To Increase Equity, School Districts Eliminate Honors Classes
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Anonymous
How exactly are you defining "equity" here? |
Anonymous
to pull people down so some others don't feel as bad. #equity |
Anonymous
Im just trying to understand if having multiple tracks of math would be equitable for people who are proponents of equity. I support differentiation and tracking. Not sure if that fits into the pro-equity viewpoint or not. |
Anonymous
I'm not an equity "proponent" - I only speak for myself. I support clustering with extensions (available to all) through elementary school maybe up to middle school/6th or 7th. Alternate math paths opening up in 7th or 8th. No tracking. |
Anonymous
The way its popularizers do - finishing even vs. starting even |
Anonymous
What does Clustering mean here? Grouping students based on ability to understand and solve math problem? How it is different from Tracking? |
Anonymous
But that's what the rest of us want? I want clustering! What I don't want is kids stuck in remedial classes because a few kids in the class are behind. How is this different than what people want? Equity to me means that higher tracks are open and available to anyone (not just those whose parents pay for IQ testing or whose counselors recommend them). If the kids can't do the rigor of the work, they will be weeded out and returned to regular classes. |
Anonymous
This is what Loudoun tried in MS and HS. Made honors classes available to anyone who reguested to be put in honors, no teacher approval required. All it did was water down the honors curriculum and now many years later they have decided (surprise!) that there is no need for honors/gen ed distinction and EVERYONE can just take the same level everything! (except Math.) Which effectively makes every class remedial. Isn't progress great? |
Anonymous
FCPS has had open honors for many years in MS and HS. Sign up for whatever you want. |
Anonymous
That's not what equity means for the people pushing equity initiatives. |
Anonymous
| There is no distinction between a “honors” class and a regular class. Both cover the same material. The class is named differently to segregate kids. Colleges don’t care or even look at “honors class” crap. You want to take a higher level class - take a higher level class. Don’t call it “honors” and pretend it’s somehow different than the regular class. |
Anonymous
Yes they do. Some colleges even give honors, AP, and dual enrollment classes the same weight for calculating your GPA. |
Anonymous
Yes they do. Some colleges even give honors, AP, and dual enrollment classes the same weight for calculating your GPA. |
Anonymous
Clustering occurs in heterogenous classes. You may have a slightly larger group of advanced students in a clustered class, but the teacher still faces the same pressures to teach to the middle of the class and still has to ensure that struggling kids learn the concepts. There's still the same bias to spend less time with kids that get the concept irrespective of whether there's a few more advanced kids in the class or not. Provision of advanced content is dependent on how good at differentiating the teacher is and that's a tough skill for anyone to master. |
Anonymous
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The problem with detracking is that it often requires additional resources to make it work. Struggling students need extra supports, and they need to be motivated enough to benefit from it. Otherwise, it can potentially lead to dragging the entire class down. It's by no means a no-brainer slam dunk.
Chicago tried detracking in the late 90s/early 2000s, and it led to fewer students matriculating into college. https://www.edweek.org/leadership/devil-is-in-the-details-when-it-comes-to-tracking-detracking/2014/03 "In the wake of that policy change, low-achieving students were more likely to fail 9th grade math and, eventually, less likely to graduate from high school. They were no more likely to attend college. In the meantime, higher-achieving students’ test scores declined, in part, the researchers suggested, because struggling and unsupported lower-achieving peers were slowing down the class. The high achievers were also less likely to go on to take advanced math, which may have helped explain why they were also less likely to attend college. One reason was that schools often lacked the capacity to both offer higher-level courses and also accommodate the curricular changes, which extended well beyond algebra-for-all in that they raised basic graduation requirements in all core subjects, Consortium director and brief co-author Elaine Allensworth said. 'It’s kind of a depressing story,' Allensworth said . 'The whole intention was to get more students able to go to college.'" You can't just mix a bunch of students together and hope it works. |