Here is yet another example of “equity” programs resulting in a lowering of academic standards. Worse, it is an implicit form of racism where school boards assume that minority students cannot rise to the challenge of Honors or AP classes.
10 Likes
Yes, it seems like only an “ooze” if averaged over the whole country, but that masks pockets of huge exodus. Enrollment at the urban district nearest our suburb has dropped 20% in just 5 years. This is in a district that already had a high % of students outside of the normal public schools. Families are choosing whatever they can afford: non-denominational privates, religious privates, charter schools, magnet schools, open enrollment into other districts, online schools, homeschooling. It’s not “white flight” either; African American families especially have chosen to leave.
3 Likes
School enrollment has declined greatly in my current town but I just read an article last month that the birth rate here is down 30%! While there has been some flight to private schools, the declining birth rate is the biggest factor. The article said it has been trending downward since 2017. (There is discussion about shuttering some of the elementary schools and a redistricting plan being proposed).
1 Like
While I agree that the abysmal quality of many regular classes is a larger issue, I can’t fix that myself ( and I note that many programs to do so have not been that effective). All I can do is ensure that my kids do not have to suffer through them.
2 Likes
Refer to my earlier post.
Posts not complying with ToS can be (and recently have been) deleted without notice or comment.
3 Likes
In the urban district nearest me, the current drop is overwhelmingly due to students leaving, but decreased birthrates are on the horizon too. I anticipate a huge mess!
1 Like
Per the state-mandated Culver City school report card, more than 1/3 of its students do not meet state standards of grade level proficiency ( even more in math). Mixed classes understandably will have to focus on those kids to the detriment of the rest of the class.
4 Likes
I think the concern is you reach a death spiral where declining demographics and students going to charter or private schools leave schools with less resources, forcing more kids to leave and so on.
Throwing money at the problem isn’t the answer, but neither is pulling funding. The point should be effective funding of public schools.
3 Likes
Serious question, does it have to be to the detriment of the rest of the class?
I know the Montessori schools have more advanced students teach the other students as part of their learning, and there is a lot of benefit to be gained by teaching what you’ve learned as part of your own advancement of knowledge. I wonder is some of that can be applied to high school classes.
I suspect though that could be a disaster with kids who don’t want to learn, and so on, but it’s a possibility.
3 Likes
I think you identified the biggest problem-Montessori schools have kids who want to learn, for the most part. Public schools do have some kids who are there because state law mandates it and are not interested at all in learning.
One of my kids was identified early as the kid who could help the teacher, grade the papers, etc in math. I stopped that the first week. It is not a recipe for social success with one’s peers.
7 Likes
Yeah… probably right. The problem I think is trying to solve a larger social issue in public schools without the rest of the infrastructure needed to make it successful. So the danger is you don’t get better results for underrepresented minorities, and you fail to prepare everyone else as well as possible.
2 Likes
in our 75% low SES school district – if the honors classes were removed there would be an exodus of families who weren’t low SES. Honors, AP and one IB program keep the non-low SES families here.
I appreciate the diversity and sensitivity our family has learned being in this school district 18 years. Truly, it has opened our eyes to urban/poverty issues that our friends - three miles from us in other districts have not seen… We all live in the same city, but they seem blind.
Me: I felt like I was hit on the side of my head with reality when we hosted my son’s HS soccer team for dinner. It was like the united nations at our house. I asked a kid from Syria how he liked it in our midwest town; he looked at me like i was batty; and just said “it doesnt matter how i like it here; I’m not being forced into being in the war.” wow. lesson learned.
but for all that, when it comes to education, we want the best for our kids; and that doesnt mean being in classes with low reading and math levels which come with low SES. If honors classes were removed, people who could leave would leave. education > diversity learning.
4 Likes
I know that a common narrative is that tracking benefits gifted kids at the expense of lower-performing kids. And perhaps that is sometimes the case. But in our family’s case, that has not been true. My 2 kids are very different students. One tests above the 99th percentile while the other struggles to stay at the median (which is below average for the district.) Tracking in our district begins in 2nd grade when students are eligible to move to the “Exceptionally Gifted” school. And students who don’t quite make this cut are still subtly tracked in grade school with different math groups and reading groups, and then can start honors classes in 6th grade.
Before the tracking, my less academic child would get confused and demoralized, especially in math. For example when they were taught how to tell time in first grade, many of the other kids grasped the concept immediately and left my kid in the dust, embarrassed to admit she was lost. Tracked classes allowed her not to feel stupid, because the other students also needed extra time, explanation, and review to learn subjects. I do not want her to be in an “honors for all” situation. I don’t want her to have more or more rigorous homework. She is already at the right level in her regular classes, just as her older sibling was in the right level in his IB program.
ETA: But we are lucky in that behavior problems are not an issue at any of the levels. Classroom chaos would cause me to pull my kids, for sure.
12 Likes
I will say though, that I think most kids from upper middle class families with educated parents are going to be ok most of the time no matter what. There is so much learning that takes place at home, that even if they don’t get stuff from school they get it from their parents.
Not saying that’s as good, or that their needs shouldn’t be attended to by the public school. But speaking personally, I wouldn’t be all that concerned directly for my kids if they were put in normal English classes instead of honors and AP… I wouldn’t like it, for sure, but I don’t think their education would suffer that much. My wife and I already talk to them about literature. We discuss books. I review their grammar in both speech and writing already with stuff we do on our own.
