Honors for All: when will it end

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
My senior just graduated, OP, with a dozen AP classes, like many students.

AP is the new Honors.
Honors is the new Regular.
Regular is the new Remedial.

This has been going on for years.
If you don't know this, you haven't been paying attention.

If you care at all about college admissions, you have to play that game. There are plenty of 4.2 wgpa, multiple-AP students who are rejected from UMD.

That's the way it was a few years ago, but now what's happening is the schools are not even offering Regular classes. Everyone gets put together in what they are calling Honors classes.

Even Health is Honors for everyone!

Last year they had regular and honors health, but I'm hoping they offer honors PE soon.

The required health class is honors for all.

http://coursebulletin.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/CourseLists/Index/225/#Health_Courses

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
My senior just graduated, OP, with a dozen AP classes, like many students.

AP is the new Honors.
Honors is the new Regular.
Regular is the new Remedial.

This has been going on for years.
If you don't know this, you haven't been paying attention.

If you care at all about college admissions, you have to play that game. There are plenty of 4.2 wgpa, multiple-AP students who are rejected from UMD.

True. When low skill students are mainstreamed, honors becomes regular. It’s not necessarily a bad thing but I agree that you have to be aware of it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
My senior just graduated, OP, with a dozen AP classes, like many students.

AP is the new Honors.
Honors is the new Regular.
Regular is the new Remedial.

This has been going on for years.
If you don't know this, you haven't been paying attention.

If you care at all about college admissions, you have to play that game. There are plenty of 4.2 wgpa, multiple-AP students who are rejected from UMD.

True. When low skill students are mainstreamed, honors becomes regular. It’s not necessarily a bad thing but I agree that you have to be aware of it.

Parents want their kids to do well and pressure the school to make exceptions. This has led to things like SAT scores being boosted by 200+ points relative to scores before 1990, or 40% of the class having an A average instead of just 5%.

I even remember when you had to get recommended for classes like AP English. Some parents would pressure the school to let their children into it, which then would dumb it down.

Honors for all was a completely predictable result.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
My senior just graduated, OP, with a dozen AP classes, like many students.

AP is the new Honors.
Honors is the new Regular.
Regular is the new Remedial.

This has been going on for years.
If you don't know this, you haven't been paying attention.

If you care at all about college admissions, you have to play that game. There are plenty of 4.2 wgpa, multiple-AP students who are rejected from UMD.

True. When low skill students are mainstreamed, honors becomes regular. It’s not necessarily a bad thing but I agree that you have to be aware of it.

Parents want their kids to do well and pressure the school to make exceptions. This has led to things like SAT scores being boosted by 200+ points relative to scores before 1990, or 40% of the class having an A average instead of just 5%.

I even remember when you had to get recommended for classes like AP English. Some parents would pressure the school to let their children into it, which then would dumb it down.

Honors for all was a completely predictable result.

Then what do you want? The whole country is going with this trend but you want MCPS to revert back? It only hurts chances of the college admissions of MCPS kids when their GPA drops from 4.5 to 3.0.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
My senior just graduated, OP, with a dozen AP classes, like many students.

AP is the new Honors.
Honors is the new Regular.
Regular is the new Remedial.

This has been going on for years.
If you don't know this, you haven't been paying attention.

If you care at all about college admissions, you have to play that game. There are plenty of 4.2 wgpa, multiple-AP students who are rejected from UMD.

True. When low skill students are mainstreamed, honors becomes regular. It’s not necessarily a bad thing but I agree that you have to be aware of it.

Then schools should be more forthcoming about it. Instead what's been happening is the regular courses have quietly been eliminated and all kids are being assigned to honors regardless of what their grades have been.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
My senior just graduated, OP, with a dozen AP classes, like many students.

AP is the new Honors.
Honors is the new Regular.
Regular is the new Remedial.

This has been going on for years.
If you don't know this, you haven't been paying attention.

If you care at all about college admissions, you have to play that game. There are plenty of 4.2 wgpa, multiple-AP students who are rejected from UMD.

