I’ll agree to disagree. There’s lots of remedial intervention available within the normal course progression, at least in our district.
If it’s “just fine,”. I assume that your district is more academically rigorous than ours. I subbed a lot in the high school, and I know exactly what was taught in the classes. English was a joke … and “reading” was all either played on tape for the whole class or each student reading a page aloud. Or a movie based on a book, with a fun activity afterwards (rather than an essay assignment or the like).
Our neighborhood elementary was great. When the various elementary kids came together in middle & high school, things were geared to the kids who needed the most help. My D was bored to tears in middle school, and I sent my S to a private school in MS to avoid the same fate. Neither attended the local high school, although my S did attend public school in another district.
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OK, let’s take a hypothetical high school math teacher. This teacher has to teach 60 students spread across three classes. She divides the students by level and comes up with 10 students who need remedial math, 10 students who need advanced/honors math, and 40 students who need just the regular high school math track. What should she do? Should she create differentiated classes of 10, 40, and 10 students each so that each gets specialized instruction based on their ability/level? She will need to create three completely different courses covering different material at different speeds, but OK. The other issue is that one class is huge (as would be expected - the average is supposed the largest segments - the advanced and remedial should be a small percentage of students - average is called average or a reason - and the district will not fund a fourth class so that she can further divide the average 40). But then she has this huge class with the majority of students. I imagine it is doable and is probably being done in high schools all over America.
But what if she divides randomly and creates three classes of 20 students each. She only has to develop a single course to cover everybody (what a time saver!), but more importantly, each class is reasonably sized so that she can offer individualized attention to everyone in each of the three classes, ensuring that their needs are met - those who need more challenge can get more challenge, those who need more support can get more support. Sure, the honors kids don’t get a special class and maybe some of their classmates are less motivated than they are. But isn’t that often true in life? Won’t that be true in college as well?
Obviously this is completely hypothetical and lacking in the various nuances of reality, but illustrates my view that equity over honors isn’t necessarily a bad thing, imo.
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I would have no way of knowing, but ours is a large and diverse district with just one high school and trying to navigate a lot of the issues outlines in the WSJ article. The English instruction/education my kids have received definitely has not been a “joke.” Both of my kids earned 5s on their AP Lang exam through nothing more than going through regular 9th and 10th grade English classes before AP Lang. This is about the universal 9th grade experience developed recently – I’d say it’s been working pretty well, though of course not perfectly: Four Years In: Evaluating the Universal Ninth Grade’s Successes and Limitations — Berkeley High Jacket
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When I went to high school, there were only honors in English (10th grade and higher; 12th grade honors was AP) and math (leading to AP calculus BC), and a small number of other AP courses (three of which were the level 4 foreign language courses, and around two others). Pretty much everything else was mixed ability, in a school where about a third of graduates went to four year colleges (mostly state universities that were less selective than they are now) at the time.
Even from the point of view of academically stronger students (heading to the state flagship or other similarly or more selective colleges), it wasn’t the academic hellscape people in this thread make it out to be. With all of the complaining here, it seems like there are many students who would have difficulty handling a class, much less a school or college, with even slight differences in student ability. Or a workplace once they enter the workforce…
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I get what you’re saying and I agree. But the problem here is that NO students are being well-served. Do the less advanced students deserve such a subpar educational experience? Of course not. But offering an honors level just gives an escape hatch to the highest performing students without giving the less well performing students the education that they too deserve.
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Perhaps standards were actually enforced back in the Stone Age? Perhaps students were more likely to be native English speakers from stable 2 parent homes? Perhaps things were simply less competitive in high school then? I dont really think our experience 40 years ago has much relevance.
My point is that we should help advanced students as well as students that need additional help.
I could address your hypothetical with another hypothetical but that wouldn’t really achieve anything.
As for colleges, I guess it depends on which college you go to.
