Reply to S/O MCPS HS "Honors" English 9/10 courses

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]But what happens when we arrive back at where we started- with tracking? With being able to tell which class is honors and which is on level based on the color of the kids’ skin when you walk by the rooms? That is not okay and there ARE teachers who don’t want that either![/quote]

There are ways to mitigate some of that, like having truly rigorous honors classes but not gatekeeping them (allowing anyone who's not genuinely below-level to enroll or even making enrollment the default unless they opt out, and providing extra outside of class supports for kids who want to take them but aren't quite prepared to succeed, to help them keep up without slowing the classes down for the others.)

But really unfortunately there's no good answer here (at least not one without investing a lot more effort and resources than MCPS is willing to invest.) Having everyone in the same below-level classes because you don't want to see any racial disparities is not a good solution either. [/quote]

Offering truly rigorous classes without gatekeeping is the obvious answer here. Make it more like math - there's no shame in dropping from Honors Pre-Calculus to On-Level, for example. Offer a genuinely rigorous experience, and then allow movement if it's not working. [/quote]

The APEX curriculum at Walter Johnson HS has been pretty strong in 9th and 10th grades.  In 9th grade, for example, the students read two full books per quarter, and some of them are definitely classics: To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, Lord of the Flies, Romeo and Juliet (the text, not the movie, with a study of sonnets included) and Night, as examples.  They supplement with poetry analysis and other readings (both novels and shorter texts), many of which are more modern and highlight diverse authors, characters, and cultures.  Teacher choices vary a bit, but offerings have included Persepolis (Graphic novel about Iranian Revolution), Life of Pi by Yann Martel, and Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng.  My 10th grader is continuing on this trajectory in 10th grade APEX, which is also engaging and (according to my student) offers much more of a challenge than "Honors" English.

Unfortunately, WJ is ending this program and pivoting to the standard MCPS English 9 curriculum for all starting next year.  [/quote]

That sounds like the standard high school English classes I had at my middle-of-the-road HS in the 1990's.[/quote]

I took honors English through MCPS high school in the early 90s (AP in 12th grade) and we read so many books -- at least 8 books/plays a year.

I have a ninth grader now and they have read, to date in "honors English", one graphic novel and is halfway through a classic novel that I was assigned as an 8th grader. It is March.

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