Not all high school designated honors courses are considered honors for UC and CSU GPA recalculation purposes.
Harrison Bergeron? 
Short Story:
TV movie adaptation:
âHarrison Bergeron lives in the fictional suburban town of Madison, Rhode Island in the year 2053. The audience is told that after the second American Revolution, which started during an ongoing economic depression that was a result of a combination of technological advancement and a widening disparity between the very rich and the very poor, it was mandated that all people be equal in all things. To this end, the social norm of this society has become dystopian egalitarianism. Citizens are pushed to strive to be of equal wealth, intelligence, athletic prowess and social status to all around them. Through a process of selective breeding, mankind is perfecting the perfectly average human being. What is not accomplished through arranged marriages is made up for through technological means, the most prominent of which are showing only mind numbing TV shows, and a headband device worn by all citizens which modulates intelligence, dialing a personâs IQ up or down in order to arrive at a âperfectâ 100.â
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This seems like a bad solution to a real problem.
When you have large discrepancies in school outcomes based on racial or other demographics, it indicates a flaw in the overall system. So the solution to be find where the flaws are and fix those, not get rid of the measurements of outcome.
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AP classes are being eliminated in areas as well as honors classes. And if not eliminated then dumbed down enough so nobody actually can pass the exam. All in the name of equity.
What they need to do is fire bad teachers and teach everybody equally.
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There have been threads in the past where the supply of seats in honors, AP, etc courses was limited and rationed, even though there were more capable and interested students wanting to take them. The rationing was often not perceived to be fair by the complaining posters.
Elimination of gatekeeping would mean offering more seats in the honors, AP, etc courses, which apparently some schools are unwilling or unable to do for some reason.
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It can be hard to find teachers qualified to teach AP level, particularly in the sciences
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If we were really interested in equity we would start with the unequal/inequitable elementary and middle school inputs rather than eliminating high school classes. Itâs way too late by the time they reach HS to make up for the deficits in the younger years. I also agree with eliminating much of the gate keeping to get into honors or AP classes, but keeping the standards the same. Kids mature at different rates and the kid who couldnât keep up in 7th grade math may be moving ahead by 9th grade when it clicks. Iâm pretty sure that although the teachers made recommendations for the following year in my daughterâs HS, a kid could still choose to take honors or AP even if not recommended. Then they either sank or swam like the rest of the class.
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Also school context is taken into consideration. The high school submits a school profile that lists the numbers of honors and AP courses available to students and a student is not penalized by the UC system if they took few such classes when few such classes were offered to them. D23âs high school offers exactly one honors class lol We otherwise havenât had honors classes in our district for years. All classes are quite rigorous, however. All students are held to a high, college preparatory standard. Beyond that, it comes down to grade distribution - some students excel and get As, others experience more challenge and get Cs. But all students are held to a relatively high academic standard and we generally get good results with UC admissions, so no penalty for students without much honors bump to their GPAs.
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The students who fail the AP exams do count against the schoolâs profile tho
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Is that true? In what way?
High school teachers are supposed to have a degree in their subject matter (English, math, history, âŠ) plus a teaching credential. Surely they should be capable of teaching up to college frosh (AP) level material as well as high school level (honors or regular, whatever that means at a given school) material.
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Most school profiles list the percent who pass the exam. Having a high percentage pass should indicate it was a course that met the expected rigor. A low pass rate could indicate that the course wasnt taught well enough to pass the test ( or those enrolled werent ready for the material). In our LPS teachers advise some students to not take the test
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Few can or are interested enough to do so. The shortage of AP science teachers is nationwide.
Perhaps such a shortage of teachers at the high school is the real reason for elimination of courses.
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Pretty sure our profile does not list percent passing the exam. But it is required that all enrolled students take the exam, including (and mostly, since our school has only a few AP classes) seniors who could care less at that point. As I always say they could require my daughter take all those AP exams senior year but they couldnât require she study for them! (She knew she was attending a school that wouldnât give her credit for them by then; she did get a mix of 3âs and 4âs which seems ok to me for not studying, and A- in all classes - the lowest grades of her HS career, she was definitely done by the end of senior year - so overall she did fine and seemed to have learned mostly what she needed to).
How can they require that when taking the exam costs money that perhaps not all families can afford (or want to prioritize in their budget)? Three or four AP tests adds up!
I also wanted to add that, in my opinion, eliminating honors classes is NOT the solution.
The REAL question that they should be asking themselves is WHY are students of color not able to succeed in honors classes? What extra support do those students need? And how do we GET them that support so they CAN succeed?
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I would like to see the schools which are eliminating honors classes consider doing some of the following in elementary, middle, AND high school:
- require each teacher to have free teacher office hours after school. Like a professorâs office hours, but at the pre-college level. Walk-in help for that subject that the instructor teaches.
- offer additional free tutoring before school, after school, during lunch period for students who need extra help beyond the teacher office hours
- proactively reach out to the parents/guardians when a student scores below a 70% on a test.
- proactively reach out to the parents/guardians when a student has below a 70% in a class at any point during the grading period. Ask the parent to meet w/the teacher. Be flexible and be willing to do a phone meeting for the parents who canât take time off of work to do it in person.
When D24 was in middle school, we considered switching her from our charter school to the local middle school. Asked the middle school counselor about what the options were if a student was struggling in a class and needed extra help and we got a âUuuhhhhâŠI guess you could go hire a tutor.â
Did the middle school offer any tutoring there at the school? âUhâŠnoâŠyouâre on your own for that.â
So imagine that youâre a single parent struggling to work 2 jobs to make ends meet, your middle school kid is struggling big time in his/her classes to pass them, and this is the attitude youâre faced with. AND to top it off, the sort of help that your kid needs is beyond what you yourself could academically help him/her with.
It makes me so mad when I think about it.
Several years ago, at our charter elementary school, there was a 5th grade student whose family were refugees from Bhutan. Both parents worked 6 days a week in factory jobs. Neither parent spoke english. The family was connected up with a local refugee assistance charity organization. They assigned an english-speaking mentor to help them figure everything out in America. The 5th grader was failing almost every class.
Parents were devastated because theyâd heard that this school was really excellent and they thought their kidâs failing grades meant that the kid wasnât smart enough.
Nope. The school rallied everybody together. Kid was given free help every morning starting at 7:00 am at school. Spent lunch period with free tutors every day. And extra help after school each day from 2:45-5:30 pm.
within a semester, kid was doing just fine. Fast forward to high school graduation, and the student graduated with flying colors and went to an elite LAC in the Northeast.
School did the same with the kidâs younger siblings, too. Totally transformed that familyâs lives.
EVERY kid deserves a dedicated âAâ team like that.
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Tell me about it! It was definitely a financial stretch for us and I resented it. But you agree to it when you sign up for the class. I think if youâre eligible for free or reduced lunch the fee is waived, otherwise you need to figure it out (itâs possible the school would help if you went to them; I didnât try). But our school doesnât have a lot of APs; my kid took five and that was pretty high for the school; a few kids might have taken as many as seven but that is highly unusual.
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Not sure why this is surprising to folks. NYC schools tried to eliminate its Gifted and Talented program. Thomas Jefferson in Fairfax County VA, one of the top HS in the country, changed admission policies for more equity.
Eliminating Honors Courses is the next logical step (to achieve equal outcomes) after eliminating standardized tests. (And yes, down the line, if this holds, AP will be replaced with DE IMO.)
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