Wilson honors for all - how has it worked?

[Anonymous]

Oh the irony. The reason that Wilson is a beacon in the otherwise problematic landscape of DCPS attendance by-right high schools is *precisely because* its address is surrounded by upper NW. You’re welcome, EOTP PP who carefully picked a residence in a so-much-more-authentic and diverse neighborhood that lacks the “bullshit” of upper NW — but is still inbounds for Deal/Wilson. It’s the large critical mass of our upper NW kids, raised on a diet of bullshit and high expectations, that makes Wilson Wilson and not Cardozo.

Test my thesis: next year your block in Mt Plesant / Sheperd Park / wherever you commute to Hardy from is zoned out of Wilson to any equally modern DCPS high school with an equally competent faculty. Is this OK by you?

[Anonymous]

I am not exactly sure where I fall on the honors for all divide.
All I know is that my 10 th grader had a boring and unchallenging year at Wilson last year. When I asked an administrator about it, he said point blank that the goal in 9th grade is to try and bring up struggling and remedial students and that is probably why my kid was bored. 10th grade is a little better since my kid is taking 2 APs and is finding them challenging but some of his regular classes are super easy. I get that Wilson is in a tough spot trying to serve kids who range from 5th grade proficiency to upper college level capabilities without being given adequate resources from DCPS but it is unfortunate they pay no attention to trying to address the needs of all kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oh the irony. The reason that Wilson is a beacon in the otherwise problematic landscape of DCPS attendance by-right high schools is *precisely because* its address is surrounded by upper NW. You’re welcome, EOTP PP who carefully picked a residence in a so-much-more-authentic and diverse neighborhood that lacks the “bullshit” of upper NW — but is still inbounds for Deal/Wilson. It’s the large critical mass of our upper NW kids, raised on a diet of bullshit and high expectations, that makes Wilson Wilson and not Cardozo.

Test my thesis: next year your block in Mt Plesant / Sheperd Park / wherever you commute to Hardy from is zoned out of Wilson to any equally modern DCPS high school with an equally competent faculty. Is this OK by you?

Why do you presume to know where the "upper NW bullshit" poster lives? They never said where they live.

Also, as someone who lives in one of the neighborhoods above that you've misspelled, we sometimes use the term upper NW for ourselves; I sometimes say "EOTP upper NW." To refer to the neighborhoods right on the other side of Rock Creek Park, we typically use the term WOTP. So my guess is that the PP's child lotteried into a Deal feeder from OOB.

[Anonymous]

Can Wilson freshmen take any AP classes (like AP US History, AP World History, etc) or are they required to take the "Honors for All" classes in all subjects?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am not exactly sure where I fall on the honors for all divide.
All I know is that my 10 th grader had a boring and unchallenging year at Wilson last year. When I asked an administrator about it, he said point blank that the goal in 9th grade is to try and bring up struggling and remedial students and that is probably why my kid was bored. 10th grade is a little better since my kid is taking 2 APs and is finding them challenging but some of his regular classes are super easy. I get that Wilson is in a tough spot trying to serve kids who range from 5th grade proficiency to upper college level capabilities without being given adequate resources from DCPS but it is unfortunate they pay no attention to trying to address the needs of all kids.

That is horrid. There is no justification for letting kids languish for a year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can Wilson freshmen take any AP classes (like AP US History, AP World History, etc) or are they required to take the "Honors for All" classes in all subjects?

Freshman are not allowed to take AP classes probably because these classes are already over-filled.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:(Excepting from above comment die to screwed up quoting.)

And yet it did work well in my school. The suggestion of the research is not accurate in that case.

But this is the main point: According to the above research, even when the placements were done subjective teacher decisions (rather than more objectively by test), the errors were between advanced and the two general levels or between the general levels and remedial.

*Despite some randomness in the middle, they still were not putting the most struggling and the most advanced in the same class, which is exactly what ‘Honors for All” does.*

How do you know it worked in your school? From your perspective it did. And when I was tracked, it seemed like it was working, too. But “working” simply meant that I ended up in a class full of kids just like me, who had the advantages that ensured we tested well, had good work habits, had parents who expected us to go to college, etc. (Oh, and were almost exclusively white!) How is that “working”? All it did was reinforce the advantages and disadvantages built into society through intergenerational wealth transfer, housing segregation, etc.

