Leslie Villegas recommends The End of Average

The End of Average: How to Succeed in a World that Values Sameness

By Todd Rose (HarperOne, 2015)

A fellow researcher recommended this book to me after a conference session on COVID-related “learning loss.” My research focus is English learner education, one of the student groups most negatively impacted by the pandemic, so I was interested in what the data had to say. But as expected, English learners were not included in the data analysis at the session. This is because monolingual standardized assessments at the center of the American education system are designed to tell you what English learners don’t know, rather than what they do.

Broadly, The End of Average is about tapping into individual talents and abilities rather than trying to fit everyone into an “average” mold that does not exist. Rose traces back the use of averages in social sciences and draws a link to many of our modern institutions. The section that revolutionized my way of thinking was titled “Factories of Education.” Here, Rose discusses how when the U.S. expanded public education in the early 1920s, the mission was not to foster greatness and “provide students with the freedom to discover their own talents and interests” but rather to “prepare mass numbers of students to work” in the new productivity-focused economy.

Understanding the intent behind the creation of the education system as we know it today brought into focus many of the ills facing our public education system. Who we see as “underperforming” or “at-risk” or “marginalized” is all related to this flawed way of thinking about the purpose of education. People in power decided to “standardize everything around the average” rather than build an education system that sees value in every student and harnesses their assets to help them become whomever they wish to become. When it comes to English learners, generation after generation has been harmed by this fundamental flaw in the framework of the American education system.