper and turn anything in.
If we refuse to think that way and insist on having high expectations, that kid is going to be better off even if they never write an excellent research paper, right?
That is the whole kind of thinking of high expectations.
The reason high expectations matter is because the student is better off for having been expected to meet high expectations than not, right?
If we say, well, I don't really believe in you.
I don't really think you can do great things.
I'm just gonna give you worksheets and you're gonna get a 50 even if you don't turn them in.
That student is not better off because of that policy.
So I think we've got to really think What do high expectations do for the students who fail to meet them?
It's not nothing and it's not negative, but if you listen to a lot of people today, you get a very different impression.
Let me know what you think.