Universal AP English & History at Wilson next year for 11th grade
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Anonymous
Has Honors for All been effective at “chipping away” at the achievement gap? This same cohort has had 2 years of this plan already. Has Wilson reported any results of the experiment? We have one tiny anecdote above of a boy saying he gets better grades with less work. Any other data? |
Anonymous
No, students do not have to take the AP exams. |
Anonymous
Yeah, you’re right: if systemic racism hasn’t been solved in two years, we should probably stop trying. |
Anonymous
No, I don’t think we shouldn’t try, but it’s dumb to do things just because they look good if they don’t work! What happened to the promised small classes? Where are the extra support sessions? Look at that article posted above about all the stuff the district in NY did to make their program work! Window dressing is not a solution and has some serious negatives. |
Anonymous
I wouldn't include anything posted anonymously on this website as a reliable data point, not even as an anecdote. But you raise a fair question. And I think that is a much better tone/approach than a lot of the other spewing. It is fair to ask Wilson what the outcomes/results have been of Honors for All and how that played into this decision. That seems like a more meaningful path than making a lot of assumptions. |
Anonymous
I agree. Since quantitative data is the universally accepted metric for measuring change, it would be very interesting to see if the test scores of formerly under-performing students will have improved, over time, after being immersed in "honors for all" and "AP for all." We already know from the studies on similar efforts that the test scores of formerly high-performing students do not decrease after being removed from accelerated courses. Obviously, the data arising from Wilson's efforts cannot be analyzed until DCPS reinstates testing. Notwithstanding this area of interest, we should not avoid the observation that the marketing of "honors for all" and "AP for all" is, on its face, stupid. A class that promotes itself as "honors" for everyone is not essentially an "honors" class any longer. It is a regular class. Same with "AP for all" -- the course is no longer a college-level course if a portion of the students enrolled at the course are not even potentially capable of performing at the college level. Both sets of courses are simply regular courses. It is this effort to roll out the courses in such a stupid, patently dishonest, way that I think infuriates many of the observers here. Of course, many others delight in this, and would (privately) refer to the marketing as "a feature, not a bug." But the dishonesty of the marketing effort runs contrary to the purpose of a public project. Public money should not be spent with the self-satisfying purpose of triggering a bunch of people who would like to have an accelerated academic experience for their kids. My inference is that DCPS wouldn't mind of those parents opt to leave the system, but if I'm correct about that, the inherent motivation being expressed by public officials reveals a terrible sickness. |
Anonymous
Well said. |
Anonymous
This is my experience: April - May 2019 - Principal Martin told then 8th grade Deal parents of Honors for All, that was then in 9th grade but supposed to expand to higher levels year after year - at the question how kids who are behind can function she responded that in 9th grade classes would be 10-15 kids max and that the school would identify students in need of extra help and help them so by the end of the year they would have improved and by 10th grade could again take honor classes and AP classes 9th grade - classes were gigantic, my kid had a class with 37 kids, the smallest was 25. my kid is at grade level so I don't have direct experience but I doubt, given high big classes were, that kids could get a lot of personal attention May 2020, end of 9th grade - after mostly white kids sign up for AP World History, the Principal, instead of reflecting on why the honor for all system had apparently failed to prepare minority kids to sign up for the AP class in 10th grade, cancel the class for all sophomores citing institutional racisms. the call with the principal and parents of affected kids was depressing. it did not seem that the school was willing to look at its own system (was honors for all working? if not, as it appeared, so what can we do to bring kids who are behind to the level of everybody else?) and there was no explanation on how canceling the AP class for sophomores who had already signed up was going to help the kids who were behind. and the decision had already been made. as a last note, the teacher who was also on the call insisted that the decision had been made unanimously by the social studies department, while my kid's history teacher told us expressly that she thought the decision was idiotic and that she did not agree with it at all. and now the AP for all BS. to me this looks like DCPS deja-vu. DCPS scrambles with a high numbers of kids who do not perform at grade level so, teachers cheat on tests (years ago that happened at some elementary schools that showed significant improvements on test scores, only to find out later than kids' responses had been changed. so kids who were falling behind were not identified and were not helped, but the school, and DCPS, could boast about how school reform was working. the Ballou scandal, where the former chancellor held the 100% graduation 100% going to college BS as a crowning of her 10 years tenure, and then we found out that it was all a fraud and so many kids were not