WSJ: School Districts Eliminate Honors Classes

Parents Forum
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The problems there are that way too many people in the country cannot differentiate “discipline” and “punishment”. It seems that the result is that teachers are either punishing kids for any type of infraction, and the punishments usually result in further loss of school time, or teachers cannot discipline the kids, and the few disruptive ones make it impossible for the rest to study.

There is also a huge issue that many school administrators are more focussed on keeping parents happy than on educating the kids.

We were lucky, and we raised our kid in a location with a very good education system.

They (my kid’s high school) have actually been successful in merging college-prep and honors for freshman year (it happened after my kid graduated, so this is based on what friends told us). The point is that they do not want the middle school tracking to follow kids into high school. So far, it works - more kids continue to Honors in Sophomore year, and then to AP (only from Junior year) than was the case before, and the kids who would have gone to honors did not feel that they were being held back.

But, it took more work on part of teachers, and the teachers need to be supported, both by the administration and by parents. There also needs to be classes for the kids who normally would find college-prep challenging.

Really, parents have to want a high school which isn’t a factory for producing applicants that are attractive to “elite” colleges, parents who think that the high school is a baby-sitter, parents who think that the high school is where kids are sent to become carbon copies of themselves. You need parents who think that high school is where kids go to get and education and to learn how to socialize with other people and to become an adult.

Administrators also need to want this to succeed, in that the students will end up better educated than before, rather than the school putting a fresh coat of paint over rust and rot.

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You have hit on it. The private schools are able to raise the standard to college prep English for “everyone” because they have already siphoned off the better students and left the others behind in public schools.

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Achingly perfect

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The irony is, in my story, I am the “undesirable”, as you say.
I did not mention my children, so why did you?

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This is why more people are flocking to private schools. Those who can, will leave, whether through tuition payments or charter applications or just moving states. There was a time when public schools had the public’s trust. Not so much anymore, and that is unfortunate for all of us.

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Hello folks. I haven’t been on CC since 2010, my son’s graduation year. In fact, I discovered my account had been deactivated and I had to rejoin. Please allow me to set the record straight about the Culver City Unified School District, referenced in the WSJ article. The WSJ sent a reporter to the School Board meeting on February 14, where an impassioned group of parents requested the reinstatement of honors English.

We live at ground zero in Culver City, CA. Our son attended the CCUSD from K to his graduation in 2010. He received his BS with a dual major in mathematics and philosophy from Northwestern U and works as a software engineer.

Our school district has been transformed due to misguided leadership on the School Board. If our son was still in the district, we’d be looking to pull him. Both my husband and I were products of public schools in Washington State.

What is missing in the discussion is the reality that our the ninth and 10th grade classes are not advanced in any way, and the idea of providing the rigor of an honors class without any student or teacher selection is simply not possible in a large class with 30+ kids. (We have friends with kids at the high school so we have intel from them.)

So removal of honors classes in our environment is a fools errand. Parents were told this had to be done because not enough students from underrepresented groups were signing up to take honors English. At the same time, the district had done nothing to set up those underrepresented students (and their parents) for success by early promotion of the importance of those classes.

To make matters worse, the School Board “sold” this idea during the depths of the Covid pandemic, when the normal communication channels were sketchy at best, or missing at worst. The School Board, who is supposed to be the gatekeeper, claimed the idea had been initiated and brought to them by the high school English Department, so who were they to deny their suggestion.

One of the reason for large class sizes at our high school is that our School Board lets in way more permit students than most, maybe any, of the school districts in our greater area. They show no inclination to pare this back in any way, claiming its an equity issue.

In short, I would advise not following the CCUSD model as a recipe of success for the greater good of all district students, which is what our Board should be laser focused on.

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Private high schools of the kind that you are thinking have a tiny number of students. There are 49.4 million students attending public K-12 schools. There are 4.7 million attending private K-12 schools, and 2/3 are Catholic or of other denominations. The type of high school that you are thinking of, enroll only around one million students.

So of the K-12 schools, private, non-denominational schools serve fewer than 2% of all students.

These high schools would not even be able to take 1% of the students who are now attending public schools.

Maybe more of the very affluent parents are sending their kids to private high schools, but, despite what it may seem to you, there is, at very most, a tiny little ooze of students to private high schools.

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What’s a permit student? Is that a California thing? (I live on east coast.)

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My goodness! Well I do appreciate hearing from someone who lives in one of the relevant districts. Sounds like at minimum the district has done a less than wonderful job communicating, which is true for most big public districts I’d say. I definitely don’t think it’s “impossible” to teach a class of 30 students well, though, Honors or not. That’s a pretty standard class size in HS?

Vis a vis some of the commentary above, again I’ll note that it’s actually the private schools in our area that have mainly done away with AP/Honors classes — I guess some people feel that it’s “ok” for them to do that because maybe they assume all their kids are special and gifted and so every class taught can meet some standard of being “advanced” instruction?

