Wilson honors for all - how has it worked?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think all the staff at Wilson should take turns being Principal. Surely some of the staff besides Ms. Wildon have the talent to be principal but have been overlooked. PrincipalPowers for All!

(And, of course, the salary should be shared too.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The fact that PARCC scores at Deal and Hardy range from 1 to 5 shows that there are significant grade-level disparities among the students.

+1

How does the administrator address these data in the context of honors for all?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I used to be an economics professor. I did my graduate and undergraduate work at two universities that are in the top ten in my field. When I began teaching at a local private university, I discovered, in talking with the students, that they hadn;t covered the same material in their intro econ courses that is generally covered in the same courses at the top ten schools. The local private university had left out more rigorous topics. The professors at the local private also tended to ask their students to do in class debate or presentations, rather than writing lengthy papers. So some colleges do pitch their courses to the median student.

They don;t have to, though. If this same thing is actually occurring at Wilson, parents should be able to provide numerous examples of topics left off the syllabus or assignments made less rigorous. Please do so. If it is happening, supporting evidence should be easy to find.

Without supporting evidence, the hostility to Honors for All just sounds like ranting.

This metastudy seems to suggest that, on average, previous posters noting that detracking doesn;t hurt top students, but helps student at the bottom.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/21349011/

While this one suggests that within- class ability grouping benefits high achieving students, while between- class grouping does not.

https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1121483

Sorry at some point the studies don't matter and you have to use common sense

If you have kids who are multiple levels behind grade level with kids who are multiple levels above grade level there is no way a teacher can differentiate across that wide gap especially in high school. A teacher will most likely teach on grade level. So what happens is the kids on the bottom will struggle and some might drop out since there is no lower level and the material is way beyond their ability. Meanwhile the kids at the top will be extremely bored with the material and have essentially wasted a year of school. Additionally on both sides there will most likely be discipline issues because the class is not relevant to the top bottom or the top.

You can go ahead and take medications, have medical procedures, and buy cars whose safety and efficacy are determined by common sense. I'll stick with science, thanks. "Common sense" used to suggest that evil spirits made people ill.

There is a huge difference between your examples and what we are talking about here. Take for example the efficacy of a medication. It's very difficult to know how a complex, dynamic system such as a human patient will react to a new medication. That is often outside any common sense intuition because most people--including sometimes even the experts--don't know really understand the body works/reacts. And as such, you need controlled experiments to tease out the efficacy.

But we all have been students and many, including myself, have taught. So we have useful experience and intuition about what happens when you attempt to teach students of vastly different abilities and vastly different motivation in the same classroom. And as parents, we have seen the negative impact of this dynamic as early as 7th grade. So I respectfully offer that it is unwise to dismiss common sense in this instance.

[Anonymous]

My DS was your in a Kindergarten class that did no differentiation. He was a great reader yet still had to spend a lot of time going over really simple texts with the whole class. He hated school.

He went to first grade at a school that did an excellent job of differentiating for reading and had a lot more choice time. He loved school.

Do I think he’d enjoy HFA for 9th and 10th when he gets there in a few years. Heck no!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I used to be an economics professor. I did my graduate and undergraduate work at two universities that are in the top ten in my field. When I began teaching at a local private university, I discovered, in talking with the students, that they hadn;t covered the same material in their intro econ courses that is generally covered in the same courses at the top ten schools. The local private university had left out more rigorous topics. The professors at the local private also tended to ask their students to do in class debate or presentations, rather than writing lengthy papers. So some colleges do pitch their courses to the median student.

They don;t have to, though. If this same thing is actually occurring at Wilson, parents should be able to provide numerous examples of topics left off the syllabus or assignments made less rigorous. Please do so. If it is happening, supporting evidence should be easy to find.

Without supporting evidence, the hostility to Honors for All just sounds like ranting.