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…and today’s pollicization of the academic space is sponsored by…
Oh Moses, smell the roses…
This is a very interesting discussion, but it’s clear opinions are very based on personal experiences. If your district is affluent and focuses largely on rigorous classes you won’t see the need for honors track programs. Now come down to the poor title one districts. Those kids absolutely need to have the option for honors classes. In our district, which has well over 55% title one qualified students, there is a small percentage of each class that needs those honors classes. I am a parent of children who are victims of doing away with honors classes (or letting everyone who wants join the class). When we don’t have honors math classes they are so bored they would rather gouge their eyes out over sitting in class slowly going over the same material. In the honors chemistry class that everyone can join, so many kids fail the tests that the teacher has to give enough extra credit and fluff work so that they still all get As. There is no reward to the students who actually excel and master the material. My daughter was just complaining yesterday that her 99% scores on tests don’t matter because the teacher just gives everyone who fails bonus points. The kids all think they are mastering chemistry when they aren’t. When it comes to math, my kids are jealous to hear about other schools where they can actually take Calc AB/BC. Do I think my kids will catch up in college, absolutely. But on the other hand none of them would ever even consider applying to an elite college because they know haven’t had the preparation that many kids have had. There is nothing wrong with differentiation of academic levels in high school. When you take away differentiation all you are doing is hurting kids who need more challenge. Trust me, teachers don’t give extra challenges to advanced kids. They are too busy getting the rest of the class to reach basic competency. It also doesn’t mean that everyone else should be forgotten about. We should always be working to make sure every child gets every opportunity possible. As a final thought, this online community is littered with post after post by kids who have had Calc AB/BC, linear algebra, Physics C, etc. Let’s try telling them that in the name of equity they don’t get to take those classes. After all, if that is important at some schools it should be important at all schools. I don’t think you will get too far in eliminating those classes in the name of equity before all those kids at elite public and private schools revolt.
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This reminds me of a conversation with one of my daughter’s elementary school teachers. She was highly advanced in math and we wanted to know how the teacher would deal with kids at different levels of achievement.
“Don’t worry, we’ll get them all to the same level by the end of the year”.
Equity? Not what we wanted to hear.
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True, but again if you read the article that’s not what is happening or being suggested
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Yes, though that doesn’t really work in spaces of concentrated poverty and disadvantage. You need a community where a fair number of families have resources and cultural capital. If the community is all refugees that don’t speak English, you’re in big trouble.
We don’t have an education problem in the US. We have a concentrated poverty problem. Our middle-class kids going to middle-class schools are doing fine…and for the most part, so are poor kids going to middle-class schools. But we’ve mostly chosen to build our society to keep that from happening.
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I am not so sure that this is politicization of the academic space. It’s not new or part of the so-called woke movement. I ran into the equity argument more than 20 years ago, when my oldest was in middle school. She learned to multiply and divide fractions in a regular class in elementary school. In 7th grade, a new math program was implemented, and they “learned” fractions. They worked in groups, doing things like finding out how many tuna cans it took to fill a soup can. I spoke with the superintendent and the person in charge of the math program. They told me that “research has shown” that the kids who are ahead in math will be fine - it’s more important to help the kids who are not grasping math concepts. I advocated for allowing the kids who understood the concepts to move forward, but that was apparently not in keeping with the principles espoused by the dude-of-the-day who felt that kids learned best when kept together … the strong ones were to help the struggling ones, and they’d supposedly reinforce what they knew by doing so. It’s more of a school of educational thought than it is political (I am not politically conservative).
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I can’t read the article because I won’t pay for it. In the long run though, if you start eliminating honors classes in middle and everyone works at the same level, you will still have trouble getting to the advanced math and science classes because you held everyone back. That being said, my statement still stands. If you told the thousands of advanced students that post on here that they weren’t allowed to have those classes in the name of equity how far would it go. Equity is great in theory, but those that preach it the most send their kids to elite public and private schools and never have to deal with the ramifications of it.
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For those who can’t access the WSJ article, the two school districts mentioned in the article where honors classes were eliminated are Culver City Unified School District and Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District. Both have median household income in excess of $100k.
I guess if you feel like “only” getting through BC Calculus is limiting. But lots of kids who need to have higher level math can and will take DE classes. As described above, eliminating Honors math in middle school in our district translates to all kids taking Algebra I in 8th grade, along with extra support for kids who need intervention. The article (which you can read for free — just make an account) isn’t about eliminating upper level classes. It’s about not separating kids into H and non-H English in 9th grade.
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I agree. I was reading an article about schools in some areas that have zero students in some grades that are at grade level for reading or math (or maybe it was proficient at reading and math). That is really disturbing. What ever happened with Charter schools? I had read some really good research regarding the successful charter school outcomes. Unfortunately, some charter schools were/are very bad. Is it a case of a few bad apples spoiling the bunch? We can’t say that there are no bad apples in the public school barrel. I don’t know enough about the topic. We had a middle/high school combo charter school open in our area and even though it was really tough to get in (so many families wanted to give it a try) it closed after about five years amidst scandal. And our taxes keep increasing as someone mentioned above. If your public school is failing most of its students you should have a choice to go to a school with better outcomes. I know it’s easier said than done.
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Wow, the Catholic school has gifted programs? I’ve never heard of that.
Let me ask you the question that I asked upthread. Shouldn’t these school districts not separating the kids into AP and non-AP classes in later years if the AP classes by then are still inequitably represented? If they don’t separate the kids then, wouldn’t they have to eliminate the AP classes as well, based on the same rational?
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