High School Achievement Culture

The academic culture in high school has changed from years past, but can it be toxic?

The pressure to succeed in life is a relatable narrative, impacting millions of high school students around the world. Recently however, psychologists, activists and journalists have noticed a rise in “toxic achievement culture,” which is characterized by success oriented pedagogy and parental pressure to perform well in school. 

According to an article published in August of 2015 from the Washington Post, many adults in the United States overwhelmingly believe that high academic standards contribute to student success. 

In December of 2019, CPR News highlighted a student’s story of coping with academic stress and the pressure of going to a high performing school. “There’s this like competition and it breeds, “I need to be first. I need to be the one that gets accepted to all the Ivys. I need to be the one that has all these extra-curriculars, that plays a sport, that’s involved in volunteering.” You have a good SAT score, you’re involved in all the APs. I would see some of my friends who were in the APs and stuff and they would just freak out over anything really below like a 90 and I’m like, that is unhealthy and unrealistic and they would stay up all the time. I’m like, ‘You need sleep!’” says High School Senior Amelia. 

Also in 2019, a consensus study report published in the National Academies Press for Math, Engineering and Science, finds that youth in high achieving schools, where test scores are generally above the national average, are an “at-risk group,” alongside children with incarcerated parents, those living in poverty and foster care, and recent immigrants. 

Many children in test score competitive schools negatively affected by academic pressure. As noted by Challenge Success, a non-profit affiliated with the Stanford University Graduate School of Education, 63% of high school students report workload as a major source of stress and that over 50% of students have noticed difficulty sleeping, exhaustion or headaches as a result of stress.  

As the college admissions process becomes ever more competitive and intensive for students, many feel an intense pressure to succeed in all aspects of their lives, not just academically. 

“The unrelenting pressure on students in high-achieving schools comes from every direction, from overly invested parents who want A’s, coaches who want wins for their own personal reputations and school administrators who feel pressured to get high standardized scores in their school, which then prop up real estate values in the area,” says Jennifer Breheny Wallace, award-winning journalist and bestselling author of “Never Enough: When Achievement Pressure Becomes Toxic – and What We Can Do About It.” 

Extracurriculars—such as sports, playing a musical instrument, organizing community events or volunteering—previously considered as fun activities, now play a decisive role in college admissions, according to a U.S. News and World Report published on May 2, 2022. 

Jennifer Breheny Wallace, award-winning journalist and bestselling author of “Never Enough: When Achievement Pressure Becomes Toxic – and What We Can Do About It”

“It wasn’t this crazy. Very few people participated in year round sports when I was growing up,” says Denise Clark Pope, a senior lecturer at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education and Co-founder of Challenge Success. 

Similarly, activities done during the summer have become a contributing factor in college admissions. 

As Harvard Summer School puts it, “those months off are an excellent time to build a college application that really stands out from the competition.” 

Summer programs are a world renowned phenomena. From UCLA Summer Sessions to Brown Environmental Leadership Labs, motivated students have the ability to travel to prestigious institutions and learn from leading faculty members. Other programs foster in-depth research and academic publishing on a topic of choice. Yet, sometimes, such an opportunity comes at a steep cost. Ranging from free to close to twenty thousand dollars, hundreds of thousands of students enroll in expensive summer activities. Many such programs mention top colleges that their alumni have gone on to, or specifically note the importance of exploring one’s passions outside of normal school curriculum in the college admissions process. 

Denise Clark Pope, Co-Founder and Strategic Advisor of Challenge Success

“It’s hard for me and a lot of my friends to even think about spending a lot of time on something that doesn’t have to do with college,” says an anonymous student in an April 2022 article published by PBS. 

To the concern and speculation of students and parents alike, acceptance rates to top universities have seen a sharp decline. Acceptance rates in the nation’s top 51 schools averaged at around 35.8% in 2008, a number that significantly decreased to 22.6% by 2018. In the nation’s most selective schools (the top ten) acceptance rates dropped from 16% to 6.4%. 

Universities selectivity started shifting far before 2018. In the 1980’s the growth in population started to effect admission rates. 

“The numbers were different. Colleges were trying to attract people and then we had the baby boom, so more people were going to college and that created this perception of selectivity, of US News and World Rankings,” Pope said. 

Additionally, as our nation struggles with economic instability, in February of 2019 a study published in the Princeton University Press has found that parents will push their children more intensely to ensure their economic success. The increasing socioeconomic disparities have added another contributing factor to the pressure to succeed in less economically advantaged households. Even if a family’s target college is not highly ranked, the narrative has been that students have to perform well in school to be successful later on. In a survey taken by Challenge Success, more than 70% of high-schoolers reported feeling “often or always worried” about getting into the college of their choice. 

The worry of receiving acceptance to a selective college may lie on the basis of social status. In our meritocratic society, going to a “good” school and getting a “good” job is the gold standard. In fact, “apart from economic payoffs, social status seems to be the most important incentive and motivating force of social behavior,” says Nobel Prize Winning Economist John Harsanyi. 

However, there is caution to be taken for the blind pursuit of status as a measurement of well being. 

“In the unrelenting chase of what is “best,” many of us can unknowingly allow our lives to become defined by materialism…Acquiring status markers, we believe, will make us worthy of the human connection we crave,” Wallace said. 

In a 2007 study published by the National Center for Education Statistics, the average amount of homework high school students complete ranges from 5.4 to 41.9 hours per week. And, according to a Challenge Success survey, only 4.4% of students report getting the sleep that they need. 