It worked darn well for me. I was in G &T and then the highest level classes in middle and high school. Your premise is that only white kids are in these classes. That’s not true. Maybe they are a majority but not exclusive. Why would you not want each child to be fully challenged? How do you expect the top 10% of the class to be in with kids in the 50% or lower? I live in DC and we are raising our son in DC. If some of you DC parents want to to believe your illusion if you have a child in the top 10% of the class, that the child will be challenged to their full potential in honors for all so be it. They won’t.
Education cannot fix external issues related to poverty, and if you think not tracking will, that’s your opinion. But we are out. I know what’s it’s like to bored and not be challenged in school, and I would never wish it on any child let alone my child.

What the research has shown EVERY TIME that this has actually been studied is that in tiered classes the actually "top 10%" of the class (i.e. the smartest 10%) is NEVER ACTUALLY PLACED in the highest tier class. Put another way, when researchers actually give a series of tests to kids, they find that there are many kids in the lowest level classes who score better than kids in the top level classes and many more who score better than kids in the intermediate classes. In other words, the kids that everybody thinks are the "top 10%" aren't, and the kids that everybody thinks are the bottom 10% likewise aren't. As far as I know, this is consistent every time this is studied. You can claim that in your case it wasn't, but you should realize that almost everybody -- parents, teachers, students -- in the schools where the research was done said the same thing.

Also, if you can get access to the 1976 paper that I linked to above, you'll see that the dynamics in how school plays out for most of us (bored, disengaged, disruptive kids in "lower" classes, more engaged, higher achieving kids in "upper" classes) seem to be possible to replicate by pretty much randomly assigning kids to tiered classes. Upper classes and gifted programs tend to be staffed by the most engaged teachers and be full of the kinds of kids whose parents push for them to be in gifted classes, so the class environment tends to be more engaging. Likewise, lower classes tend to be taught by less engaged, less experienced teachers and to have fewer resources (not to mention the stigma of everybody involved knowing that they are in the dumb class), so the environment is less engaging and there is less success.

With respect to race, no one is saying that gifted and talented or top tier classes are ENTIRELY white (at least since the not since the 70s, when that was the explicit policy of many schools, like it was the policy of at least some recently desegregated schools to put black kids in special ed). But again, EVERY TIME this has been studied, it's been shown that top tiered classes are DISPROPORTIONATELY non-minority and higher income. Taken together, the evidence shows that richer, whiter kids tend to get put into top tier classes and poorer, browner kids tend to get put into lower classes to some extent REGARDLESS OF ABILITY (i.e. smart poor kids are to some extent put in lower classes and rich dumb kids in upper classes). And, once tracking starts in lower grades, differences in achievement persist and grow partly because to the nature of the opportunities that kids get. So, by high school, the results that people take for granted and blame on society and the home environment can also to some extent be explained by school policy.

I am not at all sure that "honors for all" is the best or even a good solution. Previously it was my understanding that kids at Wilson could be put in honors classes by asking for them, and there are certainly kids who don't want to be in honors (either they don't want to do the work or they struggle to pass on-level classes and feel that honors is setting them up to fail -- which was the case for one kid I know). Involuntary tracking is a terrible and unfair solution, but I don't think that's what Wilson had. When kids who could do the work CAN choose to be in honors and don't, then there are a bunch of much thornier issues to sort out, and I am not really competent to address them, as I suspect most PPs likewise aren't.

+1

This is accurate and helpful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like an excellent model and a common sense, simple and effective approach to the a racial inequity that should not exist in the first place. I hope they continue it.

So all common sense about creating tiered classes and really pushing the highest achievers doesn’t matter as long as each class is diverse. I’m genuinely curious about parents who putt diversity over all other academic pursuits for their kids.

The main issues with tiered classes is that pretty much every time they have been studied, it's been clearly shown that students aren't actually assigned to tiers based on ability, so the entire basis for this model is completely flawed from the start:

"The Second International Mathematics Study (SIMS) was a comprehensive survey of mathematics taught and learned around the world... For the SIMS study, 8th graders in all four tracks completed a pretest of pre-algebra arithmetic skills at the beginning of the year. Researchers examined the distribution of scores on the test by student and by math track. Although it was expected that class-type performance would be different, Kifer and colleagues' (1993) analysis of student and classroom performance found considerable score overlap among tracks.

Only half of the students who achieved the top 10 scores on the pretest and one-third of the students in the top 25 had actually been placed in the algebra-level classes. Inequities existed on the other end of the proficiency spectrum as well: Nearly 50 percent of the students assigned to remedial classes had scores that were better than 25 percent of the students in general math. In addition, Kifer and colleagues found that 5 of the 23 remedial classes had higher mean scores than 75 percent of the students in general math, 50 percent of the students in pre-algebra, and 25 percent of the students in algebra."

https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P7342.html

These results have been replicated repeatedly -- over and over and over in school district after school district.

