Most students dread group projects. There always seems to be an uneven distribution–one student’s only commitment to the project is being half-hearted in their work, one student appears to do nothing at all, and another finds themselves completing and redoing the entirety of the project on the very stressful night before the deadline.

Class divisions seem to be an answer to the differing performance levels of students. Ideally, the highest performers get to participate in fast-paced classes that remain interesting to them while less rigorous courses are available to students who, for a variety of reasons, may want or need more time with the material. Students can learn without feeling overwhelmed or underwhelmed.

However, this good-natured concept of division of class pacing has unintended consequences–the division of students themselves. Eighth grade performance quickly divides students into different levels based on the numbers of their subject grades alone, separating the high-performing students from those with lower grades. In some cases, students who struggle with a subject are no longer able to collaborate with those who have a good grasp of the concepts or who simply happen to be naturally inclined towards it.

Separating all of these different students from each other makes it more difficult for struggling students to find academic support from their classmates, something I have found to be essential to my own success.

“It is less difficult to find help for schoolwork if there are people I can easily reach out to in the same class, improving performance,” said Kelly Tai, a junior. “Having their support improves my general motivation.”

Student motivation is integral to the classroom environment, where levels of concentration in class dictate how long teaching can go uninterrupted. And in a system where students are divided across five levels of academic rigor, it is unfortunately inevitable that the culture of motivation differs between them.

“[In] my honors history class, the people there are more respectful and quiet and, in all, take the work more seriously, so there are fewer disruptions,” said Mandy Adduci, a NASH junior. “Compare [that] to [one of my non-honors] classes where the teacher can’t even make it through a sentence without being interrupted, because the people there just don’t care. Being in both [course levels], you can definitely see a difference.” 

High-level classes are frequently filled with strongly motivated students, and in my own experience, the motivation of my peers has been essential to keeping my own passion for a subject alive. When a standard is set by the classroom environment, students who are already high achieving are motivated to work even harder, but those who have a harder time with schoolwork find themselves getting discouraged by a lack of effort from some other students in lower-level classes who have ceased trying to succeed in classes they dislike.

“It’s not good for students in lower classes to not have conversations with higher achieving students because they aren’t ever motivated to do better than they are doing right now,” said Jack Simons, a junior. “It creates a new standard. If you’re in all APs, the highest standard is always the one set. If you’re only in general classes, everyone’s standard is whatever they feel like it should be.”

Adduci agrees.

“I feel like people play a major role in any type of motivation,” she said. “I believe the people that surround [you] kind of mirror your work ethic.”

To be clear, I am not arguing that all students in non-AP and Honors classes are unmotivated.  As a student in two Academic-level courses this year, I can attest that ambitious students are found across all class levels.

Nonetheless, I find myself performing better in classes that are objectively more difficult in terms of course material than the lower-level subjects with less content overall, largely because of the motivation of having dedicated classmates. While the system of separate class levels was created with the best possible intentions, it may be time to revisit the consequences of dividing the student body.

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Editors’ note: All opinions expressed on The Uproar are a reflection solely of the beliefs of the bylined author and not the journalism program at NASH.  We continue to welcome school-appropriate comments and guest articles.

Additional note: This article was revised following its initial publication in order to provide further clarity on the author’s stance.