B2 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, AUGUST 3 , 2020
education
the number of college-level
exams to the number of
graduating seniors from 4.090 to
16.308 in those 22 years.
The rise of unsung schools
involving even average students
in college-level courses is not the
result of government programs or
national initiatives. The
movement has been led by local
educators who think ordinary
teens are capable of learning
above and beyond the usual.
The portion of schools that
qualify for the list by giving at
least as many college-level exams
as they have graduating seniors
has increased from 1 percent in
1998 to 12 percent in 2019. That’s
steady progress. But to get on the
list, a school only has to have half
of its 11th- and 12th-graders each
take just one AP, IB or Cambridge
International test. The 88 percent
of schools that haven’t reached
that level should start thinking,
after they recover from the
pandemic, why they cannot do at
least as well.
[email protected]that high this year. The affluent
neighborhood public schools that
dominated the list in 1998 have
fallen behind. That is interesting
and somewhat encouraging,
given that seven of those charters
(all of them part of the IDEA
Public Schools charter network in
Texas) have student populations
that are at least 75 percent low-
income. The magnets include
Carnegie Vanguard in Houston,
Downingtown STEM Academy in
Downingtown, Pa., the Marine
Academy of Science and
Technology at Florida
International University in North
Miami, Jefferson County IB in
Irondale, Ala., and Suncoast
Community in Riviera Beach, Fla.
The Jacksonville magnet
Stanton College Prep is also there,
the only school to be in the top 20
in both 1998 and 2020. Stanton
offers both AP and IB courses.
About 23 percent of its students
are Black or Hispanic, compared
with only 4 p ercent at the nation’s
most selective magnet, Jefferson.
Stanton has increased its ratio of22 years.
In 1998, the top 20 on the list
consisted of 16 neighborhood
schools in affluent communities
and four magnets that attracted
some of the best students. The
magnets in that group were
Stanton College Prep in
Jacksonville, Fla., Richard
Montgomery in Rockville, H-B
Woodlawn in Arlington and
North Hollywood in North
Hollywood, Calif.
I excluded some of the most
famous magnets, such as the
Thomas Jefferson High School
for Science and Technology in
Fairfax County, because they were
too selective for a list designed to
show which schools challenged
average students. If their average
SAT or ACT scores were above
those of the neighborhood
schools with the highest averages,
they were put on a special Public
Elites list.
This year, the top 20 consist of
14 public charter schools and six
magnets. I added private schools
in 2012, but none of them rankedthe list included some with
mostly impoverished kids.
There will be no Challenge
Index list next year. I will not
have enough meaningful data
because of the disruption of this
year’s AP, IB and Cambridge
programs by the novel
coronavirus pandemic.
Hopefully, t hose traditional
college-level tests will be back
next year and I can publish a list
in 2022.
I confess I have become
addicted to the process. I think it
makes valid points. It keeps me in
touch with thousands of smart
educators across the country. And
surely you won’t deny an old guy
his favorite hobby.
One thing I have noticed,
looking back on all that data, is
that the schools on the top of the
first list in 1998 were almost
entirely different from the top
schools this year, based on 2019
data. When it comes to preparing
average high school students for
college, there has been a
remarkable change in the pastsurprised at the positive reaction
to my list from ambitious
teachers, principals and parents
when Newsweek published it.
Educators thanked me for
spotlighting their efforts to
change students’ lives. Newsweek
made it an annual event.
Eventually, I m oved the list to The
Washington Post and then to
jaymathewschallengeindex.com ,
my website.
Some people said it was crazy
to judge a school by just one
number. I pointed out that was
nothing new. Many affluent
schools based their reputations
on their high SAT or ACT score
average. That was not assessing
them by how well they taught,
but by how rich and well-
educated their students’ parents
were. My college-level-exam
participation rate revealed which
schools were trying to give deep
teaching to as many kids as
possible — even C students. That
was rare in the easy-does-it
American high school system, but
the schools that ranked high onIn 1998, while
trying to draw
attention to a
book I had
wri tten, I created
a ranked list of the
most demanding
U.S. high schools. I
called it the
Challenge Index. It was a
publicity stunt, a peculiar
approach to school assessment I
didn’t think would last very long.
I took the number of Advanced
Placement or International
Baccalaureate exams taken by all
students at each school and
divided that by the number of
seniors who graduated that year.
The ratio showed which public
schools were working hardest to
get average students to take those
college-level courses and exams. I
had seen great teachers at a f ew
schools reveal the potential of
overlooked students by
challenging them that way. Why
not report what other schools
were doing?
My book sold poorly. But I was
Affluent neighborhood schools fall behind small charters on Challenge Index
Jay
Mathews
BY CAROLINE KITCHENERMarta Leon felt like throwing
up at her desk.
Sitting in her office at the court-
house in Hopewell, Va., where she
has reported for work almost ev-
ery day throughout the pandemic,
Leon stared at t he Facebook post
in the Henrico County moms’
group: Richmond public schools
would be fully virtual this fall. It
seemed likely that bordering Hen-
rico, where Leon lives, would
make the same decision.
