Analyzing “Most Likely to Succeed”

Most Likely to Succeed is a documentary about the different ways people learn and how students can learn without standardized testing. An example of different learning styles is Larry Rosenstock, a law school dropout. He explains that he is a visual learner and uses drawings to study rather than text, (Most Likely to Succeed, 15:57).

An influential scene in the Most Likely to Succeed video is when the High Tech High schools is explained. High Tech High is a high school in San Diego that doesn’t have standardized testing. The school hires teachers with a one year contract and there are no state standards, meaning the teachers can teach however and whatever they like. This scene matters because it is portraying the way students can learn without tests. Not everyone is a good test taker and there are other ways for students to learn. The classes are very student centered in that the students sit facing each other and the conversations are student dominated. The camera shows the way classrooms are set up by panning across the classrooms.

In Welner’s essay “The Dirty Dozen: How Charter Schools Influence Student Enrollment,” Welner discusses the “twelve different approaches that charter schools use to structure their student enrollment,” (Welner, p. 2). Welner would approve the approach that the High Tech High School takes when admitting students. Werner writes, “it’s particularly problematic when children are denied opportunities based on special needs status or English learner status – or when the poorest children in a community are pushed aside,” (Welner, p. 5). This is not the case at High Tech High. The school takes students by a lottery, and 50% of the students come from low income families. There are no tests needed to be taken to go to this school, as described in the fourth approach to charter school enrollment.

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