Regular vs. Honors vs. AP

[Anonymous]

We are new to MCPS and it has been very disappointing for 9th and i expect 10th grade. Unless your student is part of one of the few special programs like the 4 year IB at Richard Montgomery, they are going to be stuck with "honors" english and "honors" science which are just a joke. They do not fulfill MCPS published definition of an honors class. They are just watered down stuff being "taught" to a class where the vast majority do not care, do not do any work, spend most of their time on their phone or chrome book, with many of them cheating. And because of the various rules around attendance and homework, they know they won't fail and not only they won't fail, but whatever grade they manage to get buy with will be inflated with "honors" designation. This is not a reflection of the actual teachers but is a direct result of administration that cares more about metrics and image. Meanwhile students who care are bored and demotivated. Once 11th grade comes around, there will be AP opportunities (and yes they are exponentially harder classes) and IB classes (also much harder) but until then they are bored and frustrated in 9th and 10th grade english and sciences and will not be prepared for a fill AP/IB courseload in 11th grade.

[Anonymous]

There have been several questions about whether or not there are regular classes still being taught. It is my understanding that when the curriculum for a regular and an honors class were the same, then they got rid of regular and made everything honors e.g., "honors" 9th grade english, "honors" biology but when there were different curricula then there were both regular and honors offered e.g., regular 9th grade algebra 2 and honors algebra 2. The problem is that the people who decided to make things like 9th grade english or biology all honors is they failed to understand that while they might have had the same curriculum at a high view, the speed, depth, and abstraction with which they were taught in regular vs. honors were different. But hey, they can now claim a really high rate of students taking "honors".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are new to MCPS and it has been very disappointing for 9th and i expect 10th grade. Unless your student is part of one of the few special programs like the 4 year IB at Richard Montgomery, they are going to be stuck with "honors" english and "honors" science which are just a joke. They do not fulfill MCPS published definition of an honors class. They are just watered down stuff being "taught" to a class where the vast majority do not care, do not do any work, spend most of their time on their phone or chrome book, with many of them cheating. And because of the various rules around attendance and homework, they know they won't fail and not only they won't fail, but whatever grade they manage to get buy with will be inflated with "honors" designation. This is not a reflection of the actual teachers but is a direct result of administration that cares more about metrics and image. Meanwhile students who care are bored and demotivated. Once 11th grade comes around, there will be AP opportunities (and yes they are exponentially harder classes) and IB classes (also much harder) but until then they are bored and frustrated in 9th and 10th grade english and sciences and will not be prepared for a fill AP/IB courseload in 11th grade.

No one is stopping by our kid from writing a good essay.