Georgia students say math is too easy. So, why don’t we do better?
There are two views of education in America. One is that we are raising standards — especially in math — beyond the reach of many students and losing them as a result. The second perspective is that most classes are a cakewalk, leaving kids bored and unchallenged.
A new analysis by the Center for American Progress supports the latter. The analysis was based on student questionnaires given to students taking a respected federal benchmark test called NAEP or the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
The analysis provides state data, and Georgia exceeds the national average in students reporting math is too easy. In Georgia, 40 percent of fourth graders say math was easy, compared to 37 percent nationally. Yet, we have more students saying that they feel they are always learning in math class.
And while nationally 73 percent of 8th graders say they are not taught about engineering and technology, the rate is only 70 percent in Georgia.
Of course, the question becomes why Georgia does not fare better on NAEP math, where, despite a rise in the 2011 results in fourth grade, we still trail the national average. Georgia’s average score in 2011 (238) was two points lower than that of the nation’s average score (240). In eighth grade, the average math score was 278, demonstrating no change from 2009. Georgia’s average score was five points lower than that of the nation’s average score (283)
Unfortunately, we exceed the national average by 1 percentage point in 8th graders reporting that they read fewer than five pages per day. The national average is 30 percent, and the Georgia average is 31. On the other hand, that means that nearly seven out of 10 Georgia 8th graders report reading five or more pages a day.
According to the report authors Ulrich Boser and Lindsay Rosenthal:
You might think that the nation’s teenagers are drowning in schoolwork. Images of sullen students buried in textbooks often grace the covers of popular parenting magazines, while well-heeled suburban teenagers often complain they have to work the hours of a corporate lawyer in order to finish their school projects and homework assignments.
But when we recently examined a federal survey of students in elementary and high schools around the country, we found the opposite: Many students are not being challenged in school.
Consider, for instance, that 37 percent of fourth-graders say that their math work is too easy. More than a third of high-school seniors report that they hardly ever write about what they read in class. In a competitive global economy where the mastery of science is increasingly crucial, 72 percent of eighth-grade science students say they aren’t being taught engineering and technology, according to our analysis of a federal database.
Here is the official summary of the analysis:
Students don’t have access to key science and technology learning opportunities. For today’s students, being prepared for college and the modern workforce means having access to high-quality curriculum materials in critical subject areas like math and science. But our analysis found that most teenagers say their schools don’t provide important learning opportunities in science and technology. For instance, 72 percent of eighth-grade science students say they are not taught about engineering and technology.
Too many students don’t understand their teacher’s questions and report that they are not learning during class. Nationwide, less than two-thirds of middle school math students report that they feel like they are always or almost always learning in math class. Similarly, just under 50 percent of 12th-grade math students said they feel like they are always or almost always learning in their math class.
Students also often report difficulty understanding their teacher’s questions. Twenty-five percent of middle school math students report that they sometimes or hardly ever understand what their teacher asks.
Thirty-six percent of 12th-graders report they sometimes or hardly ever clearly understand what their math teacher asks. All students, regardless of their family background, should have access to a high-quality education. But our analysis of student feedback found that students from disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely to have the same access to robust learning opportunities.
Consider, for instance, that 74 percent of higher- income fourth-grade students report that they often or always understand what their science teacher is saying, compared with just 56 percent of lower-income fourth-grade students. Among middle school students, 80 percent of higher-income middle-school students report often or always understanding what teachers ask in math class. In contrast, just 70 percent of low-income students report often or always understanding their math teacher. Meanwhile, 66 percent of higher-income 12th-graders reported they often or always understand what their math teacher is saying, compared with 60 percent of low-income students.
There are also racial gaps in some areas. For instance, in the fourth-grade 73 percent of white students and 72 percent of Asian and Pacific Islander students said that they clearly understand what their science teacher talks about. In contrast, only 56 percent of black; 54 percent of Hispanic; and 58 percent of Native American and Alaska Native students say they do. In middle school, 83 percent of Asian and Pacific Islander students and 79 percent of white eighth-grade students report that they clearly understand what their math teacher is saying. But only 67 percent of black students; 70 percent of Hispanic students; 69 percent of Native American and Alaska Native students report understanding their teacher.
