Anonymous
03/07/2019 00:19
Subject: Wilson honors for all - how has it worked?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:
You misrepresent the research. And your link is to a paper from 1987, which is now over thirty years old. An honest assessment of the research is that it shows that non-tracked programs hurt the lowest and highest performing students. This is not a surprise to anyone who has attended a school or taught at one.
Actually, I don't. And as I noted in my later post, I'm not convinced that honors for all is a good approach. What I did say, and the research shows, and you haven't responded to, is that tracking EVERY TIME IT'S BEEN STUDIED has been shown to mis-assign students (putting lower ability students in higher track classes and vice versa) in ways that mean wealthy, whiter kids end up higher tier classes much more often than their academic attainment alone would dictate. You didn't respond to my actual point at all. And I'm in no way misrepresenting the research, you're just responding to points that I didn't make with long excerpts from a tangentially related study.
Actually, you do. You stated "1. The research shows that tiered classes are largely ineffective and [sic] increasing student learning." That is what I responded to. If what you said were true, the Chicago study would have found that moving from tiered to non-tiered classes had no effort or a positive effect on student performance. Instead it found the opposite, as I described. And that is why it is directly related to the discussion, not "tangentially related".
And the Chicago study is consistent with the recent literature on tracking. Parents and students should look at the report by the Brookings Institution titled "Tracking and Advanced Placement" (2016) - https://www.brookings.edu/research/tracking-and-advanced-placement/.
The report summarizes the recent literature on tracking which in all but one case finds that tracking benefits low and high performing students, including black and hispanic students. Below I include some examples pulled directly from the paper where the italics are direct quotes.
Harvard University Randomized Tracking Study in Kenya (2005)
Experiments in which students are randomly assigned to tracked and untracked settings are rare. In 2005, an experiment in Kenya could be conducted because schools were granted extra funds to hire first grade teachers.[5] More than a hundred schools (121) had only one first grade teacher, and the new money allowed the addition of a second teacher. The schools were randomly assigned to either a tracked or untracked condition. In the tracked schools, one of the classes was made up of higher achievers, the other of lower achievers. Students were placed in either the higher- or lower-achieving class based on whether they scored above or below the median for all students. Students in the untracked schools were assigned to the two classes randomly, creating classes heterogeneous in ability.
The experiment ran for 18 months. Both high- and low-achievers in the tracked schools gained more on achievement tests compared to students in the untracked schools. The benefit for students in higher-achieving classes was 0.19 standard deviations and for those in the lower-achieving classes,0.16 standard deviations.
Northwestern University and California Davis Study (2000)
David N. Figlio and Marianne E. Page (2000) also used an instrumental variable strategy to isolate the effects of tracking. They found that wealthier families consider whether a school tracks when making enrollment decisions. After controlling for those parental decisions, Figlio and Page found that disadvantaged students benefitted from tracking, contradicting the notion that abolishing tracking promotes equity. As they put it, “…tracking programs are associated with test score gains for students in the bottom third of the initial test score distribution. We conclude that the move to end tracking may harm the very students it is intended to help.”
California Berkeley and Santa Cruz Study (2014)
David Card and Laura Giuliano (2014) studied the effects of gifted classes in a large Eastern school district. The district had mandated that schools with even a single gifted student (most of whom were identified by IQ tests) must provide separate gifted classes in fourth and fifth grades, with open seats in these classes filled by high achievers—the school’s highest performers on the annual state assessment. The policy dramatically increased the proportion of disadvantaged students in the gifted classes to about 40 percent districtwide. The researchers found significant positive effects for high achievers in the program, in particular for low-income black and Hispanic students. Card and Giuliano concluded, “Our findings suggest that a comprehensive tracking program that establishes a separate classroom in every school for the top-performing students could significantly boost the performance of the most talented students in even the poorest neighborhoods, at little or no cost to other students or the District’s budget.”