Leon’s two kids — ages 5 and 11
— were at home with a high
schooler who would soon start
school herself. Who else would
watch them for $150 a week? As a
single mom on a paralegal salary,
that is all Leon can afford.
In the Facebook group, some
moms were already praising the
decision.
A child “can always make up
whatever education he falls be-
hind on,” one mom wrote, “but
not if he catches the virus and
dies. I want [my daughter] in
school too but I want her alive
more.”
Leon hasn’t had time to make
many real friends since she
moved to the area a year ago. She
joined nine different Facebook
groups for local moms, hopingthey’d provide the kind of guid-
ance she was missing, such as
where her daughter should get
her ears pierced or where to take
her son for swim lessons.
On the issue of school reopen-
ings, Leon said, the prevailing
opinion seemed clear: If you want
your kids to go back to school, you
don’t care about their health.
Good moms put the health of
their kids first.
As schools across the country
announce their plans for the fall,
working parents are forced to
choose from an array of bad op-
tions: Send your kids back to
school, if it’s open, and risk coro-
navirus exposure — or keep them
home with little or no supervision
as you try to simultaneously par-
ent, do your job and monitor your
child’s online schooling. With no
social safety net, some U.S. par-
ents are devising other solutions,
which come with their own set of
problems: find a nanny or au pair;
hire a teacher and form a home-
schooling pod with a few other
families; or bring in a grandpar-
ent and constantly worry that
your family might inadvertently
put them in the hospital.
“It doesn’t matter what deci-
sion you make,” said Caitlyn Col-
lins, a sociologist who studies gen-
der and families at Washington
University in St. Louis. “You will
feel like a failure.”
It’s easy to believe that other
families are doing a better job.
Even in non-pandemic times, par-
ents — but mostly mothers, and
especially working mothers —
have to contend with an on-
slaught of opinions about their
parenting decisions, Collins said.
People feel empowered to weigh
in on this issue, Collins said, far
more than they do on other as-
pects of a woman’s life, telling her
what she’s doing wrong and how
she can do better. This judgment
is particularly prevalent for work-
ing moms, Collins says, because
they defy a d eeply rooted cultural
assumption: A woman’s children
should be her primary responsi-
bility.
This shaming seems to have
intensified during the pandemic,
according to interviews with 10
working mothers who say they’vefelt judged for their parenting
decisions. Many said they’d be
hesitant to post about their child
care online or talk about their
choices with people outside their
closest networks: If you say the
wrong thing, one said, people will
“make you feel terrible about
yourself.” Even if they hadn’t expe-
rienced explicit shaming, many
said they anticipated the judg-
ment, and judged themselves.
“The mom shame is so real,”
said Joy Rush, a yoga studio own-
er and mother to a 9-year-old son,
who lives in Short Pump, Va.
Fathers aren’t experiencing the
same kind of judgment, Collins
said. In heterosexual partner-
ships, mothers are still over-
whelmingly expected to take the
lead on child care, she said. They
are often the ones “losing sleep”
over these choices. If something
bad happens — if someone gets
sick, Collins said, or a child falls
behind in school — mothers will
be blamed for making the wrong
decision.After she heard about the Rich-
mond schools’ decision on virtual
learning, Leon looked into joining
a home-schooling pod. On the
Facebook groups, many moms —
mostly White women — were
cheerfully swapping contact in-
formation, connecting with other
potential pod members. A quick
scan of these exchanges con-
firmed what Leon had already
expected: It was too expensive.
Some pods cost as much as $25
per student, per hour, she said.
That’s more than she makes her-
self.Second-guessing games
When Shruti Gupta would
come home around 8 or 9 p.m. in
March and April, several hours
later than usual, her 9-year-oldson would be waiting for her at
the kitchen table. He knew
enough about the novel coronavi-
rus to understand that his par-
ents, both physicians at the hospi-
tal where they lived in Stamford,
Conn., were at risk. Gupta works
directly with coronavirus pa-
tients.
No one questioned Gupta’s de-
cision to keep going into the hos-
pital, exposing herself — and po-
tentially her family — to the virus.
Her friends seem to understand
that she had no choice. But people
eagerly offered opinions on the
family’s child-care solution: a
babysitter who went home to her
own family at the end of every day.
Gupta’s friends would ask if she
was sure the babysitter was a good
idea: Hadn’t she considered that
the sitter could pick up the virus
somewhere else? When Gupta
posted about her situation on Fa-
cebook, one mother told her that
bringing in a babysitter “was like a
death sentence,” Gupta said. (The
mom eventually deleted the com-
ment, she said, after other moth-
ers jumped to Gupta’s defense.)
No one ever asked her husband
who was caring for their kids,
Gupta said.
“Men are expected to be work-
ing,” she said. “So people just
assume [the mother] must be fig-
uring it out.”