To be clear, there were not opportunity gaps in every area that we looked at. We examined disaggregated data for all of the relevant background questions and we reported the results only for questions in which there were significant gaps.
Our analysis leads us to the following recommendations:
- Policymakers must continue to push for higher, more challenging standards. To ensure that all students are ready for the global economy, we need to expect more of our students and schools they attend. The Common Core standards are one way to help states and districts make progress on this issue, but far more needs to be done.
- Students need more rigorous learning opportunities, and our nation needs to figure out ways to provide all students with the education that they deserve. Too many students report not being engaged in class. They don’t understand what their teachers are teaching them and they feel like they are not learning. Our nation can—and should—do more.
- Researchers and educators should continue to develop student surveys. We hope this report launches additional research into the use of student surveys. Researchers such as Ronald Ferguson, senior lecturer in education and public policy and director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard University, have made significant advances which we describe below. But we need to know much more about these tools, and what they reveal about the student experience.
Over the past few years, many states have engaged in promising reforms that address the issues we raise in this report. But our findings suggest we need to do far more to improve the learning experience for all students. We hope that the interactive state-by-state maps available on our website—together with the findings and recommendations in the following pages—will inspire engagement with students’ perspectives in the search to find new and better ways to provide students with the knowledge and skills that they need to succeed.
Here is an excerpt from a USA Today story on the analysis: (This is only an excerpt. Please the read the entire story.)
Ulrich Boser, a senior fellow at the center who co-wrote the report, said the data challenge the “school-as-pressure-cooker” image found in recent movies such as Race to Nowhere. Although those kids certainly exist at one end of the academic spectrum, Boser said, “the broad swath of American students are not as engaged as much in their schoolwork.”
Robert Pondiscio of the Core Knowledge Foundation, a Virginia non-profit that pushes for more rigorous academics, says the pressure-cooker environment applies only to a “small, rarefied set” of high school students. The notion that “every American kid is going home with a backpack loaded with 70 pounds of books — that’s not happening.”
The data suggest that many kids simply aren’t pushed academically: Only one in five eighth-graders read more than 20 pages a day, either in school or for homework. Most report that they read far less. “It’s fairly safe to say that potentially high-achieving kids are probably not as challenged as they could be or ought to be,” Boser said.
Gladis Kersaint, a math education professor at the University of South Florida and a board member of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, said she’s not surprised by the findings. “I think we underestimate students,” she said.
Florida State University English education professor Shelbie Witte, a former classroom teacher, said standardized tests limit material teachers can cover. “The curriculum is just void of critical thinking, creative thinking,” she said. As a result, students are “probably bored, and when they’re bored, they think the classes are easy.”
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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69 comments Add your comment
Mr. Todd
July 11th, 2012
10:28 am
SIGNS OF LIFE
One morning just after I sat down at another teacher’s desk to substitute for her … a math teacher … I was sort of whacked out by the posters on her wall. Well, you really couldn’t see the walls because they were covered by colorful posters …
Integer Rules!
Basic Fraction Circles!
All Math Work Must Be Done in Pencil!
Watch These Factor Trees Grow!
Primes and Composites!
Helpful Graphing Info!
Fraction-Decimal-Percent Equivalents!
Rules of Divisibility!
Complete Homework Has Three Parts!
Metric Weights and Measures!
Rules for Multiplying and Dividing Negatives!
Respect is not a gift! You have to earn it!
God Bless America!
I liked this teacher even before I hunkered down in her classroom for the day. She’s serious about her job and about math and about being a good citizen and person. And these posters were like a warm blanket wrapped around us all day. The exclamation marks are mine, however.
God bless those common polygons, too!
http://www.adixiediary.com
Mary Elizabeth
July 11th, 2012
10:36 am
Jerry Eads, 8:33 am
This statement of yours is so true and has so much merit, that I must highlight it. Thank you for stating it, with such impact:
“If you want a good education for your kids, stop treating teachers like the dirt on the factory floor. When teaching becomes a valued profession (AND WE LET THEM TEACH), more of the best and brightest will choose it, and your kids will get the education we all deserve.”
==============================================
mountain man, 7:12 pm, July 10th
“You are correct, Mary Elizabeth.
Bring back tracking.”
