Reply to Bio & Honors Bio and schools with only Honors Bio

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]MCPS has done away with any meaningful distinctions between honors and on-level courses. If your school offers only honors-level Bio, it's pretty much a regular bio class with honors being in name only.

I assume schools that offer both on-level and honors versions of the same class have some differences,  but I've never been able to get a clear articulation of what those differences are from educators or counselors.[/quote]

+1. Soon all subjects (unless it is remedial) will be honors for all. Take the BCC example (this happens in other highschools too). You have these mixed classrooms where honors kids are not doing meaningfully harder work, but, they are getting the GPA boost. Teachers recognize that it isn't really fair to the "non-honors" kids (who also are more likely to be brown). What I don't understand is why MCPS parents continue to accept these mixed level classrooms. These mixed level classrooms and the extreme grade inflation are the main reason we moved to private for HS.[/quote]

Why don't we just do away with honors as a concept all together if this is how it's going to be?

Then you just have regular classes and AP classes? [b]I really don't understand how we got to this place[/b] but since we're here, it's insane to do things the way that we are.[/quote]
It's been a slow creep since I started teaching in 2005. Around that time was an effort to have actual curriculum documentation for HS courses, instead of there being variations school-to-school and teacher-to-teacher. They also started the common countywide final exams at that time. Those exams highlighted how different performance was across schools and between honors and on-level classes. Even though the same curriculum was supposedly being taught to both groups, the grade distribution was that Honors classes had all kids with As and Bs, and on-level had all the Cs, Ds, and Es. It was apparent which class you were in when you looked at the kids. Rather than instruction for on-level being tailored to help those students achieve the goals of the course, instruction and methods were simplified and content cut. They were taught less, instead of better. One legitimate reason for heterogeneous grouping is to allow struggling learners hear and see examples/questions/discussion from capable peers as modeling for the course content. If it is done well heterogeneous grouping shouldn't dilute the curriculum - the honors students should still be working at a high level. In practice, that doesn't happen, especially since the elimination of final exams in 2016. Without a consistent, countywide goal to measure course achievement, what is actually being taught is back to school/teacher discretion.

What I would like to see is for MCPS to bring back final exams for an HONORS course designation. If you want honors on your transcript (and the GPA bump) then you have to pass a final exam with a minimum grade of C. Otherwise your transcript says regular (not honors). If kids are taught in a heterogeneous group (under honors for all), teachers will have to aim instruction and teaching practices at the higher level of students passing the exam. If kids are taught in separate groups, kids in the "honors" classes have to actually demonstrate they learned and retained material by passing the final exam. And kids in the regular class could still take the exam and earn an honors designation.[/quote]

Thank you for taking the time to provide this critical context as an educator! This makes SO much sense. And I like your proposal to tie the honors designation to a final exam! That would help with the grade inflation.[/quote]

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