Where to find WJ school profile?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think MCPS needs a special AP-level English class for 9th graders. Honors should be fine for most of the top roughly 1/3 of students (more or less depending on school), and “on-level” needs to be available for the large number of students who don’t have the preparation for high school ELA work.

This would probably be true if the Honors 9 curriculum included honors level material. Unfortunately, the Honors 9 curriculum is a complete embarrassment. The books are generally at a very low reading level, and in my kid's experience (with verification from his teacher), the curriculum focuses on only one type of writing per quarter. So, they might learn dabble in how to write an argument during one grading period, but that type of writing will generally be ignored for the rest of the year. From what I can tell, this is the fault of the curriculum MCPS has decided to roll out, not the fault of the teachers. I really wish my younger kid would have chosen APEX, as his older sister did.

The primary benefit of the APEX English 9 and 10 curriculum at WJ is that it differs from the MCPS Honors curriculum - the literature is more challenging and it delves much more heavily into analytical and argumentative writing throughout the year. It moves much more quickly, as well, which means the kids really have the opportunity to build their skills over the course of each year. The APEX English classes did a really solid job of preparing my daughter for AP and college level writing. From what I've seen of Honors English 9, it does nothing of the sort.