Reply to Racial make up in honors vs. non-honors classes

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm wondering why it matters to you what the racial composition is of his classes?  Isn't this a great opportunity to teach him that race doesn't matter?  That he's a smart kid and he should learn to work well with the other smart kids in his class?[/quote]

It matters because race does not determine your intelligence. So if there are 50% minority in the schools there should be 50% minorities in AP classes. Otherwise there is another reason why kids are not in AP classes.

It not just a minority issue -this happens to boys, kids with LDs, and minorities.

It does matter to me that my kids are not given the impression in their school experience that blacks and Hispanics are poor, not as smart and trouble.

This is a big problem in diverse MoCo schools. So I understand why the poster above who is Caucasian and in private believes her diverse experience is more balanced.[/quote]

So you would rather have affirmative action in honors classes than allow students who truly deserve it to be in those classes?  Your school is not actively telling minority students they can't join honors classes because they are asian, hispanic, or with a learning disability.  For whatever reason (and it could be parental involvement or lack of english skills or whatever), the students who are in honors classes deserve to be there. [/quote]

No one is saying that the kids who are there don't deserve to be there, so stop acting so threatened. The question is why more AA are not there. The answer is not to lower the standards just to fill the seats with more color. The answer is to better prepare the capable students, regardless of color, from a younger age. This isn't a 6th grade or a 9th grade issue. [b]It is a k-5 preparation and engagement issue[/b].[/quote]

It is a preschool preparation problem. My husband and are middle class Latinos. I grew with Asian friends in California and grew to realize how much their parents cared about and focused on their education. I put my son in Kumon for math and taught him how to read and spell at home. At Kumon he was the only brown kid there that was preschool age. The only other Latinos /AA I saw were upper elementary students working on remediation. He just started kindergarten at a high performing school. He has already realized that he is in the top group of students (he has already figured out who can read and write). The teacher has already told me twice what a "nice kid" he is. She even said "your son is such good boy, I really need more boys like him".  Two weeks into school he is already getting validated for being a good student and believes that he is really smart. Many of our  Latino middle class and upper middle class friends think we are crazy.[/quote]

23:45 here. Yes, preschool preparation is very important. We are AA, and our daughter went to a wonderful preschool, we read with her, she was reading before she turned 5, etc, etc. But my point was about how schools need to address the issue. It is great that your son is getting validation so early in school. But on the first day of kindergarten, who knows if he (or my daughter when she was that age) are actually "smart" or simply better prepared than the many other Latino and AA kids who are not getting that teacher validation. Kindergarten is too soon for the school system to be already relegating vast numbers of students to 12 years of average to below average expectations simply because their parents are housecleaners and cab drivers rather than doctors and lawyers. Maybe the parents have missed a lot of the enrichment they could have been doing in the first 5 years, but that doesn't mean the schools shouldn't be doing all they can in k-5 to enable those kids who are intellectually capable to be prepared for advanced classes in the upper grades. Our DD has tested as gifted, and definitely needs enrichment and acceleration. I don't want advanced classes to be watered down. I want the pool for those classes and programs to become more competitive due to more students being prepared for higher level work, not less competitive from watering them down.[/quote]

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