Brookings Institution State-Level Tracking Study (2016)
States with larger percentages of tracked eighth graders produce larger percentages of high-scoring AP test takers. States where tracking is less prevalent tend to have a smaller proportion of high scorers....States with a larger percentage of kids scoring 3 or better on AP tests in 2013 had a larger percentage of kids in tracked classes four years earlier. That association occurs without any apparent increase in selectivity. The relationship of tracking with AP participation is indistinguishable from zero. Moreover, the finding holds for black, Hispanic, and white subgroups. If eighth grade tracking operates in a manner discriminatory to blacks and Hispanics, it is not apparent here....AP courses represent the end of the pipeline for academically gifted students. If we are serious about expanding opportunity, and serious about increasing the numbers of students of color who not only take AP courses but also score extraordinarily well on AP tests, policymakers need to take another look at strategies for nurturing academic talent in middle schools. Long condemned by political opponents, tracking has been overlooked as a potential tool for promoting equity.
This is the type of research Principal Martin and Diversity Committee should have shared with parents and students so that they could be informed about the likely impact of "Honors for All". Instead they produced a propaganda FAQ devoid of any evidence that "Honors for All" would work at a unique school like Wilson where there are large differences in academic performance.
Anonymous
03/06/2019 23:09
Subject: Wilson honors for all - how has it worked?
“Honors for All” - a sad joke.
Anonymous
03/06/2019 22:23
Subject: Re:Wilson honors for all - how has it worked?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:
You are misreading the research again.
Sigh.... This is why we can't have nice things. People who can't be bothered to understand evidence (or choose not to understand it because it goes against their privilege or aren't bright enough to understand it) breezily dismiss it. This is Republican public policy in a nutshell -- slogans over science, soundbites over substance, dismissing complex issues with an evasion and focusing on what they can extract from the public.
You have detracted, not added, to this discussion. Please troll elsewhere.
Anonymous
03/06/2019 18:10
Subject: Wilson honors for all - how has it worked?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Can Wilson freshmen take any AP classes (like AP US History, AP World History, etc) or are they required to take the "Honors for All" classes in all subjects?
Freshman are not allowed to take AP classes probably because these classes are already over-filled.
They need more AP teachers, obviously.
Let's be honest, ALL of DCPS desperately needs teachers and substitutes! There are no Spanish teachers or subs in the city and multiple vacancies. Teachers don't want to come to DC nor can many afford it.
Wilson isn't looking to hire more AP teachers to serve 9th graders. Wilson has decided to allocate resources to small classes afor 9th and 10th graders (honors for all) and then tp [ay for this by having really large classes for AP. There is no money for more teachers.
I agree with Principal Martin's choice. We can't pay for everything and small classes in 9th and 10th seem more important to me than for AP classes later.
Agree with PP. If DCPS would allow Principal Martin to spend Wilson's budget based on what she knows it needs- not what downtown mandates- there could be more teachers.....
Anonymous
03/06/2019 17:31
Subject: Wilson honors for all - how has it worked?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Can Wilson freshmen take any AP classes (like AP US History, AP World History, etc) or are they required to take the "Honors for All" classes in all subjects?
Freshman are not allowed to take AP classes probably because these classes are already over-filled.
They need more AP teachers, obviously.
Let's be honest, ALL of DCPS desperately needs teachers and substitutes! There are no Spanish teachers or subs in the city and multiple vacancies. Teachers don't want to come to DC nor can many afford it.
Wilson isn't looking to hire more AP teachers to serve 9th graders. Wilson has decided to allocate resources to small classes afor 9th and 10th graders (honors for all) and then tp [ay for this by having really large classes for AP. There is no money for more teachers.
I agree with Principal Martin's choice. We can't pay for everything and small classes in 9th and 10th seem more important to me than for AP classes later.
But then we have come full circle to the original question, how is it working? I will not blindly support it without asking is it working. To answer that question, we have to understand what we mean by working, who is it working for and how? That knowledge is not yet available because the experiment is still young. Many parents are okay with the experiment but also see that their kids are not really challenged until later grades. On the flip side, I know a lot of parents whose kids are really happy at Wilson. No DCPS school is perfect and we have an option that many want to have.
Anonymous
03/06/2019 16:54
Subject: Wilson honors for all - how has it worked?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Can Wilson freshmen take any AP classes (like AP US History, AP World History, etc) or are they required to take the "Honors for All" classes in all subjects?
Freshman are not allowed to take AP classes probably because these classes are already over-filled.
They need more AP teachers, obviously.
Let's be honest, ALL of DCPS desperately needs teachers and substitutes! There are no Spanish teachers or subs in the city and multiple vacancies. Teachers don't want to come to DC nor can many afford it.
