The Merits of Meritocracy

The nation must think through its contradictory attitudes toward academic achievement.

On May 17, 1999, the Wall Street Journal reported on the disappearing valedictorian. One of the side effects of high-school grade inflation and a complex system of extra credit for some demanding courses is that it is not unusual for a graduating class to have a dozen or more students with straight-A (or better!) averages. How does one pick a valedictorian? Some schools have simply eliminated the honor; others spread it thin. Eaglecrest High School in Aurora, Colorado, had 18 valedictorians this year. Vestavia High School near Birmingham, Alabama, typically allows 5 percent of the graduating class to claim the number one ranking. But in these litigious days, no solution is safe. Last year, an Oklahoma teenager sued to prevent two other students from sharing the title with her.

The problem does not end with the top students. Some schools object to ranking any students. College admissions officers cited in the story estimate that half or more of the applications they receive do not have a class rank for the student. Because grading systems can vary widely from school to school, how does a potential employer or a college admissions officer know how to interpret a transcript that does not reveal how a student performed relative to other students? Perhaps they all have straight-A averages.

Admissions officials who cannot use class standing as a way of differentiating students are likely to put more weight on standardized test scores, but they are also under attack. One problem is that the tests are a useful but far from perfect indicator of who will succeed in school. Another is that African American and Latino students on average receive lower scores than do their white and Asian counterparts. Although the test score gap has closed somewhat in recent decades, it is still sizable; and although all would agree that the best solution is to eliminate the gap completely, it has become clear that this will not happen quickly. In the meantime, because these tests influence not only college admissions but the courses students are able to take in high school, they have the power to close the door to many professional career options.

There is some irony in this, because standardized testing was originally promoted as a way to break down class barriers and open opportunities for capable young people from the lower rungs of the social ladder. For many successful people who came from poor families, these tests are a symbol of the U.S. meritocracy–a sign that what you know matters more than who you know or where you come from. With the widespread recognition that we live in a knowledge-based economy in which well-educated workers are the most valuable resource, the thought that the society would de-emphasize the importance of school grades and standardized test scores is profoundly disturbing. Particularly in the fields of science and engineering, there is a strong belief that some individuals perform better than others and that this performance can be evaluated objectively.

Is it time to be alarmed? No. There should be no doubt that admission to the elite science and engineering college programs is fiercely competitive and that grades and test scores are critical criteria. Likewise, job competition for scientific and technical workers is rigorously meritocratic. The majority of college officials, employers, and ambitious students support the use of these criteria, in no small part because they achieved their own positions because of good grades and high test scores.

A greater threat than the elimination of standardized testing is the misuse of these tests, particularly in the lower grades. A 1999 National Research Council report, High Stakes: Testing for Tracking, Promotion, and Graduation, found that critical decisions about individual students are sometimes made on the basis of a test score even when the test was not designed for that purpose. The report finds that standardized tests can be very valuable in making decisions, but only when the student has been taught what is being tested, the test is relevant to the decision being made, and the test score is used in combination with other criteria. What worries the committee that prepared the report is the situation in which a student entering middle school is given a math test on material that was not taught in his elementary school. As a result of a poor score, that student could be tracked into a curriculum that includes no demanding math courses and that virtually eliminates the possibility that the student will ever make it into a science or engineering program or into any college program.

Grades do matter. Test scores do matter. We have a shared societal interest in identifying which individuals are best qualified to do the jobs that are important to all of us. The fact that someone wants to be an engineer or a physician does not mean that we have to let that person design our passenger planes or perform our bypass operations. Course grades and test scores help us identify those most likely to perform well in demanding jobs. If some groups in the society are not performing well on the tests, let’s use the tests to identify the problem early in life and to intervene in ways that enable members of these groups to raise their scores. We should remember that these tests are designed to evaluate individuals, not groups. We cannot expect everyone to score well. The very purpose of grades and tests is to differentiate among individuals.

That said, it’s worth noting the point made by journalist Nicholas Lemann in several articles about the development and use of standardized tests and the evolution of the meritocracy. The winners in the academic meritocratic sweepstakes, who are well represented among the upper ranks of university faculty and government leaders, tend to exaggerate the importance of academic success (as their stressed-out children will testify). Lemann argues that success in school and standardized testing is not the only or necessarily the best criterion for predicting success in life. The skills and qualities that we need in our society are more numerous and varied than what appears on the college transcript.

In spite of the extensive public attention paid to academic measures, the society seems to have enough collective wisdom to look beyond academics in making important decisions about people. We all know the difference between “book smart,” “street smart,” and “people smart” and recognize that different jobs and different situations call for various mixes of these and other skills. We do need grades and test scores to identify the academically gifted and accomplished, but we also need the good sense to recognize that academic prowess is only one of many qualities we should be looking for in our researchers, business leaders, and public officials. The people who make the most notable contributions to the quality of our society are the trailblazing inventors, artists, entrepreneurs, and activists, not only or primarily the valedictorians.

Cite this Article

Finneran, Kevin. “The Merits of Meritocracy.” Issues in Science and Technology 15, no. 4 (Summer 1999).

Vol. XV, No. 4, Summer 1999