Some other issues:
1. The research shows that tiered classes are largely ineffective and increasing student learning.

2. The quality of teaching is lower in lower-track classes. Less experienced teachers tend to teach them, fewer resources are devoted to them and teachers are less engaged.

Here's an abstract of one of the first articles to systematically make these points: https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P7342.html.

Basically. like a lot of "common sense", tiered classrooms totally fail to stand up to rigorous scrutiny.

You misrepresent the research. And your link is to a paper from 1987, which is now over thirty years old. An honest assessment of the research is that it shows that non-tracked programs hurt the lowest and highest performing students. This is not a surprise to anyone who has attended a school or taught at one.

And very few high schools in the nation have such a large distribution of students who perform at the very low end and the very high end. Wilson High School in this sense is truly unique. And so it is much more important for Wilson--relative to other more homogeneous high schools--to recognize that students have vastly different needs that require tailored instruction (e.g., on-level vs true honors classes). To intentionally not tailor instruction to a child's needs at a school such as Wilson is unethical.

The best study done on this topic was done by the “Chicago Consortium for School Research" (CCSR) which is part of the University of Chicago. Their 2010 study is titled "College Prep for All? What We’ve Learned from Chicago’s Efforts". Looking at a 10-year period, CCSR measured the impact of the City of Chicago’s implementation of a program in 1997 that was similar to Wilson High School’s “Honors for All”. Chicago ended remedial class for English, math, science, and social studies which meant that all students were now enrolled in college prep classes (thus the tag "college prep for all"). It was no surprise that CCSR found “there were no positive effects on student achievement” and that students at the low-end and high-end were both negatively impacted.

CCSR study - https://consortium.uchicago.edu/publications/college-prep-all-what-weve-learned-chicagos-efforts
CCSR Press Release regarding study titled "Chicago’s college-prep-for-all policy failed to improve student achievement" - https://consortium.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/press-releases/211PressReleaseCollegePrep.pdf

Here is CCSR’s description of the study:

To examine the consequences of the new curriculum on students’ outcomes, the research teams compare outcomes for students in Chicago before and after policy implementation in three subject areas: English, math, and science. In the study described in this brief, the focus is on two mandatory ninth grade courses: Algebra I and English I. This focus was selected because ninth grade coursework often serves as a “gatekeeper” in many schools for more advanced study, and remedial coursework was common in Chicago prior to 1997 in both subjects. Under the new policy, students were required to take Algebra I and English I in the ninth grade (or a higher course in the math or English sequence, such as geometry, Algebra II, or English II)….

In CCSR’s words, here is a partial summary of their research results:

There Were No Positive Effects on Student Achievement

One of the key premises of mandatory curriculum policies is that greater equity in course-taking will lead to improvements in student learning (as measured by tests and grades) and college readiness (as measured by test score gains and increases in advanced course-taking). While students were considerably more likely to earn English I and Algebra I credits by the end of ninth grade, the researchers found no evidence of these kinds of broader impacts on academic outcomes as a result of the new curriculum policy. Specifically, test scores in math and English were unaffected by the increase in college-preparatory coursework in the ninth grade. Furthermore, grades declined in both subjects for lower-skill students, and these students were significantly more likely to fail their ninth grade English or math course. Absenteeism also significantly increased among students with stronger skills in both subjects…

Test scores in math and English did not improve for either low- or high-skill students, and reading test scores actually declined for the highest- skilled students; ninth grade math and reading grades declined for low-skill students; failure rates in both subjects increased for low-skill students

The New Mandatory Curriculum had Negative Effects on Graduation Rates and College Enrollment

Another key argument for mandatory curricula is that these coursework reforms will help students get to college and complete their degrees. Yet the researchers found evidence to the contrary in Chicago Public Schools...

Implications for State and Federal Policy

These findings have important implications for policymakers looking to enhance access to college-preparatory classes and implement a mandatory curriculum or other course-taking requirements in states or districts. While the Chicago Public Schools 1997 reform did reduce inequities in coursework by entering skill level, race and ethnicity, and special education status, the policy had no effects on the major outcomes these kinds of curricular reforms are designed to impact. Test scores did not rise among ninth-graders, students were no more likely to take advanced math classes beyond Algebra II, and they were no more likely to attend college. Moreover, the policy change produced a number of adverse consequences: math grades declined, math failures increased, absenteeism rose among average- and higher-skilled students, and graduation and college-going rates declined.

