Reply to Regular vs. Honors vs. AP

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]MCPS does not call everything Honors now and yes there are plenty of in level classes and plenty of kids talking them (Despite what DCUM will tell you). The only place where this is absolutely a problem is English (MS and Grade 9/10). Choosing an advance SS, Science or Math is a different experience.[/quote]

What percentage of MCPS high schools do not opt into the Honors-for-All model that is dominant in the DCC and NEC?[/quote]

Many of the posted documents on school sites still show on-level classes being offered, but in reality they will only offer the Honors class. With the exception of math, which as others have said, still often has on-level options.[/quote]

So in other words, the PP who is attempting to act like Honors-for-All isn't pervasive throughout MCPS high schools, is attempting to obfuscate and gaslight. [/quote]

Not gaslighting.  [b]There are plenty of  science, math, and social studies classes not labeled honors or AP/IB thus they are on-level.[/b]  Just because DCUM is saying only honors classes are offered and everything below that is remedial doesn’t make it so.[/quote]

They may show up in the course listings but do you know if there is anyone currently enrolled in them? At our HS, only honors English, science and social studies classes are available, in terms of the main graduation pathway classes. There are on-level electives of course, and there are some on-level math classes.[/quote]
+1 just because they are in the catalog doesn't mean it's actually offered at the school.  They push too many kids who are not ready into the "honors" classes so that the numbers look good, and certain people's feelings don't get hurt.[/quote]

It's that classic MCPS thing where there is good reason for a policy change, but because MCPS is incapable of handling anything with nuance, they make broad changes that make the problem they're trying to solve worse.

The reasons behind the "Honors-for-All" movement are understandable. There WAS racism and gatekeeping with honors classes before. The criteria was non-existent or unevenly applied at the expense of keeping mainly Black kids out of honors classes. But instead of doing the meticulous work of fleshing out the criteria for students to qualify for an honors and ensure that criteria was being applied with fidelity and fairness to mitigate racist teachers and admin from snuffing out promising Black students' potential, they decided to just make Honors the default for everybody.

Anyone with two functional brain cells knows that if you make everyone special then no one is special. I don't really know why the folks within in MCPS who lobbied for and implemented Honors-for-All couldn't foresee or didn't care about the obvious downsides to this approach. But here we are, stuck with cleaning up the consequential mess of their decisions.[/quote]

There does not need to be gate keeping for honors or AP classes.  Students should sign up for what they want to take, be encouraged to take challenging classes and be supported within.  That said, they should also expect the depth or speed and expectation of deliverable is not changing just because they are choosing a certain course.[/quote]

I would be fine with having an open-door sign-up policy, but then weeding kids out and putting them back on-level if they prove via their academics that they can't keep up with the material.

But here's the problem: Sometimes kids get bad grades in those rigorous classes because the teachers don't know how to teach to the curriculum. So even that isn't a perfect way to gauge if the student is not ready for the rigor or if in fact, the teacher is not ready to instruct at that level.[/quote]

Most teachers are not teaching AP class out the gate.  There are requirements that teachers must meet before they can teach an AP class.  And if the teacher really is the problem, there is going to be a lot of students complaining.

Now there may be a time where a particular teachers style of teaching doesn’t work for every student, but that true generally and will definitely be true in university.  So in that situation it’s up to the student to figure out how to learn what is needed.  Do they need to see the teacher outside of class? Do they need to preview the material more before class? Do they need a tutor? [/quote]

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