—————————————————————————–
Thank you for your compliments to my posts, mountain man, but I must qualify, somewhat, your advocacy for the old system of “tracking” students. Although I do advocate precise instructional level placement for each student, the problem with tracking – at least as it had been implemented previously when I was an active teacher in high school – was that the lowest level of students, having been separated from the others, felt very inferior to other students. Moreover, they were usually locked into the lowest level of classes, in a particular curriculum area, for years.
As I had stated earlier, often students can absorb skills – on which they have been properly placed – quickly, even if these are lower level skills, and therefore these students should be able to advance to average level classes, and above, in a timely fashion when they master lower level skills. If students realized that they could move to higher level classes more easily and quickly, they would not feel so inferior to other students, as well as defeated in life, in their teens. Students should not be “locked into” low level classes indefinitely – perhaps only a quarter or two – until they can increase their skills. In addition, perhaps the content and manner of the lowest level classes could be changed to embrace more practical application of skills through field trips, or job internships, while students are functioning in these lower level classes. Some students end up in lower level classes simply because of a language barrier and, once that barrier has been broken, they can be placed in higher level classes. The old “tracking” system was not good because it simply reinforced the low self-esteem problems many students in those classes were already having, and often those students “gave up,” as a result of their placement, and had life-long poor self-image problems.
Please take a few minutes to read “Cyndie’s Story” from my personal blog. It is a true story of how Cyndie went from being a student who was two or three grade levels behind others in her 5th grade science class, because of her low reading skills, to being on grade level. Cyndie’s outstanding 5th grade science teacher did not move Cyndie into a lower level class because she was behind the others in her class, but instead helped to raise Cyndie’s skills within her own classroom, by creating subgroupings within her classroom. This fact meant a world of difference in how Cyndie perceived herself, as Cyndie had shared with me. As an 11th grade student, Cyndie ended up in my Advanced Reading class, and she posttested on grade level 16 (graduate school level) at the end of her 11th grade year in school. Cyndie’s story may not have had the remarkable ending that it did, had Cyndie not had such an outstanding 5th grade science teacher, who had practiced humane and sophisticated intructional techniques, within her own classroom, which contained students functioning on several different levels of instruction – from low to high.
http://maryelizabethsings.wordpress.com/2012/02/11/cyndies-story/
Old School 36
July 11th, 2012
12:23 pm
An important thing that might be missing with many of these students who have difficulty with reading or math may have something to do with sometimes not paying close enough attention to what is going on with that student or maybe making assumptions about why that student is not making success. I am not teacher bashing here so, please do not misunderstand. A common term I hear is “laziness” on the part of the student as being the reason for not making the grade. That does exist, but I see it more with average or high students. In my experience low functioning students need more conversation time with teachers. They need one-on-one instruction at times. This does not mean intervention. I am not sure how effective intervention classes are in the long run since they primarily are focused on passing the CRCT. Having mini-conversations with students about a particular issue can help target their misunderstanding. I know that can seem an impossible task with large numbers of students, but something as simple as asking the student what they do not understand or asking them to explain their rationale for a choice they made or walking them through a mock before the real thing. Sometimes students will use the “I don’t know” response, but that simply means refining the question. Eventually they will give in and give a response. Scaffolding is a real thing that works, however it’s not a whole group approach, but an individualized one. Yes, whole group instruction is important, but there also should be more instructional time focused on individual student needs in the classroom. When I look at assessments and I have students who do not show understanding, I want to know why. Sometimes that leads me to a gap in student learning and sometimes it leads me to a lazy student…however I have found more gaps.
mountain man
July 11th, 2012
12:48 pm
Mary Elizabeth – I have not yet read Cyndie’s story – but a question in my mind is how can she be “three grade levels behind others in her 5th grade science class, because of her low reading skills,” unless she had been socially promoted? Would it not have been better to catch her up in the 2nd grade, so she doesn’t fall further and further behind? It is great that her 5th grade teacher was able to get her caught up, but that is harder and harder as class sizes increase. You are also arguing for what could be “individualized instruction” – a great idea but not feasible.
Ole Guy
July 11th, 2012
12:49 pm
A number of 8th graders, acording to the article, want to learn more about engineering and technology…is THIS supposed to justify the “math is boring” arguement?
