The Academy of (Lesser) Science

By Patrick F. Bassett

Every so often, too infrequently in fact, comes a defining event in the life of the educational world. Such is the case for this year's Illinois State Science Fair competitions hosted annually by the Illinois Junior Academy of Science. For the fourth year in a row, the state championship went to a small independent school, Avery Coonley School in Downers Grove, a pre-kindergarten-grade 8 school which offers a very strong and traditional academic program.

What is noteworthy and commendable for the school was that its demanding academic expectations, and particularly in this instance, those of the science program, resulted in the "four-peat,'' the unheard-of string of annual victories by the school. What is astonishing and unspeakably absurd was a decision by the board of the academy to banish the school from team competition for next year, on the grounds that their students were "just too good,'' and therefore obviously put all the other schools at a distinct and somehow unfair disadvantage. "We have decided to give other schools an opportunity to win,'' explained Janine Petric, the president of the Academy of Science. "We want to spread the wealth around.''

The Avery Coonley students, admittedly a precocious and confident group of 7th and 8th graders, took strenuous exception to the ruling, taking their case immediately to the airwaves--on Chicago talk radio at first and then eventually in nightly news spots and in newspaper interviews as the controversy emerged and caused, thankfully, a furor. Of course, the first thing the students countered with was an analogy, in this case, to the National Basketball Association: "Nobody says the Bulls shouldn't be allowed to go for the 'four-peat,' so why should we not be able to continue to...