One of my father-in-law’s astute observations of human behavior is that most people do not correctly perceive ratios or probabilities less than 5% or greater than 95%. A greater-than-95% chance of something occurring becomes irrationally either “It definitely will happen,” or “I’ll be the exception.” Similarly, a less-than-5% chance becomes either “It definitely won’t happen,” or “I’ll be the exception.” (If you want to see this phenomenon for yourself, ask anyone about buying a lottery ticket or about the chances of experiencing side-effects from a medication or treatment.)
I fear that the 95% principle guides educational policy much more than I would like to believe. Policymakers have declared that “every child” should have the sort of education that they want for the average American. It’s easy to imagine politicians envisioning a fantasized 1970s suburban public school from The Brady Bunch, in which the teacher recognizes that one student out of the twenty in the classroom is struggling in time for the first commercial break, determines the cause by the second commercial break, and implements the necessary intervention, giving the student just enough time to be successful and restore his belief in himself before the credits start scrolling up the screen at the end of the show. Don’t we want this for all of our children? As legislators and policymakers, shouldn’t we require this of all of our teachers and school administrators?
Sadly, the Brady Bunch universe doesn’t apply to the entire US educational system. In the real-life US, some children have circumstances that cannot be fixed, even by the most dynamic, caring, and capable teacher. Some children’s problems don’t stay fixed after a single 30-minute episode of a sitcom. These children need ongoing support, long after finding and solving the problem has ceased to be glamorous. Some children will simply never be able to work at the level of their peers in the Brady Bunch classroom. Some children come into the classroom without the knowledge, skills, and background of the Brady Bunch kids. Remarkably, it takes more than the time from one commercial break to the next to provide these students with years of background information. Legislators and policymakers would like to think that we can live in the Brady Bunch world by simply enacting a policy that says so, but the reality is that problems don’t simply vanish the moment they become illegal.
A goal of getting 95% of students in 95% of classrooms in 95% of schools to Brady Bunch levels would be ambitious and impractical, but it would at least allow for the 5% who fall far outside of the Brady Bunch world to be exempt from the dream. Unfortunately, when 95% is indistinguishable from 100%, this already ambitious and impractical goal suddenly becomes a requirement for 100% of students in 100% of classrooms in 100% of schools. This is where we are now.