Except they are all coming out of the same small number of high schools, which reduces their chances. My DD had friends at Whitman that were doing 2 science AP classes in sophomore year and taking college level classes at home, to give herself the edge. The more you push, the more pressure you put on everyone and the more it takes to be something higher than the general output of 4.0 (unweighted) kids.

What's true is that if you're in a wealthy MCPS cluster and you want do be competitive for college admissions, you have to take more APs than if you were at a school that offers fewer, since universities get the info sheet from each high school, and want to see that an applicant has taken advantage of their opportunities. It's the price you pay for getting overall better teachers and a more studious student body. I've had kids at Walter Johnson and will have kids at BCC, and I think it's a fair deal. Pros and cons.

Better teachers? You haven’t had kids in public school very long, have you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
My senior just graduated, OP, with a dozen AP classes, like many students.

AP is the new Honors.
Honors is the new Regular.
Regular is the new Remedial.

This has been going on for years.
If you don't know this, you haven't been paying attention.

If you care at all about college admissions, you have to play that game. There are plenty of 4.2 wgpa, multiple-AP students who are rejected from UMD.

And then everyone is like "Why are our kids doing drugs and so depressed?" Duh.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
My senior just graduated, OP, with a dozen AP classes, like many students.

AP is the new Honors.
Honors is the new Regular.
Regular is the new Remedial.

This has been going on for years.
If you don't know this, you haven't been paying attention.

If you care at all about college admissions, you have to play that game. There are plenty of 4.2 wgpa, multiple-AP students who are rejected from UMD.

True. When low skill students are mainstreamed, honors becomes regular. It’s not necessarily a bad thing but I agree that you have to be aware of it.

Parents want their kids to do well and pressure the school to make exceptions. This has led to things like SAT scores being boosted by 200+ points relative to scores before 1990, or 40% of the class having an A average instead of just 5%.

I even remember when you had to get recommended for classes like AP English. Some parents would pressure the school to let their children into it, which then would dumb it down.

Honors for all was a completely predictable result.

The bolded is not the same. Students are better prepared for the SAT, and it has been renormed.

For the rest, you can whine about nomenclature all you want, but the net result is that you need to work the system for your kid. That's all. Honors is now a normal thing, so your kid can only stand out with a ton of APs, fantastic ECs, etc.

It's an arms race. You can choose to participate or not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
My senior just graduated, OP, with a dozen AP classes, like many students.

AP is the new Honors.
Honors is the new Regular.
Regular is the new Remedial.

This has been going on for years.
If you don't know this, you haven't been paying attention.

If you care at all about college admissions, you have to play that game. There are plenty of 4.2 wgpa, multiple-AP students who are rejected from UMD.

And then everyone is like "Why are our kids doing drugs and so depressed?" Duh.

Again, mixing everything up.

The kids who are serious and doing multiple APs are not the same ones vaping in the bathroom, partying and doing harder drugs. They're at home, studying. They do risk burnout and they're ALL stressed.

The druggies are not on the 12-AP track. This is my neighbor kid, buying drugs, out at all hours, whooping it up. He's a smart kid too. He's going to community college, but he might be perfectly well-adjusted in a decade, who knows.

Statistically, the former tend to reach higher income brackets than the latter. Drugs are now laced with Fentanyl and you play Russian roulette every time. But hey, at least the druggies are not stressed right now!

[Anonymous]

Lol. Everyone is vaping, including the kids with lots of APs and athletes. They smoke weed to deal with the stress.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
My senior just graduated, OP, with a dozen AP classes, like many students.

AP is the new Honors.
Honors is the new Regular.
Regular is the new Remedial.

This has been going on for years.
If you don't know this, you haven't been paying attention.

If you care at all about college admissions, you have to play that game. There are plenty of 4.2 wgpa, multiple-AP students who are rejected from UMD.

And then everyone is like "Why are our kids doing drugs and so depressed?" Duh.

Again, mixing everything up.

The kids who are serious and doing multiple APs are not the same ones vaping in the bathroom, partying and doing harder drugs. They're at home, studying. They do risk burnout and they're ALL stressed.