The Chicago experience should serve as a cautionary tale for those who advocate for similar mandatory curriculum policies in their cities and states.

When Wilson HS quickly implemented "Honors For All", Principal Martin and the Wilson Diversity Committee never mentioned the Chicago study to parents or students despite its obvious relevance. I would like to know why.

On the Kojo Nnamdi show last week, Principal Martin said that she was surprised that the school did not get much negative push back from parents to the implementation of "Honors for All" and she attributed the lack of pushback in part to an FAQ produced by the Diversity Committee. That FAQ did not mention the Chicago study and also was misleading/factually incorrect which helps explain the lack of pushback. It is time to re-evaluate Honors for All and to do that Wilson needs to be transparent with data that would allow students and parents to measure the impact of the program.

Thank you for posting such a thoughtful and informed rebuttal. Your post gave me a lot to think about. Honors for all is not such a positive slam dunk approach as its cheerleaders would have us believe

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
You are misreading the research again.

Sigh.... This is why we can't have nice things. People who can't be bothered to understand evidence (or choose not to understand it because it goes against their privilege or aren't bright enough to understand it) breezily dismiss it. This is Republican public policy in a nutshell -- slogans over science, soundbites over substance, dismissing complex issues with an evasion and focusing on what they can extract from the public.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
You misrepresent the research. And your link is to a paper from 1987, which is now over thirty years old. An honest assessment of the research is that it shows that non-tracked programs hurt the lowest and highest performing students. This is not a surprise to anyone who has attended a school or taught at one.

Actually, I don't. And as I noted in my later post, I'm not convinced that honors for all is a good approach. What I did say, and the research shows, and you haven't responded to, is that tracking EVERY TIME IT'S BEEN STUDIED has been shown to mis-assign students (putting lower ability students in higher track classes and vice versa) in ways that mean wealthy, whiter kids end up higher tier classes much more often than their academic attainment alone would dictate. You didn't respond to my actual point at all. And I'm in no way misrepresenting the research, you're just responding to points that I didn't make with long excerpts from a tangentially related study.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:(Excepting from above comment die to screwed up quoting.)

And yet it did work well in my school. The suggestion of the research is not accurate in that case.

But this is the main point: According to the above research, even when the placements were done subjective teacher decisions (rather than more objectively by test), the errors were between advanced and the two general levels or between the general levels and remedial.

*Despite some randomness in the middle, they still were not putting the most struggling and the most advanced in the same class, which is exactly what ‘Honors for All” does.*

How do you know it worked in your school? From your perspective it did. And when I was tracked, it seemed like it was working, too. But “working” simply meant that I ended up in a class full of kids just like me, who had the advantages that ensured we tested well, had good work habits, had parents who expected us to go to college, etc. (Oh, and were almost exclusively white!) How is that “working”? All it did was reinforce the advantages and disadvantages built into society through intergenerational wealth transfer, housing segregation, etc.

It worked darn well for me. I was in G &T and then the highest level classes in middle and high school. Your premise is that only white kids are in these classes. That’s not true. Maybe they are a majority but not exclusive. Why would you not want each child to be fully challenged? How do you expect the top 10% of the class to be in with kids in the 50% or lower? I live in DC and we are raising our son in DC. If some of you DC parents want to to believe your illusion if you have a child in the top 10% of the class, that the child will be challenged to their full potential in honors for all so be it. They won’t.
Education cannot fix external issues related to poverty, and if you think not tracking will, that’s your opinion. But we are out. I know what’s it’s like to bored and not be challenged in school, and I would never wish it on any child let alone my child.

“It worked darn well for me” is not evidence that tracking works systematically. Seems like you’ll be happier in another school system, so good luck to you.

And you think it has so far for DCPS which does not track vs VA and MD which does with AP and magnet schools? Just look at your neighbors. I really don’t care to have my child be an experiment for the city. If your child is crushing thru school and obviously one of the top students in the class, and these are the kids I’m talking about, you do your child a disservice by letting them “teach” or be a leader for the class. They need to be challenged to reach their full potential or else don’t expect them to be competitive in college with all the other kids who are. Big reality check when they get to college.

I grew up poor and had free lunches. I wouldn’t be where I am today (top 10% high school, college, and med school) if I wasn’t tracked and challenged to my full potential and be among peers working at a similar level. High school is only the beginning. College will be a higher level playing field and graduate/law/med even higher. Challenge your child to their full potential. For only then will you know what they can really achieve.

[Anonymous]

1) There haven't even been 2 cohorts of kids who have experienced this at Wilson yet. It is too soon to draw conclusions one way or another with any certainty.