My Dad taught me the basics of flight when I was 10. In a very short time, I could…with his guiding hand not far from the stick…taxi (steer the aircraft about the field), take off, trim for level flight, and approach to land (I was, disappointingly, not ready to actually land the airplane). All this, of course, was mastered in one of the most-basic aeroplanes, the venerable Piper Cub. While flying with Dad was never boring, I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t “try on” a few larger craft; why Dad’s simple “You aren’t ready, Son” answer seemed to be the only acceptable answer to my youthful quest. As the years rolled by; as I learned, THROUGH EXPERIENCE AND APPLICATION, the mysteries of the art, I eventually went on to accept new aeronautical challenges.
These kids…who, all through their lives, have probably never known the meaning, nor the very concept, of SELF-DISCIPLINE, would do well to accept the reality that they are going to have to “be bored” once in a while before they can “move on” to bigger an’ better things.
IT’S THAT SIMPLE, KIDDIES!
Mary Elizabeth
July 11th, 2012
1:25 pm
mountain man, 12:48 pm
“You are also arguing for what could be ‘individualized instruction’ – a great idea but not feasible.”
===========================================
You are right that individualized instruction is not feasible – if one thinks in terms of a separate instructional plan for every student. However, when you read Cyndie’s story, you will see how her teacher incorporated small group instruction within her larger class, and that simple instructional variance helped to “individualize” students’ varied instructional needs within her overall class.
About your other point regarding “catching Cyndie up” in 2nd grade, the thing is there will always be variances of students’ functioning levels in every grade level and that variance starts at birth, not in kindergarten or in lst or 2nd grade. Have you ever seen flowers all bloom at precisely the same moment in time, even though all their seeds had been planted at the same point in time? Various factors effect the blooming of each plant. So it is with children, and master teachers will address students’ varied instructional needs, all along the curriculum continuum, from K through 12th grade. Most elementary teachers know how to create at least three subgroups within each of their classes. Many high school teachers do the same, at least two or three days a week. Often teachers will team teacher in order to create a situation in which one teacher takes the lower functioning students (from both classes) in one period and the other teacher takes the higher functioning students (from both classes) in one period. There are many ways to accommodate varied instructional needs which students will always have, than forming individual lesson plans for every student.
In graduate school, I was taught that the higher the grade level, the more variances in students’ functioning teachers will find in their classes because students will always learn at different rates of learning. I was in graduate school from 1971 – 1973, when I was taught that fact. That same instructional truth holds true today, and it will continue to hold true tomorrow. Master teachers know how to accommodate for those variances at all grade levels. Other teachers can be taught how to do so. Please read the following link from my blog, especially as I document “Johnny’s” progress through about five grade levels (about halfway through the post), to understand more fully why these variances in students’ instructional levels will always be present. We can minimize these differences at every grade level, and we can minimize them, especially, through placing an emphasis upon early children education in preK through 2nd grade (and by funding early childhood education adequately).
http://maryelizabethsings.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/about-education-essay-5-assessing-teachers-and-students/
Mary Elizabeth
July 11th, 2012
1:33 pm
Corrections above: “team teach” not “team teacher,” and “early childhood education” not “early children education” My apologies. . .
lyncoln
July 11th, 2012
2:21 pm
There is a pair of posts on Diane Ravitch’s blog in response to this same study. The response is primarily to point out flaws/weakenesses in the studies methods of analysis.
It’s worth a read for those who took an interest in this post.
The comments can be found at: http://dianeravitch.net/
Once Again
July 11th, 2012
9:23 pm
We don’t do better because government schools do not have to answer to their customers. There are no market forces at work improving quality or service. Government simply takes the money it wants and delivers the service it feels like delivering. Nobody can walk and take their money and when they fail, they justify taking even more as if too little money were the reason for their systemic failure.
We as a society will get the educational service we demand when we take the control of education and its associated funding away from government and put in back in the hands of parents and charitable businesses and individuals. Only with market forces will real change ever be possible. The free market has been the only economic system that has ever delivered quality and service in response to customer demands.