Sometimes it feels as though
you’re not allowed to care about
your kid’s mental health, said
Rush, the yoga studio owner:
Their physical health — and po-
tential exposure to coronavirus —
has to take priority above all else,
or you’re not a good mother. But
Rush felt that her son urgently
needed some socialization. He’d
been cooped up inside with her
for too long, she said.
She signed him up for in-per-
son taekwondo, a class held with a
few other kids.
“I made the mistake of telling
my older family members,” said
Rush. They wanted to know all the
details, she said: Were masks re-
quired? Would there be social dis-
tancing?
It was frustrating, Rush said,
because she’d already considered
all of this. Of course she had. The
studio took every child’s tempera-ture before they entered the
building and required them to
stand in their own space through-
out the class.
“I was like, you’re asking all the
questions you know I’m already
asking as a mom,” she said. “You
know me well enough to know
that I’m very protective of this
kid.”Pressing onward
None of the 10 women inter-
viewed for this article have quit
their jobs. The last 4^1 / 2 months
have been deeply unpleasant,
they said: Trying to be both a
full-time caregiver and a full-time
employee, they say, they feel as
though they’re constantly failing
at both. But they’ve continued.
Even women who have high-earn-
ing partners and could afford to
quit have chosen to stay in the
paid workforce.
That could change soon, Col-
lins said. “If women are constant-
ly feeling ashamed and guilty
about [their choices], I thin k we
will see women leaving the paid
labor force in droves.”
People have been telling Betha-
ny Sobczak to quit her job for
years. Her husband makes more
than enough to support their fam-
ily, Sobczak’s mother and grand-
mother would point out: Why is
she still working? When she gets
older, they always say, she’ll wish
she’d spent more time with her
three kids, now ages 7, 5, and 1.
Until now, these comments
have been easy to ignore. Based in
Fairfax, Sobczak is a senior hu-
man resources representative at a
major company. She loves her job
and is proud that she makes good
money. But the pressure to quit
has intensified during the pan-
demic, Sobczak says, with her
mother and grandmother point-
ing out — again and again — how
much the kids would benefit from
their mother’s full attention. A
senior-level manager at her com-
pany gave her the same advice,
Sobczak says.
“She said she doesn’t under-
stand why I do it,” said Sobczak.
The manager knows her husband
has a high-paying job. “If she was
in my position, she said, she abso-
lutely wouldn’t.”
In the hardest moments —
when she’s on a work call and the
kids are screaming and fighting in
the background — Sobczak thinks
about quitting. Her husband has
had to work in-person overnight
shifts throughout the pandemic,
sleeping during much of the day.
The family has no outside help.
“I get to the point where I’m
like, ‘Okay, w hy am I doing this?’ ”
Sobczak says. She worries about
her kids falling behind, struggling
to concentrate on teachers from
behind a s creen.
Sobczak drafted her resigna-
tion letter a few weeks ago, but
she never turned it in. She has
never considered the possibility
that her husband might scale
back at work or quit.
“Oh, my goodness,” she says,
laughing. “I could never ask him
to do that.”
And you can be sure, she said:
No one else ever would, either.
[email protected]During child-care crisis, ‘mom shame’ is getting worse
PHOTOS BY CARLOS BERNATE FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
LEFT: Joy Rush, a yoga studio owner and mom to a 9-year-old, s aid her decision to enroll her son in a socially distanced taekwondo class
was questioned. RIGHT: Marta Leon, a p aralegal and single mother of two, works at a courthouse and is worried about child-care costs.Balancing kids and jobs
is a high-wire act with no
safety net, mothers say“It doesn’t matter what
decision you make. You
will feel like a failure.”
Caitlyn Collins, a sociologist at
Washington University in St. LouisSubscriber ExclusivesSee details at live.washingtonpost.com.Eat This Up: A Q&A with Food Critic Tom Sietsema at 11:00 a.m. ET on August 5The Post’s famed foodie recently chatted about pies; gift cards; tipping; meal kits; celeb ratory meal option s;
carrot cake; and famed restaurants Seven Reas ons, Rose’s Luxury, Chloe, and Foodhini. Got a question that
slipped through the cracks? Post it now then tune in on Wednesday.12 months 0% interest
AND no payments
for 12 months
then monthly payments
as low as $69.
with approved credit.
Minimum purchases of $4,000.
Offer expires 8/31/20Defeat The Heat! Being Cold Gets Old!INSULATION SALEInstalling Multilayer Foil Attic Insulation, Blown Insulation and
Air Sealing Can Have an Immediate Impact on Your Energy Bill!Hot House? Too Hot To S leep?
Summer Will Be Here Soon!202-996-3585 DC301-245-2492 MD703-278-9016 VAVA #2705029456A | MHIC #46744 | DC #67000878 | NC #77474***Attics Only - We Do Not Do Crawl Spaces***FREE
Nest thermostat
with purchase of
Perfect Attic System