Wilson isn't looking to hire more AP teachers to serve 9th graders. Wilson has decided to allocate resources to small classes afor 9th and 10th graders (honors for all) and then tp [ay for this by having really large classes for AP. There is no money for more teachers.
I agree with Principal Martin's choice. We can't pay for everything and small classes in 9th and 10th seem more important to me than for AP classes later.
Anonymous
03/06/2019 16:35
Subject: Wilson honors for all - how has it worked?
I doubt that anyone posting against honors for all at this point in the thread genuinely believes they are fighting for the education of their own children, but just for the record: People who fight for their child’s right to the best education fight FOR that. They don’t fight “for” it by putting huge amounts of time and energy into stopping the access of other peoples’ children to that same education. The same is true of the anti-OOB posters, whose posts also happen to, entirely coincidentally, target children who are not white and middle-class.
Anonymous
03/06/2019 16:12
Subject: Re:Wilson honors for all - how has it worked?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:
You are misreading the research again.
?
DP: as to #1, these DCPS kids are tested out the wazoo from 2nd grade forward. Their teachers have so much detailed data on every strand of math and ELA capabilities for these kids that it is ridiculous to think they'd need more to know how to place them. Literally years of data on each kid, which is way better than a single teacher subjectively choosing which is kids should take a single GT test and placement flows from that one test.
Schools that have GT/Academically advanced programs give them intelligence tests (e.g. COGAT or WISC), not just achievement tests. The point isn't to select based on knowledge but to find the kids who are really intelligent but may or may not have demonstrated it so far. In fact, when identification is done this way, many ELL students and students with disabilities test as gifted.
But, for all the testing DCPS does, it is limited to achievement testing.
Anonymous
03/06/2019 16:00
Subject: Wilson honors for all - how has it worked?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Can Wilson freshmen take any AP classes (like AP US History, AP World History, etc) or are they required to take the "Honors for All" classes in all subjects?
Freshman are not allowed to take AP classes probably because these classes are already over-filled.
They need more AP teachers, obviously.
Let's be honest, ALL of DCPS desperately needs teachers and substitutes! There are no Spanish teachers or subs in the city and multiple vacancies. Teachers don't want to come to DC nor can many afford it.
Wilson isn't looking to hire more AP teachers to serve 9th graders. Wilson has decided to allocate resources to small classes afor 9th and 10th graders (honors for all) and then tp [ay for this by having really large classes for AP. There is no money for more teachers.
Anonymous
03/06/2019 15:28
Subject: Re:Wilson honors for all - how has it worked?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:
You are misreading the research again.
Sigh.... This is why we can't have nice things. People who can't be bothered to understand evidence (or choose not to understand it because it goes against their privilege or aren't bright enough to understand it) breezily dismiss it. This is Republican public policy in a nutshell -- slogans over science, soundbites over substance, dismissing complex issues with an evasion and focusing on what they can extract from the public.
No, it’s because what you’ve argued is absurd. I fon’t really have time to refute silliness. Nonetheless....
(1) Any decent program uses testing as part of its placement. Your research you cited implies that is not the case.
(2) it’s ridiculous to say that “every” single time it has been done, it has been done horribly wrongly. Anyone who has been in G&T or Advanced classes would likely say that the classes were overall above-average. How do people know that their anecdotes don’t jibe with your assertion ? Because students know their peers! I can guarantee that most of the people with the highest SAT/ACT/CAT/whatever scores at my school were in the advanced classes, and no people in the advanced classes had terrible test scores. Schools have this information!
(3) You are wrong in saying that, according to your research, people in the lowest group had higher test scores than the highest group. But actually what it said is that a handful of people in the lowest group scored higher than some of the people in the medium-high group — not the highest! (Note that there were 4 levels, not 3.) As I said above, whatever errors in themiddle, the program studied still had the most struggling and the most high-achieving students in different, so it wasn’t completely, horribly upside diwn, as you argue.
(4) Why don’t you respond to the substance of the (more recent) research posted by the other poster?
DP: as to #1, these DCPS kids are tested out the wazoo from 2nd grade forward. Their teachers have so much detailed data on every strand of math and ELA capabilities for these kids that it is ridiculous to think they'd need more to know how to place them. Literally years of data on each kid, which is way better than a single teacher subjectively choosing which is kids should take a single GT test and placement flows from that one test.
