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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]^^ I agree with the above except I would say that attitudes toward POC need to change.

Please tell me if honors, AP and IB programs in school today are inaccessible. Do kids of color feel not welcome in those classes?[/quote]

They are. You need to have the internal drive to want to do them or parents who are aware of them and are driving you to take those classes. You need to hit the necessary prereqs. The focus on ES is there because it builds the base for kids to be able to take honors and AP/IB classes.

I am not a big fan of tracking, mainly because I was supposed to be tracked into remedial classes because of learning disabilities and ADHD. The problem was that many of those remedial type classes were not challenging and the Teachers were not really focused on getting kids up to speed but to a point where they could attend votec classes when they got older. My parents wanted nothing to do with that and insisted that I be placed in Gen Ed classes. The SPED Teacher flat out told my parents I would never go to college so what was the point.

My parents won, I was in regular classes. I was a C/D student in math and science but an A student in English, history, and social studies. I was excluded from Honors classes in High School because of my LD's, that was another battle that my parents fought. We moved when I was entering my Junior year of HS and my new school gave me a series of placement exams. The Guidance Counselor there was shocked that I was not in honors classes. I ended up in AP English, I had already completed the counties social studies requirement so I did not get to take those classes. My parents did have to fight for me to receive Resource Support 3 times a week, essentially 1 on 1 help with math and science. I ended up a B student in Math and Science and an A student in everything else.

Tracking is dangerous, in my mind, because many parents are willing to accept that their kids will not do well in school and accept remedial classes. Kids will not be challenged and Teachers do not always feel motivated to help those kids get up to speed. I saw far too many creative, bright kids in remedial classes who had so much potential but who had never been told that. There are always exceptions, my parents and most of the parents posting in the Special Ed forum, but we are exceptions for a reason.

At the same time, I don't think that a Teacher in a classroom can handle the needs of remedial, gen ed, and advanced kids in one class. The advanced kids are left to work on their own, the gen ed kids get some extra attention, but the remedial kids get more of the attention.

The reality is that the only way to actually deal with the education gap is to find a way to change Parents attitude towards school and make school a priority for more families. But families with no history of schooling or massively disrupted schooling, many poor immigrants from South America, are not focused on school. They are worried about paying their bills and are not as likely to be keeping up with their kids school work. Parents who are dropouts are more likely to have kids who drop out. Mom and Dad didn't see school as important, why would they see it as important for their kids?

So we are trying to force schools to be able to connect with kids who have Parents who are not focused on school or invested in school and bring those kids to the same level as kids whose parents are invested in school. The Schools are able to reach some kids but not that many. Tracking is not going to be the answer because you are going to end up with socio economic/racially segregated classes. You can argue that classes are based on test scores or grades but the end resulted will be segregated classes and that is not going to be allowed. [/quote]

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