Mary Elizabeth
July 11th, 2012
9:49 pm
Once Again, 9:23 pm
If schools were to be designed around “market forces,” then students would be used for profit purposes and teachers would be viewed as commodities to ensure that profit. The values are not sound in Once Again’s vision for educating students. “Government schools,” or public schools, are not focused on profit; they are focused on the students’ progress.
long time educator
July 12th, 2012
8:14 am
We should not be surprised; these survey results are the direct result of NCLB. In order to survive in the NCLB educational environment, educators HAD to focus on the lower achieving students and spend whatever time it took to pull them up to bare minimum. In the meantime, the powers that be felt that the more capable students would be alright on their own and they did achieve the bare minimum, which sometimes they exceeded, but that is still not saying much. We need to teach children where they are: challenge the more gifted and remediate those that are slower to grasp the concepts, not either or, but both. BUT do not try to do it in the same classroom; this is madness. Asking one teacher to differentiate on multiple levels in the same classroom and be successful is folly. It may be politically correct, but it is highly inefficient and lately, the kids who are getting the short end of the stick are the brightest. We need to group by ability, or achievement, and keep the grouping fluid, so that a child could move up or back depending on frustration level. Will the grouping probably be somewhat racially segregated? It probably will based on the student survey responses above. The main goal should be that the student learns, is challenged and gets the support he/she needs. Who cares what race the student is? Making race the most important variable makes academic success much less important and is not good for children of any race. Every child should be challenged to achieve all he/she can. This crazy mainstreaming may sound good politically, but it is an inefficient mess, wasting the time of teachers and students.
hssped
July 12th, 2012
8:50 am
After 18 years of teaching collab math….the kids that do their homework every night “get it,” those that blow it off are not successful. One must practice math the same as one practices a sport.
Anonmom
July 12th, 2012
9:13 am
If we returned to small classes, respect for teachers, who are “quality teachers” (I know many are — some are not) and tracking — we could be at the top with children performing as high as possible at their best possible levels. As it is, we are pushing through packs of sardines with field marshalls who are being treated by BOEs/Supers as if they don’t matter much at all….. What do we really expect?
@ Long Time Educator
July 12th, 2012
12:11 pm
Thank you! I really mean that. I have been advocating for my three children for years against this idiocy and I am never surprised by the total resistance to ability grouping by the school system. The most recent example was when our son’s high school denied his request to skip over Math II because… wait for it… in order to get a diploma, his transcript “must have Math II” on it. Hello? Hell, no. Never mind that he would obtain more than the requisite 4 units of math, they wouldn’t let him do it because of the class title. Un-frickin’ believable.
FYI: We looked over the so-called skills taught in Math II and requested a final exam for him to take to prove mastery of these skills before he took the class. This is what the state allows for TRANSFER students from other states, but… they don’t allow it for a student educated in Georgia.
Then it gets better. The county wouldn’t allow him to take the Math II final because they said it wouldn’t be a true reflection of what was taught in the class. Come again? The HS principal understood what the issue was, but was powerless to affect a change. So, our son spent the bulk of his Math II year B-O-R-E-D. BTW — he just received his SAT scores back showing Math at 800.
What is so wrong with ability grouping? IMHO, I think the educational world is so concerned with the lower-level learner and protecting their self-esteem, that they have lost sight of the fact that the brightest are being screwed. When I was in high school, ability grouping was used wherever possible. Now, every student must follow herd-mentality. This is why the US is swirling around the proverbial toilet bowl. We are negatively impacting the learning trajectory of our future leaders. And when we allow that, we are also keeping the other students in check by not removing them from the shadows of the brighter students, so they too, can learn to shine.
Differentiation does NOT work! They have saddled teachers with too many different learning cohorts and told them to meet everyone’s disparate needs. Good luck with that plan. Also, they have buried these same teachers under mounds of paperwork that add very little academic value, but are instead, fodder for some administrative purpose. Finally, they have been given “frameworks” to apply that lack basic common sense and disregard teaching to mastery.
I know my opinion will not be popular, but I really don’t care. We need to step back and see the damage we are doing to these kids and the teachers that really want to teach them. This really is the crime of the century for me.
Ole Guy
July 12th, 2012
12:23 pm
This “sub group” concept is great in the extremely elemental stages of education, and more importantly, the early stages of growing up; of maturing into (eventual) self-sustaining adults. At SOME point in their lives…preferably some point in those teen years…these kids have to start the sobering process of realizing that THE WORLD DON’T WAIT FOR THEM TO DECIDE TO CATCH UP; THEY GOTTA START CONSIDERING THE POSSIBILITY THAT THEY GOTTA CATCH UP TO THE WORLD. That being said…my earlier comments have centered, primarily, on the development priorities of earlie generations as compared to current-day gens. Previous gens have experienced, early-on, the concept of URGENCY, the full realization that “Hey, I better get my poo poo together an’ git with it”! When the kid knows that, no matter how much effort he expends/decides not to expend, the system will provide the “slack” so that he may, through the passive process of social osmosis, someday decide to grasp issues long-ignored.
