I would be interested in seeing a department try this idea. Taking my school, Skyline, as an example: our social studies department could decide that freshmen history will be graded on a tougher standard than sophomore World History. Students transition from the freshmen class to World History might experience the reassurance that Mr. Weinberg mentions and think to themselves, “We can do this! History is easy!” Then junior year could become more rigorous, forcing kids to work harder to maintain their self-asscribed identities of “A” students. Then Senior year, we could back off again to reinforce again the attitude that students are good at history.

Again, I’m not sure this would work, but I would be interested in seeing some data from an experiment like this.

My point is, if Mr. Winberg is onto a good idea, let us not leave the implementation of this idea to chance; allowing the patchwork of rigor to continue. Instead, let us make some professional decisions and work hard to find out if this idea is really good for kids.