The druggies are not on the 12-AP track. This is my neighbor kid, buying drugs, out at all hours, whooping it up. He's a smart kid too. He's going to community college, but he might be perfectly well-adjusted in a decade, who knows.

Statistically, the former tend to reach higher income brackets than the latter. Drugs are now laced with Fentanyl and you play Russian roulette every time. But hey, at least the druggies are not stressed right now!

LOL. Welcome to Churchill.
You don't live in the county, do you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
My senior just graduated, OP, with a dozen AP classes, like many students.

AP is the new Honors.
Honors is the new Regular.
Regular is the new Remedial.

This has been going on for years.
If you don't know this, you haven't been paying attention.

If you care at all about college admissions, you have to play that game. There are plenty of 4.2 wgpa, multiple-AP students who are rejected from UMD.

And then everyone is like "Why are our kids doing drugs and so depressed?" Duh.

Again, mixing everything up.

The kids who are serious and doing multiple APs are not the same ones vaping in the bathroom, partying and doing harder drugs. They're at home, studying. They do risk burnout and they're ALL stressed.

The druggies are not on the 12-AP track. This is my neighbor kid, buying drugs, out at all hours, whooping it up. He's a smart kid too. He's going to community college, but he might be perfectly well-adjusted in a decade, who knows.

Statistically, the former tend to reach higher income brackets than the latter. Drugs are now laced with Fentanyl and you play Russian roulette every time. But hey, at least the druggies are not stressed right now!

LOL. Welcome to Churchill.
You don't live in the county, do you?

Yeah, stop lying. My teen is at Walter Johnson, and has friends at Churchill, Whitman and BCC. We've been around for a while in this part of the county. I'd say that 99% of high achievers in these schools are not wasting their time doing drugs.

But you go on spreading nonsense on DCUM

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
My senior just graduated, OP, with a dozen AP classes, like many students.

AP is the new Honors.
Honors is the new Regular.
Regular is the new Remedial.

This has been going on for years.
If you don't know this, you haven't been paying attention.

If you care at all about college admissions, you have to play that game. There are plenty of 4.2 wgpa, multiple-AP students who are rejected from UMD.

True. When low skill students are mainstreamed, honors becomes regular. It’s not necessarily a bad thing but I agree that you have to be aware of it.

Then schools should be more forthcoming about it. Instead what's been happening is the regular courses have quietly been eliminated and all kids are being assigned to honors regardless of what their grades have been.

Forthcoming? What more do you want, if you look at courses offered and don't see a regular class for that subject? Are you going to assume that all students magically became good at the subject, or are you going to understand that the "Honors" class is just the least challenging class?

I see you belong in the Regular class, PP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a horrible trend in mcps middle & high schools. Any end in sight?

Why are you so interested in gatekeeping?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
My senior just graduated, OP, with a dozen AP classes, like many students.

AP is the new Honors.
Honors is the new Regular.
Regular is the new Remedial.

This has been going on for years.
If you don't know this, you haven't been paying attention.

If you care at all about college admissions, you have to play that game. There are plenty of 4.2 wgpa, multiple-AP students who are rejected from UMD.

True. When low skill students are mainstreamed, honors becomes regular. It’s not necessarily a bad thing but I agree that you have to be aware of it.

Then schools should be more forthcoming about it. Instead what's been happening is the regular courses have quietly been eliminated and all kids are being assigned to honors regardless of what their grades have been.

Forthcoming? What more do you want, if you look at courses offered and don't see a regular class for that subject? Are you going to assume that all students magically became good at the subject, or are you going to understand that the "Honors" class is just the least challenging class?

I see you belong in the Regular class, PP

You don't understand. When our then-8th-grader was registering for 9th grade, the school's registration form listed both regular and honors classes for English and Biology. But then when they got to 9th, the regular classes had disappeared and every 9th grader was put into 'Honors' English and 'Honors' Biology. There was no explanation about this change ever shared by the school. We only found out it happened because a parent shared the info on the listserv.