Personally I very much feel it’s appropriate to give public school kids the same opportunity to learn together/universally in 9th and 10th grade English, attempting to give all students the same foundation from which they can then decide whether or not they want to take more advanced/college level classes as they get closer to college age. Yes the instruction and instructors need to be good—and of course they aren’t always good. There are also bad teachers in private schools! And yes, some students need remedial support and instruction, and that should be offered. But I don’t understand the absolute outrage at a district trying to broadly redirect so that most students learn English together in 9th and 10th grades before differentiating.

Some of the benefits of attending big diverse public schools is learning how to engage with all kinds of people. I always saw this as an advantage for my kids’ school experiences. I’ve been glad that they have to navigate some frustrating situations, learn to speak up, etc. They are still learning and being challenged, and they are getting prepared for real life. I just am surprised/discouraged at the idea some people have that public school classrooms are filled with unworthy, hopeless kids.

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There are district students (students who reside in Culver City) and permitted students. Permitted students are allowed to attend district schools by permit, based on a number of classifications. I’m not sure if even know them all. If a student’s parent works for the school district or the city, the student can request a permit to attend our schools. Ditto for some athletes, students in special circumstances (one parent lives in the city, the other doesn’t. Some parents try to get their kids permitted in because of the perception that our district is better.

Of our 6678 students, 1558
are on permit from an
attendance area outside of
CCUSD boundaries.

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When I was in high school, all 9th grade students other than the ESL students were in the same English classes. Recommendation for honors in 10th through 12th (12th honors was AP) was based on how one did in the previous year English course. From the high school’s current course catalog, it looks like they do it the same now (11th honors is also AP now, reflecting the existence of two AP English courses/tests), although the demographics have changed substantially (SES increased, four year college attendance went from about a third then to nearly all now).

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OMG. I’ve never heard of that in the suburbs surrounding NYC. Do the permitted students have to pay tuition? If not, your taxpayers are supporting these students?

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My kids and my nephew are the same age but went to different catholic grade schools, and their schools were in different ‘leagues’ although only a few miles apart. We went to watch my nephew once and my daughter went ballistic when she saw that they were shooting free throws from a line about 18 inches closer to the basket. “What are they doing? They aren’t following the rules. This isn’t fair. They should be shooting from the line!”

We didn’t have many kids who could shoot a free throw, but that didn’t matter to my daughter - there were rules and these kids weren’t following them!

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A goodly amount of funding for public K-12 comes from the state to the school districts based on headcount (the state having received funds from counties via property tax … it’s a very Byzantine system) Additionally, some districts like CCUSD may have voter approved parcel taxes and such to add additional funds. So there is no clean answer to both questions. No, the students do not pay tuition, that is certain. I am not sure how it nets out for who pays. If our district brings in more students than permit out, then I suppose the School District benefits … but I can tell you that especially at the high school, it’s overcrowded so the learning environment is not optimal and the physical plant takes a beating.

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We have open enrollment between districts in Colorado. You can apply to a school in another district and many do. The schools have priority rankings on who to let in (in the zone, in the district, siblings at the school, then usually by lottery number). I live right on the line between districts and many kids go to elementary and middle school in the ‘better’ district, but the high school in that district which is closest to us is impossible to opt into. All spaces are filled by those living in the zone for that school and usually the only others who can get in are those from the gifted and talented school (a whole school, not just pull outs or a class or two) who are guaranteed to get a spot in that high school. There are something like 6 other high schools in that district and you can opt into them, but you have to provide your own transportation and most are fairly far away so it would be difficult for a freshman or sophomore to do that.

Many kids to opt to go to other school districts for high school. Sometimes it is for sports or a special program (theater, music, IB). My kids went to a k-8 school with a public high school a few blocks away. I can’t think of any student who went there as it wasn’t highly ranked so they went to private or public in other districts.

School of the Arts is popular and serves 5 school districts so kids come from a long distance. It doesn’t offer many AP classes so the students take them at a Denver public school that is a few miles away even if they live in another school district.

Yes, those from high tax districts do subsidize students from other districts, but the state money travels with the student (it can be $8k to $12k that would come with the student).

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The money generally follows the student. At least in CA, state funding is based on average daily attendance. Interdistrict transferring is not uncommon in CA: District Transfers - California Department of Education FAQ (CA Dept of Education)

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Your story about the recent Culver City School Board is reminding me of the three San Francisco Board of Education members who got recalled because they were were more interested in equity than education. It’s easy to promote equity by holding more advanced students back than by boosting poorly-performing students upward, so the SF Board of Ed did what was easy, including effectively eliminating what served as SF’s honors high school. That’s what’s happening with these districts that eliminate honors classes in the name of equity.

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I get the point you are trying to make, but imo that’s an oversimplification of what happened in SF. Some of the recall was related to Lowell — much more of it was other stuff, including the absurdly mismanaged, sloppy effort to rename schools (using Wikipedia research!!?) in the middle of the pandemic when they were not instead working on safely returning to in person instruction.

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I don’t know the statistics, but I know of quite a few parents in our district who have pulled their kids out, either for private school or homeschool. And the district is rated as one of the top three in the state. Parents are fed up.

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