All too many people…kids, young adults, and not-so-young adults…piss an’moan over the hardships which “life has handed them”, when, in harsh fact, these people have allowed the cultivation of “the effortless way”; not daring to “bust one’s six” in order to achieve goals and aspirations. This entire process started within an educational system which, like the political process which panders to desires as opposed to intellects, tries to make the educational process fun and easy instead of challenging.
So what the hell do you expect when these CARING TEACHERS bend over backwards (into positions which only the saturday night dateless would wish for) thinking that they are actually helping, when, in harsh reality, they are only aiding and abeting a generation which (probably like themselves) searches only for the easy path to mediocrity.
Once Again
July 12th, 2012
4:26 pm
You are kidding yourself if you actually think that government schools are “focused on the students’ progress.” They are self-sustaining government bureaucracies that are focused on keeping politicians and other bureucrats happy. If they were actually focused on students’ progress this blog would be empty, instead of chronically filled with one report after another of the abject failure of the government system. While there are certainly “WalMart” hate sites and the like, everyone knows they have a choice to take their money and walk to some other business that will serve their needs better.
You clearly have a problem with the entire profit motive of business. It is hard to tell if you are complete socialist/communist or whether you believe that somehow “education” is exempted from the laws of economics and human nature/motivation. It is NOT. If you do not have a motivation to provide a better service, you will not strive to. The marketplace inherently provides that motivation by it very nature. Government takes the money it wants and has no real accountability. You can call an election “accountability” but that is a hollow argument as anyone who has watched our country’s history since its founding can attest. When you can withdraw your support and your money, THAT IS ACCOUNTABILITY.
And please don’t rehash the whole “founding fathers including Jefferson wanted public education” line as there is a HUGE difference between what he had envisioned, what education was before the late 1800’s and the joke it has become since criminals like Horace Mann and John Dewey helped usher in the structures we have today.
Read John Taylor Gatto or check out his great YouTubes if you want to fully understand what change took place and more importantly WHY. The truth is scarier than fiction.
Anonmom
July 12th, 2012
9:53 pm
yes, Once Again, I agree — this where I’ve finally come to the conclusion that vouchers are the next best move — it is imperative to get the money into as many hands as possible and get it to the bottom rung of the ladder, instead of the current situation where it is being fed in at the top of the pyramid and isn’t making it to the bottom (that being the classroom) — there’s much more of a chance that the money will see the classroom with a voucher system than what is currently happening — I realize that it would not be perfect and that it, too, would have its problems but the current system is an abject failure in the vast majority of the schools — the sucesses stories are too few and far between. It is time for a major overhaul.
Old School 36
July 13th, 2012
12:05 am
I absolutely agree with ability grouping. I experienced this when I was moved into the top tier at the beginning of my 11th grade year in 1968. This happened because of my English teacher, Mrs. Thomas, who went to the mat for me against the guidance counselor who saw nothing in my school records of 17 different schools at that time to indicate I was college material. However, she did. I was in her class for just a few weeks before she requested to have me moved into her higher level English class. I will always be eternally grateful. Because of that one decision I was exposed to a curriculum that was much more challenging academically than that of the 2nd tier which was focused on Work Study opportunities. Also, because of that one decision when I applied to attend college two years after graduation with a total of 19 different schools in my educational background I had met the academic requirements for admission.
long time educator
July 13th, 2012
8:05 am
If we use “tracking” again, it should be voluntary and fluid. No adult should tell a student or parent which class he or she gets in. Let them start out in the harder class if they want to, but don’t dummy it down for them. If they are willing to work and actually have the ability, they should be able to move up. If they fail the tests and the class, they should be moved down where they can be more successful. We could give an entrance exam to guide parents and students about what prerequisite skills are needed to be successful, but no guidance counselor should be able to pigeon hole a student. Motivation equals success in many endeavors and should not be discounted.