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

[chelseagirl]

Yup. I see this at the university where I teach, quite a lot.

[wpadmirer]

I think all the time that I'm SO glad I went to high school and college before it became so fucking competitive. It's not at all healthy right now.

[havocthecat]

Yeah, our school district started up a program that allows kids to get their Associates at the same time as their HS diploma, and I talked to the kidlet about it. We both agreed it was too high stress and that he should just chill and have a regular high school experience - well, as regular as he's going to get, he's already in a gifted academy. I don't think he needs to switch to a college credit program instead. I'm already trying to make sure he stays low-stress and takes at least an elective he likes or something along with the required college courses.

I mean, it took them long enough to figure it out; I was feeling this IN THE 90s and my ex-girlfriend had a breakdown and ended up in the mental hospital in that same decade over this.

[nicki]

About half of my self-harmers are high achievers. A lot of their pressure to succeed is internal, though.

[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.

[low_delta]

Coincidentally, someone else just posted about how high amounts of stress reduce the ability to learn. And yeah, the pressure some of these kids are under is just another kind of stress.

[conuly]

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