This metastudy seems to suggest that, on average, previous posters noting that detracking doesn;t hurt top students, but helps student at the bottom.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/21349011/

While this one suggests that within- class ability grouping benefits high achieving students, while between- class grouping does not.

https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1121483

Sorry at some point the studies don't matter and you have to use common sense

If you have kids who are multiple levels behind grade level with kids who are multiple levels above grade level there is no way a teacher can differentiate across that wide gap especially in high school. A teacher will most likely teach on grade level. So what happens is the kids on the bottom will struggle and some might drop out since there is no lower level and the material is way beyond their ability. Meanwhile the kids at the top will be extremely bored with the material and have essentially wasted a year of school. Additionally on both sides there will most likely be discipline issues because the class is not relevant to the top bottom or the top.

You can go ahead and take medications, have medical procedures, and buy cars whose safety and efficacy are determined by common sense. I'll stick with science, thanks. "Common sense" used to suggest that evil spirits made people ill.

There is a huge difference between your examples and what we are talking about here. Take for example the efficacy of a medication. It's very difficult to know how a complex, dynamic system such as a human patient will react to a new medication. That is often outside any common sense intuition because most people--including sometimes even the experts--don't know really understand the body works/reacts. And as such, you need controlled experiments to tease out the efficacy.

But we all have been students and many, including myself, have taught. So we have useful experience and intuition about what happens when you attempt to teach students of vastly different abilities and vastly different motivation in the same classroom. And as parents, we have seen the negative impact of this dynamic as early as 7th grade. So I respectfully offer that it is unwise to dismiss common sense in this instance.

Absolutely. Economist here from a few pages back.

Re: “science”: forty years ago, “studies” said that fat was terrible and carbs were good for you. Turned out that nutrition is very difficult to nail down (like education), and a bunch of corporate sugar interests were able to influence nutrition studies. If forty years ago you had used common sense and rejected those crappy sugar studies, you would have been better off.

Cars and medicine are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT scientific fields than education (and nutrition).* Be really really careful you’re using a high-quality study before you cite an education study.





* also, note that literally *hundreds of billions of dollars* have gone into funding for medical research, just in the past 5 years. Same with automotive research, development, and testing. Nutrition and education spend way way way less on research.

[Anonymous]

I heard a few weeks ago that CHEC is also “Honors for all.” Anyone have anything to report about that program?

[Anonymous]

What amazes me is that admin cites a study that says some kids with average or above average IQ are in the lower class and some with average or below average are in the higher level classes. Because of this, they are basically justifying HFA.

Are you kidding me?

Since when does IQ equate 100% directly to academic achievement? Show me a good study that says that. We all know kids with high IQ who are lazy and don’t apply themselves and don’t do well in school. There are kids with average IQ but extremely motivated, disciplined, hard working and as a result do well in school.

I’m not saying all, but I bet some of those kids in the lowest level class with average or above average IQ are not motivated to do the work, don’t care about school, or have other reasons that prevent them from doing well - neglect, emotional/physical abuse, depression, anxiety, missing school too much, etc.. Many of these factors are more associated with poverty. No motivation or apathy about school likely can be traced to parent’s values, and we know that poverty is a big factor here. If parents don’t place a high importance to education and don’t support their children, then that child will likely not do well.

Those with average IQ who are in honors and doing well are likely the motivated, hardworking type.

In my opinion, teachers recommendations are the best because they know the kids and what they can and cannot do in the classroom. They know how well they can or cannot perform. if admin wants to be more objective, then set parameters such as 4 on parcc and 80% or higher on a developed test for entry to honors class. These 2 parameters can make up 40% each and teachers recommendations 20%. You get the point. It’s not difficult to develop an equation on who gets into honors and who doesn’t that is transparent for all to understand.

What I also find unbelievable is that admin is asserting the content and pace of the honors course will not change, yet they have not addressed at all the following questions:

1. Syllabus of the topics and timeline of what the current honors class covers so it’s transparent and parents can track. As someone who posted before, ideology and reality is not the same. A teacher can have the intention of adhering to the syllabus but find it is not working with the wide grade spread and so
might not be able to realistically stick to her original intent.