Anonymous
03/06/2019 15:24
Subject: Wilson honors for all - how has it worked?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Can Wilson freshmen take any AP classes (like AP US History, AP World History, etc) or are they required to take the "Honors for All" classes in all subjects?
Freshman are not allowed to take AP classes probably because these classes are already over-filled.
They need more AP teachers, obviously.
Let's be honest, ALL of DCPS desperately needs teachers and substitutes! There are no Spanish teachers or subs in the city and multiple vacancies. Teachers don't want to come to DC nor can many afford it.
Anonymous
03/06/2019 15:19
Subject: Wilson honors for all - how has it worked?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Can Wilson freshmen take any AP classes (like AP US History, AP World History, etc) or are they required to take the "Honors for All" classes in all subjects?
Freshman are not allowed to take AP classes probably because these classes are already over-filled.
They need more AP teachers, obviously.
Anonymous
03/06/2019 15:13
Subject: Wilson honors for all - how has it worked?
Anonymous wrote:Oh the irony. The reason that Wilson is a beacon in the otherwise problematic landscape of DCPS attendance by-right high schools is *precisely because* its address is surrounded by upper NW. You’re welcome, EOTP PP who carefully picked a residence in a so-much-more-authentic and diverse neighborhood that lacks the “bullshit” of upper NW — but is still inbounds for Deal/Wilson. It’s the large critical mass of our upper NW kids, raised on a diet of bullshit and high expectations, that makes Wilson Wilson and not Cardozo.
Test my thesis: next year your block in Mt Plesant / Sheperd Park / wherever you commute to Hardy from is zoned out of Wilson to any equally modern DCPS high school with an equally competent faculty. Is this OK by you?
Your racism is showing. You attacked the only two Deal/Wilson feeders that have a sizable minority population, and you did so without provocation. BTW, the spelling is Mount Pleasant and Shepherd Park and they feed to Deal, not Hardy, but I suspect you already knew that.
Anonymous
03/06/2019 14:39
Subject: Wilson honors for all - how has it worked?
*had higher mean scores. That actually matters, and to me makes the argument more compelling.
Anonymous
03/06/2019 14:36
Subject: Re:Wilson honors for all - how has it worked?
Anonymous wrote:
(1) Any decent program uses testing as part of its placement. Your research you cited implies that is not the case.
(2) it’s ridiculous to say that “every” single time it has been done, it has been done horribly wrongly. Anyone who has been in G&T or Advanced classes would likely say that the classes were overall above-average. How do people know that their anecdotes don’t jibe with your assertion ? Because students know their peers! I can guarantee that most of the people with the highest SAT/ACT/CAT/whatever scores at my school were in the advanced classes, and no people in the advanced classes had terrible test scores. Schools have this information!
(3) You are wrong in saying that, according to your research, people in the lowest group had higher test scores than the highest group. But actually what it said is that a handful of people in the lowest group scored higher than some of the people in the medium-high group — not the highest! (Note that there were 4 levels, not 3.) As I said above, whatever errors in themiddle, the program studied still had the most struggling and the most high-achieving students in different, so it wasn’t completely, horribly upside diwn, as you argue.
(4) Why don’t you respond to the substance of the (more recent) research posted by the other poster?
Your reading comprehension is ... limited.
>(1) Any decent program uses testing as part of its placement. Your research you cited implies that is not the case.
No, the research showed that the OUTCOME was a failure. Kids who tested well on the tests given as part of the huge study I cited were in the wrong classes, and kids who tested poorly were too. It was a huge, international study and covered schools with lots of ways of assigning kids to tiered classes.
>(2) it’s ridiculous to say that “every” single time it has been done, it has been done horribly wrongly.
Jesus, learn to read. Every time it's been STUDIED, the results have been the same. You're not a data person, huh?
>(3) You are wrong in saying that, according to your research, people in the lowest group had higher test scores than the highest group.
No, I'm not: "In addition, Kifer and colleagues found that 5 of the 23 remedial classes had higher mean scores than 75 percent of the students in general math, 50 percent of the students in pre-algebra, and 25 percent of the students in algebra."
The class levels were remedial, regular, enriched, and algebra. Algebra was the highest of the 4 levels. So on average, more than 21% of remedial classes (lowest level) had higher median scores than 1/4 of the kids in algebra (the highest level).
Here's the link -- looks like it was deleted: http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/108013/chapters/What-Tracking-Is-and-How-to-Start-Dismantling-It.aspx