“We do find students skipping out on family time and sleep… I 100% [notice that people are not getting even 25 minutes per day of positive relationship interaction],” says Kimberly Cawkwell, Director of Programs for Challenge Success. 

Social time in particular is considered a protective factor to mental health. And, as the rates of suicide and eating disorders soar, a July, 2018 report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation names the top factors harming adolescent wellbeing, including poverty, trauma, discrimination and “excessive pressure to excel.” 

Additionally, a study published in September of 2022 by the NIH found that “acting out” is directly increased by academic pressure. They also noticed a relationship between misbehaving and parent-child conflicts, highlighting that a severe amount of academic pressure and disputes can come from a students’ family. 

When parent affection depends on a child meeting specific expectations, such as academically, athletically, or behaviourally it is termed “conditional regard.” Research has shown that any form of conditional regard is harmful to children’s sense of well-being. 

“They need unconditional love. You want to show your child that you will love them no matter what, even if they don’t get the grades that you want them to get, or if they miss the soccer kick…If parents hold fast to PDF (Playtime, Down time, Family time), help kids get the sleep they need, not overload them, tell them that they love them, and don’t put so much pressure on them to be perfect little robots, we know that kids do better in school,” Pope said. 

Kimberly Cawkwell, Director of Programs at Challenge Success

Similarly, both Pope and Cawkwell recommend not comparing a parent’s own educational experience with their child’s. Life has changed for students and they need support, not a lack of sympathy. 

In fact, “the research is crystal clear: the best thing we can do for our kids is take care of our own well-being and psychological health first so we can be a better resource for them,” Wallace said. 

Outside of the household, a student’s educational institution has much to do with the pressure students feel. 

“One of the biggest flaws in the American education system is the amount of pressure that students have on them to do well in school, so they can get into a good college. Because students have this kind of pressure on them they purely focus on doing well rather than actually learning and taking something valuable away from what they are being taught,” says New York Times High School Student Respondent Jordan Brodsky. 

Researchers, Challenge Success, and Wallace campaign all for a focus on student well-being over driving curriculum and traditional pedagogy. Students need to feel like their needs are being met at their educational institution, which may manifest in different ways. 

“What we know in order for all our students to thrive is that they need to be well, healthy, have reduced stress, play and down time. Have time to just be in community or with our families. We need wellbeing, if we don’t have wellbeing then we can’t engage. Vice versa, if we cannot engage in learning then we don’t have wellbeing or belonging. Those three are connected,” Cawkwell said. 

Challenge Success proposes a framework for education that is more accommodating to student needs, including longer transition times between classes, less of a focus on tests and quizzes as the main method of measuring students progress and a learning style that doesn’t necessarily utilize lectures, a very common form of teaching. 

“We talk about this sort of trifecta called: wellbeing, engagement and belonging. Every student needs to be healthy enough to get out of bed, not depressed, anxious and fearful. Every student needs to feel safe at school, they need to feel like they belong…every student needs to feel engaged with their learning…you are not just sitting and listening to lectures all day. And you really see the value, meaning and purpose in what you are doing. We like really relevant projects where students have a voice and choice and not this test/quiz craziness that is not how people get assessed in the real world,” Pope said. 

New Roads, a small progressive private school in Santa Monica, California, which prioritizes student focused education, is not immune to this culture, as proven by a recent poll where the majority of respondents said that they sometimes or frequently felt disengaged with school. Most students also experienced exhaustion, difficulty sleeping or headaches as a result of stress.

“It is not where you go to college, it is what you do there and take advantage of all the resources that really matter…Understand that there is a college out there that wants you, so don’t let that drive your high school experience,” Pope said. 

Schools can tend to only highlight students who have gone off to college. Families do it as well. 

“[I recommend] really staying grounded in your own unique pathway. It can be really easy to get distracted. “That person is doing X, my family says I need to be doing X.” You can take into consideration all those perspectives and also center yourself on what it means for you to be healthy, engaged and thriving. Getting curious, staying grounded in you and trusting your gut. In the end, we only have one precious life to live,” Cawkwell said.

Our lives might be more meaning-filled if we focused on things other than success. 

“Research has found that time with our friends may make us the happiest, happier than time with anyone else, including our children, relatives, parents, and even spouses. And yet friends are the first ones to take a back seat when life gets hectic. We take them for granted, thinking they’ll always be there, until one day, maybe they’re not,” Wallace said.  

Similarly, sleep is imperative to personal well being. According to the NIH, sleep improves brain performance and reduces the likelihood of developing various diseases and disorders. 

“You can still have a life and get lots of sleep…Go to bed…Do not put any devices in your room at night, there is really good research on that, yet we have about 80% of our kids have their phones in their bedroom at night. Even if it is off or in your backpack, there is research that shows that it impacts you,” Pope said. 

After spending years in Nazi concentration camps analyzing why some people survived and others didn’t, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Vicktor Frankl found a source of meaning in one’s life to be the determining factor. 

“Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it,” says Vicktor Frankl in his book Man’s Search for Meaning. 

Want to Take Action? Here are some easy ways you can stop toxic achievement culture: 

• Visit Challenge Success – an organization founded with a mission to disrupt patterns of inequity to further well-being, belonging, and engagement for each student. 

• Read Never Enough by Jennifer Brehney Wallace and Doing School by Denise Clark Pope. 

• Implement strategies of SPACE and PDF in your own homes or classrooms. 

• Share what you’ve learned from this article to your community!