Basically, my kids are the ones that won’t suffer under most scenarios. It’s either the kids from parents who are too busy to enrich them and need the school to challenge them. Or the kids who come from an environment where they need to be nurtured first and shown a world where they can be high achieving and then given the resources to become that high achiever.
So, I have to acknowledge that this is more academic for me and it’s probably more personal for others.
3 Likes
Candidly, it also depends upon where kids end up in college. There are some universities where students from the most elite prep schools in the country ( or world) attend in great numbers, and they often have the benefit of superlative academic preparation. It can be intimidating for those from more mundane preparation. While I agree that by and large most upper middle class kids likely will be basically fine regardless of which K12 they attend, it can have lasting impact for some.
It is hard to overstate the difference in educational quality among all the US schools.
2 Likes
DadBod refers tangentially to the elephant in the room, which is “social capital”, which Prof. Loury of Brown writes about extensively. A student is a product of his/her social environment, i.e. family, friends and community. If a student is raised in a home with parents - and is surrounded by others - who value education, read often, are engaged in the local school, and hold their kids to high standards they will do better in school and have more options than kids who do not receive this support. A student doesn’t even need to be from a family where the parents have college degrees to receive this support; stories abound about families where the parents sacrifice to improve the lives of their kids and are fully engaged.
1 Like
I’m not sure about academically achieving kids being ok in non-honors classes. In our large (3,800 student) HS the disruptive kids rule the room. That environment could have impacted my kids and would be a non-starter for me.
Both my kids wanted to attend the public HS. When we talked the gifted counselor we were assured that they could fill their schedules with honors an AP classes. She also said “ we keep the honors/gifted kids together”. Had that not been the case we would have taken the private school route.
As a parent I would not jeopardize my kids education for any cause.
8 Likes
I’m not even sure it is so much about valuing education as it is understanding education.
I do a lot of physicals for 5-year-olds the summer before they enter kindergarten. As part of that, I ask parents whether their child knows how to count and say the ABCs. Parents invariably reply that their kid can. But then I will have the kid show me (I will sing along to get them started.) Some kids can count past 50, say the entire alphabet, and recognize all the written letters and tell me their sounds. On the other end of the spectrum, some kids can’t count to 10, can’t tell me how many fingers when I hold up 2, and when they sing the ABCs it is a mostly-wrong jumble without any idea that it relates to letters. But the parents will sit there beaming with pride, not realizing that their kid is already way behind. It is tragic.
4 Likes
I sort of agree that kids from educated families will be OK no matter what. I didn’t get bent out of shape when my kids didn’t learn anything, or much of anything in certain classes. But the key is which classes and how many out of the day.
Younger S only had the option of regular Spanish 2. In the first few weeks, the teacher was led out in handcuffs. He was addicted to drugs. The rest of the semester year (block schedules) were a revolving set of teachers/subs. Nobody lasted a week. Students fought often and security was called. One got in a physical fight with the students. Another just walked out of the door saying “I can’t do this.” He learned nothing. I wasn’t happy about it, but at least he was already fluent (by my standards) in Spanish from talking to his Hispanic friends/coaches. After that, the classes were honors/AP and everything was normal.
Another one was actually an Honors English 10th grade class. The teacher was out on medical leave all semester year, and he had a long term sub. In our district, that means they just have a pulse. He sat on his phone and the kids did nothing until the teacher came back with 2 weeks to go. Again, I wasn’t happy about it, but I would have rather have had him in there than the zoo with kids fighting each other. And, it was only 1 class, 1 semester. Not every English/Math/Science class would be like that. Had it been a math class, I would have been more upset and probably taught him on my own. I’m picky about math. English, well. Can’t help him there. You’ve read my posts. I’m a numbers gal.
Older S had a regular personal finance class that was similarly a zoo. For that class, the teacher let him sit in his office and do his work there.
Senior year, he had the same teacher for AP Pysch. While the class was a good class, the teacher was so beat down from teaching the regular classes that he would often just let them watch movies while he laid his head down on his desk - and often cried. He left for another teaching job not long after.
Both of my kids did/are doing well in college. A few bad classes aren’t going to make/break such a student. But both of mine were also part of the governor’s school program. In their Junior/Senior years, they took all the core Math/Science/English classes off-site with other top kids from the county schools. It was a great program. Had they not had that option, I am not sure if we would have stayed. Probably, since they did have AP/honors for the other classes at the school. But, if they dropped those and all of their classes had to be non-honors? No way. We would have found some alternative. I know most of the other college bound kids would have likely done the same. Many of them already do.
2 Likes
We probably have different situations, so it’s not perfect. Our school is 2900 kids but almost all affluent, with very minor discipline issues.
I have a very high achieving kid who also has mental health issues, and he took a year with no honors classes (because he had spent the previous 3 months in the hospital). I don’t think his education suffered much being with non-honors students. It was an easy A for sure, and he was bored with the class, but as I said we discussed stuff at home, and comparing to what he learned vs his older brother who had the freshman honors class, there wasn’t much difference in end results. He’s back in the honors classes this year as a sophomore and he’s not behind on any subject and still getting A’s (never had a grade lower than 97% on any of this tests or homework). This suggests his year with the non-honors students was not detrimental to his learning curve at all. YMMV.
I’d be more concerned if there were safety or major discipline issues though.
1 Like