2. If the honors course content and pace is the same, what is admin’s solution to addressing kids who cannot keep up and are doing poorly or failing?

3. If the course content and pace is not being adhered to as promised due to a large percentage of kids struggling, what is admin’s solution to meeting the needs of the kids who are not being challenged like they would be if it truly was an honors course content and pace?

I’m sure there are other good questions I’m missing and others chime in if you want. But I just find it unacceptable and unprofessional that these basic questions have not been already thought out and adrressed by admin with their HFA. I have also noted that the few on this forum who are advocating HFA for all have not answered the questions either when question #2 above was asked by a previous poster.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I used to be an economics professor. I did my graduate and undergraduate work at two universities that are in the top ten in my field. When I began teaching at a local private university, I discovered, in talking with the students, that they hadn;t covered the same material in their intro econ courses that is generally covered in the same courses at the top ten schools. The local private university had left out more rigorous topics. The professors at the local private also tended to ask their students to do in class debate or presentations, rather than writing lengthy papers. So some colleges do pitch their courses to the median student.

They don;t have to, though. If this same thing is actually occurring at Wilson, parents should be able to provide numerous examples of topics left off the syllabus or assignments made less rigorous. Please do so. If it is happening, supporting evidence should be easy to find.

Without supporting evidence, the hostility to Honors for All just sounds like ranting.

This metastudy seems to suggest that, on average, previous posters noting that detracking doesn;t hurt top students, but helps student at the bottom.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/21349011/

While this one suggests that within- class ability grouping benefits high achieving students, while between- class grouping does not.

https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1121483

This is obviously a long thread but numerous posts have provided detailed evidence and expertise as to why they believe HFA is a bad idea. For example, see the posts at 03/06/2019 02:37 and 03/07/2019 00:19 that cite recent studies--including a very relevant high school longitudinal study done by the University of Chicago--that showed harm to students from detracting. So please don't dismiss our concerns as "ranting".

The meta studies you cite are just not relevant. Both papers include elementary and middle school studies which are a wholly different animal than high school. And one paper includes studies from as far back as the 1920s - yes the 1920s!

We also need to face the fact that Wilson is actually unique in that we have a HUGE range of academic performance. Given its uniqueness, Wilson is what is referred to in statistics as "out of sample" which makes it difficult to draw relevant meaning from existing studies. I would argue that Wilson's uniqueness in this regard makes HFA likely to be even more harmful than what previous studies show. In other words, the larger the range in academic performance the greater the harm from HFA. To show this, simply imagine hypothetically that the range from low to high academic performance in a partiular classroom were really huge - say the equivalent of 4 grades. I think we all can agree that HFA would be a dramatic failure in such a circumstance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The best part of this is that Rachel Laser sends her own son to GDS for high school while living in the Wilson High School zone.
You can't make this up.

so yes, while she is creating HFA for your kid and mine she is paying $40K a year to get her own child far, far away from the underachievers.

I believe she has another child who graduated from Wilson.

I believe you are her or her friend.

LOL!

But either way, it’s the height of hypocrisy.

“Honors for Everyone-except-my-child, so I can atone for something.”

Rachel needs to atone for being a shameless hypocrite! Elite private high schools are of course just another--more potent--form of tracking. And with all her self-righteous talk about "equity", her child goes to a high school that is well over 60% white which is about twice as high as Wilson. Unbelievable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I used to be an economics professor. I did my graduate and undergraduate work at two universities that are in the top ten in my field. When I began teaching at a local private university, I discovered, in talking with the students, that they hadn;t covered the same material in their intro econ courses that is generally covered in the same courses at the top ten schools. The local private university had left out more rigorous topics. The professors at the local private also tended to ask their students to do in class debate or presentations, rather than writing lengthy papers. So some colleges do pitch their courses to the median student.