2) Every year Wilson's first year become less economically (and racially) diverse. The broad gaps in reading levels cited above is increasingly not the reality of the school.

3) 9th grade has NEVER been challenging or rigorous at Wilson, so to argue that "advanced' students have lost something in this change seems disingenuous

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
You are misreading the research again.

Sigh.... This is why we can't have nice things. People who can't be bothered to understand evidence (or choose not to understand it because it goes against their privilege or aren't bright enough to understand it) breezily dismiss it. This is Republican public policy in a nutshell -- slogans over science, soundbites over substance, dismissing complex issues with an evasion and focusing on what they can extract from the public.

No, it’s because what you’ve argued is absurd. I fon’t really have time to refute silliness. Nonetheless....

(1) Any decent program uses testing as part of its placement. Your research you cited implies that is not the case.

(2) it’s ridiculous to say that “every” single time it has been done, it has been done horribly wrongly. Anyone who has been in G&T or Advanced classes would likely say that the classes were overall above-average. How do people know that their anecdotes don’t jibe with your assertion ? Because students know their peers! I can guarantee that most of the people with the highest SAT/ACT/CAT/whatever scores at my school were in the advanced classes, and no people in the advanced classes had terrible test scores. Schools have this information!

(3) You are wrong in saying that, according to your research, people in the lowest group had higher test scores than the highest group. But actually what it said is that a handful of people in the lowest group scored higher than some of the people in the medium-high group — not the highest! (Note that there were 4 levels, not 3.) As I said above, whatever errors in themiddle, the program studied still had the most struggling and the most high-achieving students in different, so it wasn’t completely, horribly upside diwn, as you argue.

(4) Why don’t you respond to the substance of the (more recent) research posted by the other poster?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
You misrepresent the research. And your link is to a paper from 1987, which is now over thirty years old. An honest assessment of the research is that it shows that non-tracked programs hurt the lowest and highest performing students. This is not a surprise to anyone who has attended a school or taught at one.

Actually, I don't. And as I noted in my later post, I'm not convinced that honors for all is a good approach. What I did say, and the research shows, and you haven't responded to, is that tracking EVERY TIME IT'S BEEN STUDIED has been shown to mis-assign students (putting lower ability students in higher track classes and vice versa) in ways that mean wealthy, whiter kids end up higher tier classes much more often than their academic attainment alone would dictate. You didn't respond to my actual point at all. And I'm in no way misrepresenting the research, you're just responding to points that I didn't make with long excerpts from a tangentially related study.

Me again. Had a look at the study you cited (https://consortium.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/publications/College%20Prep%207x10-10-%20final%20082610.pdf). A couple of points:

- Page 7 makes the EXACT point that my posts have been making, to wit: An extensive body of research documents this social stratification in educational opportunities and outcomes and identifies strong and pervasive links between students’ academic, racial, and socio-economic backgrounds and the quality and academic demand of their high school courses.

- The Chicago policies eliminated remedial classes. What I've seen about "honors for all" stressed that remedial classes and additional resources would be available to kids who needed them.

- The finding that putting kids in more advanced classes increased failure rates is one that I've made a couple of times already in this thread. I know a kid that this happened to who ended up transferring from Wilson because if it and is now doing better at a charter high school.

So, again, I'm not convinced that honors for all is a good approach (and I have more concerns after seeing this paper). But -- mountains of evidence, including evidence cited in this study, document the pervasive inequities of traditional tracking (i.e. putting smart brown kids in lower classes and less smart white kids in higher classes). The trend that's arisen over the past 20 years or more in response to the limitations of tracking (differentiation) is also problematic in that it's next to impossible to accomplish.

My impression is that there needs to be a more technology-enabled solution that allows for individualized, differentiated instruction, but I don't know that there's evidence supporting that approach.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am not exactly sure where I fall on the honors for all divide.
All I know is that my 10 th grader had a boring and unchallenging year at Wilson last year. When I asked an administrator about it, he said point blank that the goal in 9th grade is to try and bring up struggling and remedial students and that is probably why my kid was bored. 10th grade is a little better since my kid is taking 2 APs and is finding them challenging but some of his regular classes are super easy. I get that Wilson is in a tough spot trying to serve kids who range from 5th grade proficiency to upper college level capabilities without being given adequate resources from DCPS but it is unfortunate they pay no attention to trying to address the needs of all kids.

Wow, that response is a huge red flag if that is how the school views your child. But I’m not surprised. DCPS doesn’t care about the kids who are doing well because they will graduate. Their focus is on the struggling students at the expense of not challenging the top students.