Hence all my caveats to that point.
This does not accurately describe the two schools in question.
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Horace Mann, good-hearted guy for sure. But did his ideas work? Besides grouping children of all different abilities together, another of his pet ideas was that teaching phonics was bad for students, and that they should be taught to read by memorizing whole words instead. Look how that one turned out.
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Funny, but I think it is just the opposite-the primacy of the individual studentās right to remain in class when disruptive, violent, etc has overtaken the collective right of the majority of the class to a quiet and safe education. Many countries have far larger class sizes than American schools but far fewer discipline problems, so the quality of education is still good.
Many of those who care about all children would like to see public schools restore some semblance of order and discipline to all classes, but some parents fight that. The best we can do is support charter schools and alternatives for parents with similar values to us.
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Whatās the reason for changing honors classes again?
Iāll decline the opportunity to turn this thread into a phonics vs. whole language approach debate 
ā I think both are important to teaching reading but agree that itās good to see the pendulum swing back a little towards ensuring kids get explicit instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics 
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I think this is a slight oversimplification of what some schools and teachers are trying to achieve. Some teachers at these schools simply want more students to be able to access a rigorous curriculum and want to delay tracking until after 9th grade. Others do want to eliminate some or all of the rigorous curriculum track, because they feel it perpetuates racist outcomes to have multiple tracks where certain tracks have a higher population of White and Asian students, and other tracks have a higher population of Black and Latinx students.
For example, hereās an article from the Berkeley High student newspaper in which several teachers were interviewed: Should Advanced Math Exist at BHS? ā Berkeley High Jacket
āIf a policy isnāt anti-racist, then itās racist. So, therefore Advanced Math is racist. Itās a racist policy ā¦ and it has racist outcomes."
Nothing to do with āfailing schools, where many students that want to learn simply cannot due to crumbling infrastructure, disruptive students.ā While this sort of misinformation is repeated over and over again in this thread, it isnāt really the case at these two schools.
And the changes arenāt due to āadministrators who are sometimes trying to advance agendas that donāt match the communityās they are supposed to serve.ā The changes to 9th and 10th grade English at SaMo were teacher driven, and the purpose was to better serve the educational needs of the entire community by increasing rigor and encouraging students of all backgrounds to excel in an integrated environment. Posters here seem only concerned with the educational needs of the kids who end up in the honors courses.
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This is what happens when you only look at things through the lens of race. When thatās the case, the next step is to say āif we donāt have multiple track we wonāt have the problemā. I have a hard time with that brand of logic.
Btw, only looking at things through a single lens is sometime captured in a phrase the includes a construction implement and a type of metal fastener. I was tempted to use that phrase but did not because I didnāt want my post to get deleted or worse edited
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They are a deserving constituency Iām my estimation.
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Please include some teachers and teacher groups in my previous post. My bad.
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Agree ā thereās the same kind of push and pull at BHS as in some other places, and Iād argue that itās a district that is pretty similar to the two in question in the original article. Part of the effort at creating a U9 program was to address these inequities, and I think thereās a good argument to be made (and one that probably prevailed in convos at the time to leave math out of it) that thereās more of a case to be made for leaving an advanced option in place in math which is by definition sequential, requires mastery of some topics before you can get to others, etcā¦ Iām curious what your kidsā experiences in Advanced Math at BHS have been (maybe DM me so as not to sidetrack the thread). My oldest tested into it but ultimately decided against doing it, and some of his friends who did take the Advanced track ultimately regretted it (while others were fine)).
Personally, I care about both. I have one kid who needs advanced courses, the other who needs regular courses. Both deserve access to quality instruction at their appropriate level.
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S23 went through the 9th-11th grade Advanced Math series, and D26 is in 9th grade Advanced Math. Iāll PM you, since our experiences are very school- specific (and teacher-specific).
I will also note for the purposes of the thread that S23 went through middle school and started high school with an IEP for a physical disability (later changed to a 504). In middle school, the goal was to get our student āup to average,ā while in high school he has been able to excel. We have consequently taken advantage of a wide range of services in our district for both struggling and advanced students, and really appreciate all of the support we have received.
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Of course. But so are the rest of the students; the ones you write off as ādisruptive.ā All of these kids were in the same English class in 8th grade. They all have the same level of preparation for 9th Grade English.
Will do. Fascinating that you think you know more about what these kids can handle than their teachers.
At these two schools, they are all still being taught at the appropriate level, just without the segregation.
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I was raised by two people that didnāt go to college. Somehow they raised two smart sons who both did well in K-12 and went off to college. I have often wondered how they instilled in both of us to do well in school. We somehow replicated it with our children. My wife made sure they could read well. For me everything was a math question around the house for the kids. My wife always made sure they did their best. That was the rule. Speaking of rules we had rules around the house. I always said we did all the heavy lifting for the kids during their early years. We got them on the right path.
Now we are lucky to live in a good not great school district. After about 5th grade we didnāt need to do much extra with the kids. My wife always made them to math workbooks in the Summer. Here is the rub. As a parent I would do anything for my kids to succeed. If they werenāt getting the level of schooling they needed I would have found a way. I would have done without or spent any free time helping my kids. I know math I can teach them math. I know how to read I can go to a library and get them books to learn from. I am a believer if you can read and do math and you have a library card you can learn anything.
Now I donāt hold myself up to being some great parent. I know I have made plenty of mistakes. I was just bound and determined to make sure my kids had the opportunity to do better. I just wish more parents really made sure their kids werenāt falling behind.
That being said I would never push my kids to being great in something even in school. I know if I wanted to I could have made sure my kids got a 36 or 1600. It would not have been fun and they would have probably hated me afterwards. But I made sure they had good scores and grades to take them to the next level. What they do on the next level is up to them.
My wife and I looked at our kids as our responsibility and we were to make sure they grew up to be independent contributing members of society.
I know I am preaching to the choir here on CC. Letās face it by just finding this site you take an interest that is more than the average parent.
See though I am a true believer in kids. Kids can be taught to do anything. And once you get them moving in the right direction you will be amazed at what they can do. Sometimes they just need a push. I watched the movie Stand and Deliver while I was in HS and it really stuck with me.
Now I donāt really know what this rant has to do with schools canceling Honors. But I know if it happened to my kids I would have found a way.
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This would not work well for my 2 children. They are at such different levels. One child needs advanced books, the other needs basic books. One child needs sophisticated class discussions, the other child needs discussion of basic themes.
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The same situation occurred with my grandfather and his brother. Grandfather was very advanced, his older brother was average. The school wasnāt able to challenge my grandfather in his class so they dealt with it by having my grandfather skip grades. He was skipped enough grades that he ended up graduating ahead of his older brother. That wasnāt ideal. Way better would have been to have honors tracks but those hadnāt been invented yet.
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One size cannot fit all. Simple.
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Why on earth would anyone expect entering 9th graders to have the "same level of preparation "? Do they in any other field of endeavor.? Of course not. They all survived 8th grade English-but some read Jane Austen on the side for fun, while others relied on cliff notes to get through the bare minimum of in-class readings. Some ran a mile in 5 minutes; some in 14 minutes, but they all passed PE.
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