<p>The answer is in the editorial:</p>
<p>To “ensure that all Texas students are competing for college admission on equal footing.” </p>
<p>It will give a lot more kids the chance to be in the top 10%…above average but not brilliant? smart but don’t like to study very hard? Get 100s in your regular courses, and you’ll beat all those ambitious super smart kids out of the top 10%. Very democratic. Not wise, but democratic.</p>
<p>I have a very smart 7th grader who is not very interested in academics…she’d much rather be dancing, cheering, tumbling, etc. She would LOVE IT if we let her take all regular classes…she’d breeze through and maybe she’d be the first of our kids to break into the top 10% (under the proposed method.) Then she’d get to college and hit the wall, like most of her other peers who also didn’t challenge themselves.</p>