actually in a position to graduate including kids who had 4 or 5 months of absences from school. so now because not that many minority kids take AP classes, with the stroke of a pen the school makes them all AP students. how are kids who are now below grade level in English (and there are a good number based on tests) going to do in a AP English class? we were already promised very small classes in 9th grade and extra help and personal support and that did not happened so the same BS will happen again, but the school will be able to claim to have closed the achievement gap in a few short years. you ask what we should do? I am not an educator so I admit I dont have a perfect solution, but just stop the lying and BS would be a great start. and after 2 years of honors for all, see how it is working, or not working and make adjustments, not just forging ahead with even more BS and dismissing people who complain as racists concerned about their snowflakes. I studied abroad in a country with no tracking and with the entire class taking the same classes year after year in MS and HS and we all did well, so I am certainly not a die hard advocate of segregating kids, quite the opposite. but at the same time there were no kids below grade level in my system. if kids were not a grade level they would have to repeat the entire year. also, in elementary school we did not do a lot of fancy research on DNA but we had a very solid preparation on the basics, math and reading and writing, more in depth work was left for HS. finally, I agree with the poster above about the level of the honor classes. a pig with lipstick is still a pig and you can call a class "fantastically advanced math" but if the content is basic this is still a casi class, I can't believe people are really fooled by names. my kid is awful at STEM just hanging on until the day she will take her last math test in her life in school to even forgot math exist. at Deal she was in the basic classes (fancy name there too, like accelerated math or something but it was the basic class) and did ok with it with work and our help. at Wilson she breezed through Algebra last year with A all year. my experience with the Wilson teachers has been that they are great and dedicated and go the extra mile to help students, especially students who struggle (a math teacher last year instituted a weekly call on Sunday for parents with DL just to talk to the parents and make sure kids were on track) so certainly that was part of her success, but I saw what she was doing and the class was just a regular class at best ( same for Geometry and Chemistry), whoever thinks that these are some higher level classes above regular classes is just deluded a good start would be to look at the situation with honesty, see what is working and not cover up what is not working and cut the BS |
Anonymous
Small classes! Extra support sessions! That's what struggling kids need. That should be the very basic that cannot be compromised on. |
Anonymous
| Will they decrease the range of APs offered in order to accommodate the changes? |
Anonymous
Why would they need to do that? They will have additional slots (and teachers) based on not offering "on-level" 11th grade English and non-AP US History. |
Anonymous
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I have a couple of thoughts as a HS teacher myself:
1. Doing this in the 4x4 schedule is a big push. That schedule does not give students time to process information learned or seek out the teacher for help before moving on to the next topic. 2. This move really hurts STEM students given that many choose to load up on STEM APs and take on level classes for humanities (for instance many of my students take AP Calculus BC, AP Physics and then choose to do on grade level US History to balance the workload). Those kids will either end up not taking APs in their subjects of interest or have a killer schedule. 3. Any time an AP is forced upon all students without extra support (i.e. spread the course over two years, create small classes, double up the class to be two class periods, etc.) the rigor is decreased. Getting an AP class ‘certified’ by College Board takes no work and doesn’t mean you have to cover the content at all. 4. As an addition to #3, DCPS will not allow a bunch of students to get Fs in these courses so the rigor will decrease as a result of that. Just my thoughts from my experiences! |
Anonymous
Re: #1, 4x4 also means fewer classes at once, so students won’t be trying to master eight subjects simultaneously. I’d think this would also help with #2.... |
Anonymous
PP but this is true, although a student could be quite rusty in a subject given in a 4x4 you can have history the fall of sophomore year and not take a history course again until winter of junior year. And AP classes that start February 1st for an early May exam are at a huge disadvantage. Three months, with winter and spring break thrown in, to learn an AP class is crazy. |
Anonymous
all these things are clear and obvious, so the school can see them too and they don't care. 4X4 schedule and AP for all is a recipe for disaster unless you fake the numbers. small classes and extra help were promised for 9th grade honors for all and did not materialize so I am not sure why we should expect anything different. They don't care about the kids, even the kids they claim they want to help. They will water down classes, inflate grades, and will not require all the kids to take the AP test lest the failure would be obvious. the way the decisions are made, by fiat without any input or consultation with kids and parents, shows that there is no interest in working with the school community. |