Students in high-achieving schools are now named an ‘at-risk’ group, study says

[conuly]

A consensus study report on advancing health equity among American children published this summer by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine added youths in “high achieving schools” to their list of “at-risk” groups, along with kids living in poverty and foster care, recent immigrants and those with incarcerated parents.

Last year, a report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation came to a similar conclusion when it named the top environmental conditions harming adolescent wellness — among them were poverty, trauma, discrimination and “excessive pressure to excel,” often, but not exclusively, occurring in affluent communities. It may sound counterintuitive, even perverse, to put relatively affluent kids in the same category as our country’s most vulnerable youths. While the stressors are markedly different, researchers are finding that both are “at risk” for elevated levels of chronic stress that can affect health and well-being.

The people who need to hear this have no intention of listening, of course.

Comments

[siderea]

Yeah, I'm really dubious about this research. I haven't looked into it yet, but but, well, if the research compared the kids eligible for a high-achieving school but who didn't go to one to those who did, that fact didn't make it into that rather messed-up WaPo article.

And comparing gifted kids in a program to non-gifted kids not in the program is the standard trick to come up with results that can be construed as arguing that gifted kids need no accommodations in schooling - anything that's wrong with them must be from the specialized program they're in, so they shouldn't be any such programs.

[conuly]

I did try to find another article, but no luck just yet.