They don;t have to, though. If this same thing is actually occurring at Wilson, parents should be able to provide numerous examples of topics left off the syllabus or assignments made less rigorous. Please do so. If it is happening, supporting evidence should be easy to find.

Without supporting evidence, the hostility to Honors for All just sounds like ranting.

This metastudy seems to suggest that, on average, previous posters noting that detracking doesn;t hurt top students, but helps student at the bottom.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/21349011/

While this one suggests that within- class ability grouping benefits high achieving students, while between- class grouping does not.

https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1121483

Sorry at some point the studies don't matter and you have to use common sense

If you have kids who are multiple levels behind grade level with kids who are multiple levels above grade level there is no way a teacher can differentiate across that wide gap especially in high school. A teacher will most likely teach on grade level. So what happens is the kids on the bottom will struggle and some might drop out since there is no lower level and the material is way beyond their ability. Meanwhile the kids at the top will be extremely bored with the material and have essentially wasted a year of school. Additionally on both sides there will most likely be discipline issues because the class is not relevant to the top bottom or the top.

You can go ahead and take medications, have medical procedures, and buy cars whose safety and efficacy are determined by common sense. I'll stick with science, thanks. "Common sense" used to suggest that evil spirits made people ill.

There is a huge difference between your examples and what we are talking about here. Take for example the efficacy of a medication. It's very difficult to know how a complex, dynamic system such as a human patient will react to a new medication. That is often outside any common sense intuition because most people--including sometimes even the experts--don't know really understand the body works/reacts. And as such, you need controlled experiments to tease out the efficacy.

But we all have been students and many, including myself, have taught. So we have useful experience and intuition about what happens when you attempt to teach students of vastly different abilities and vastly different motivation in the same classroom. And as parents, we have seen the negative impact of this dynamic as early as 7th grade. So I respectfully offer that it is unwise to dismiss common sense in this instance.

Absolutely. Economist here from a few pages back.

Re: “science”: forty years ago, “studies” said that fat was terrible and carbs were good for you. Turned out that nutrition is very difficult to nail down (like education), and a bunch of corporate sugar interests were able to influence nutrition studies. If forty years ago you had used common sense and rejected those crappy sugar studies, you would have been better off.

Cars and medicine are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT scientific fields than education (and nutrition).* Be really really careful you’re using a high-quality study before you cite an education study.

* also, note that literally *hundreds of billions of dollars* have gone into funding for medical research, just in the past 5 years. Same with automotive research, development, and testing. Nutrition and education spend way way way less on research.

Economist-basher from a few pages back here . I think you are on solid ground when you critique the quality of studies, note the paucity of investment in gathering evidence, question the representativeness of the sample population, or point out that there's a big incentive for political manipulation of results. I didn't really agree with you on those points when this thread started, but now I'm more convinced.

I'm less convinced by using hindsight to champion "common sense." Bacteria as the cause of infection was rejected in the US for years after if was scientifically demonstrated and widely accepted in Europe (and hospital procedures updated accordingly), and a lot of people died as a result of US doctors' embrace of "common sense". Rather than arguing for "common sense", I'd suggest that the evidence isn't there to justify radically changing things in the way that HFA is doing. To me "common sense" can be used to argue for a multitude of things, some of them pretty nefarious. I also think it makes sense to argue for measures to address the shortcomings of the previous system (e.g. that some middle schools recommended zero percent of their kids for honors, while others recommended 100%). Other posters have suggested testing, but that seems like an enormous administrative burden. I wonder if instead of HFA there was a push to have kids try AN honors class in a subject that they cared about, teacher recommendations not withstanding?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DS was your in a Kindergarten class that did no differentiation. He was a great reader yet still had to spend a lot of time going over really simple texts with the whole class. He hated school.

He went to first grade at a school that did an excellent job of differentiating for reading and had a lot more choice time. He loved school.

