No no! We can't have kids learning up to their ability. Thank god Illinois and Calif have the good sense to lead the charge against accumulating excess knowledge.
BTW, I feel sick that our kids went to high schools where all their classes were either Honors or AP level. I'm not sure they'll ever fully recover.
Schools Cut Honors Classes to Address Racial Equity. It Isn’t a Quick Fix.
Districts in California, Illinois report data pointing to some benefits from changes as vocal parents push back
A number of U.S. high schools are trying to reduce racial segregation on campuses by eliminating two-tiered systems of honors and regular classes.
By Sara Randazzo, WSJ
Oct. 9, 2023 5:30 am ET
Before science teacher Rachel Richards’s Silicon Valley high school eliminated honors classes in her department, teaching the non-honors courses meant you were in for a year of behavioral problems, she recalled.
Now, students from across achievement levels are taught together, and Richards has noticed the teenagers try harder and pay more attention to lessons. “You’re not considered uncool anymore for taking a class seriously,” she said.
Menlo-Atherton High School, where Richards has worked for a decade, is among a number of high schools nationwide that are trying to reduce racial segregation on campuses by eliminating two-tiered systems of honors and regular classes, primarily during freshman year.
The theory goes that starting everyone on equal footing gives more students the confidence and skills needed to enroll in honors and Advanced Placement courses in later years. The changes typically target Black and Latino students, who are underrepresented in advanced courses in most states.
Districts in California and Illinois report mixed success in widening the pool for advanced classes after making changes to freshman-year offerings, recently released district data show. Students who continue on to AP or International Baccalaureate classes still succeed on national exams, even in the absence of freshman-year honors classes, school officials say.
Some students reported a decrease in rigor after the changes to honors classes.
“We’re not fixing anything,” said Jacob Yuryev, a senior in the Sequoia Union High School District, where Menlo-Atherton is located. The district’s four traditional high schools have eliminated about half a dozen honors classes in recent years, but the number of lower-income and minority students choosing to enroll in advanced courses later in high school hasn’t budged, according to a new report. “We’re simply delaying the emergence of these realities,” Yuryev said.
Sequoia Union officials are pointing to some signs of success, like more socioeconomically disadvantaged students meeting graduation requirements and completing courses needed for University of California admissions.
The district’s 121-page report has re-stirred a decades-old debate over so-called tracking in this Northern California community, which pulls students from wealthy, tech industry-fueled enclaves as well as working-class, immigrant communities. Vocal parents have insisted that their high-striving children are being shortchanged and that removing honors classes won’t solve an achievement gap. A parent-led petition to restore the classes has garnered 700 signatures. Teacher sentiments have been split.
“I’ve had several people tell me that ninth grade is soft,” Sequoia Union school board President Richard Ginn said during a September meeting. “I’m hearing many people say…‘My God, we can’t go there now.’ ”
Yuryev, who serves as a student board member, said students he has informally polled oppose eliminating freshman honors classes, even those who have no interest in taking the classes themselves.
District administrators and teachers spent hours at the recent board meeting defending the elimination of certain honors courses, arguing that the changes haven’t harmed high-achieving students and that they create a more equitable learning environment.
“It’s OK at the freshman level that they are enjoying a common experience,” Karen van Putten, the principal of Woodside High School, told the Sequoia Union board. “And common should not be a negative word.” Woodside eliminated honors freshman English in 2022, a year after Menlo-Atherton did the same. District staff said honors English had overwhelmingly attracted Woodside’s white students and not its Hispanic ones.
In the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Ill., the local high school is analyzing the first year of a revamped curriculum that enrolls almost all ninth-graders in honors classes for English, science, history and world languages. Those who test below grade level are placed instead in catch-up courses.
Oak Park and River Forest High School officials pitched “honors-for-all” to the community for three years before implementing it. “I’m not willing to have my children succeed if it means they have to step on Black kids to do so,” Mary Anne Mohanraj, a board member for the high school, said in October 2021 before voting in favor, calling it a moral choice.
In the freshman class entering Oak Park in 2021-2022, a year before the new system, white students made up 54% of the class and at least 62% of those in honors classes; Black students were 18% of the class and 9% or less of honors enrollment.
In a district study released last month, the school points to a promising early sign: The proportion of courses that sophomores enrolled in this year that were honors or Advanced Placement rose by 8 percentage points, to 44%. In the four restructured subject areas, it rose 7 percentage points to 66%.
While more students across racial groups enrolled in advanced classes after the changes, differences by race persist. Among white sophomores, 77% of their core classes were at advanced levels, compared with 41% for Black students, 60% for Hispanic students and 85% for Asian students.
Five years ago, 66% of white sophomores’ core classes were honors or AP level, compared with 22% for Black sophomores, 42% for Hispanic sophomores and 62% for Asian sophomores.
Laurie Fiorenza, Oak Park’s assistant superintendent for student learning, said staff could see in test data that students across racial groups were capable of honors-level work, but only certain students were enrolling. “We had to remove those barriers,” she said.
State-issued survey data included in the report shows that after the changes were implemented, freshmen ranked classroom rigor and teacher expectations lower than prior years’ ninth-graders.
Misty Olson said she might have had trouble convincing her son to challenge himself as an Oak Park freshman last fall if honors hadn’t been automatic. But he did well, earning As and Bs, and “it gave him the confidence” to take Advanced Placement U.S. history and honors courses this year, she said.
Last year, about a third of Menlo-Atherton High School students took an Advanced Placement class.
At Menlo-Atherton, students can still pick from more than two dozen advanced courses. Last year, about a third of the school’s 2,100 students took an Advanced Placement class.
The school’s freshman honors English course—which assigned some 40 pages of nightly reading to complete the entirety of “The Odyssey”—had a reputation for causing stress and burnout, as well as intellectual awakenings. Two years ago, the school replaced honors with a single freshman course called Multicultural Literature and Voice, which pulls from a more diverse set of reading material.
Menlo-Atherton English teacher Lara Gill said the benefits of the new course, which she helped develop, have been so apparent there is no way she could go back.
Gill sees students from different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds sharing ideas and building off one another. “We strip down these ideas of status on who should have the airtime and who shouldn’t,” Gill said.
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