Do I think he’d enjoy HFA for 9th and 10th when he gets there in a few years. Heck no!

High school is not first grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DS was your in a Kindergarten class that did no differentiation. He was a great reader yet still had to spend a lot of time going over really simple texts with the whole class. He hated school.

He went to first grade at a school that did an excellent job of differentiating for reading and had a lot more choice time. He loved school.

Do I think he’d enjoy HFA for 9th and 10th when he gets there in a few years. Heck no!

High school is not first grade.

Of course it’s not! But being bored by content or discussions or assignments that are not challenging doesn’t change. In fact, it gets worse!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The fact that PARCC scores at Deal and Hardy range from 1 to 5 shows that there are significant grade-level disparities among the students.

+1

How does the administrator address these data in the context of honors for all?

9 8th grade students at Hardy scored a 1.
22 8th grade students at Deal scored a 1.

You don't know anything else about these students, or even if they went to Wilson. Some may be very bright but ELLs, some maybe have significant learning or developmental disabilities which account for a low score.

But 31 students out of about 600 9th grade students are not going to ruin or hurt your child's experience in those same classes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The fact that PARCC scores at Deal and Hardy range from 1 to 5 shows that there are significant grade-level disparities among the students.

+1

How does the administrator address these data in the context of honors for all?

9 8th grade students at Hardy scored a 1.
22 8th grade students at Deal scored a 1.

You don't know anything else about these students, or even if they went to Wilson. Some may be very bright but ELLs, some maybe have significant learning or developmental disabilities which account for a low score.

But 31 students out of about 600 9th grade students are not going to ruin or hurt your child's experience in those same classes.

How will these 31 students be supported in a way they will be successful in an honors course with students who scored 5 on the PARCC?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Sorry that happened to your kid's friend - that is shitty. As a thought experiment, what if your kid's friend had been Asian or Hispanic. Would the driver had left? I think not. So is it accurate to label it "white privilege"? The problem is not that the driver would pick up your kid or his/her Asian friend but that the driver would not pickup a black child. That is the shitty thing we need to fix. Calling it "white privilege" is generally unhelpful, inaccurate, and alienates people of goodwill.

As a white person, there are literally a thousand daily worries that I don't have to deal with because of my race. I also don't have to worry that my young son will be perceived by members of the majority culture as, on average 4 years older than he is. I also don't have to worry that my preschooler is three times as likely to be suspended as his classmates for the exact same discipline issues (https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/crdc-discipline-snapshot.pdf). If my kid was convicted of a crime, I don't have to worry that he would be 18 times as likely as a white kid to be sentenced as an adult (http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/psp-a0035663.pdf). When I'm shopping for a home, I don't have to worry about being routinely guided to sub-prime loans regardless of my income (http://www.demos.org/blog/new-hud-report-shows-continued-discrimination-against-people-color). Unlike black people, I'm not 30% more likely to be pulled over by police (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/09/you-really-can-get-pulled-over-for-driving-while-black-federal-statistics-show/). I also don't have to worry about being killed while crossing the street at a crosswalk because white drivers simply refuse to stop for people of my race (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-gridlock/wp/2015/10/26/walking-while-black-can-be-deadly-too-study-finds/). Denying that life is easier for white people (and to a lesser extent for Asians and Latinos) is unhelpful, inaccurate, and alienates people of goodwill.

The need that I sometimes feel to try to explain away statistics like those above or to try to explain away experiences like the Uber experience you commented on is what I mean when I say "white fragility." I can't look into your heart and know what you are thinking, but I can see that discomfort and defensiveness in myself (and, as a man, similar defensiveness that I feel in the face of some MeToo discussions) and name it, and I think that's useful. I'm not aware of white fragility being used in any of the communications about HFA at Wilson (or anywhere in this discussion, until you combed the consultant's Web site to find that term), so I'm not sure how it's being used to shut down discussion.