To Increase Equity, School Districts Eliminate Honors Classes

Is this the right move?

  • Yes

    Votes: 8 9.5%
  • No

    Votes: 76 90.5%

  • Total voters
    84
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The main difference between people who learn faster or better than others is interest.

Some people see education as a chore. One they avoid as much as they can and one that does not please them during the process.

Some people are interested in learning. Some people enjoy learning.

Let us please allow for the kids who treat school like jail to be in one location and the kids who truly want to learn as much as they can in another location.

You wouldn't take all the people out of the theater for a romantic comedy and force them to watch a brutal horror movie.

Let these kids over here do their thing and let the others do what they like too.
Well said!
 

Professor Emeritus

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So why are some kids able to get in the honors courses, and others not, despite going to the same school?

Some combination of parents who know how to work the system, better home prep, or natural ability.


I'm a bit bothered to this point that one side is providing papers, videos, model systems, and citations to support their claim.... and the other side is just repeating the same pop education theories that right-wingers push when they explain why Black students are undereducated, school reform isn't necessary or Affirmative Action would be eliminated.

Why is no one engaging with the actual educational arguments?
 
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Some combination of parents who know how to work the system, better home prep, or natural ability.


I'm a bit bothered to this point that one side is providing papers, videos, model systems, and citations to support their claim.... and the other side is just repeating the same pop education theories that right-wingers push when they explain why Black students are undereducated, school reform isn't necessary or Affirmative Action would be eliminated.

Why is no one engaging with the actual educational arguments?
I’m just not on board with the idea that black folks need our hands held, and never taking responsiblity for any of our failures. Even if the courses are subpar, the kids are STILL failing subpar courses. You have to work within the system. If you see your children aren’t doing well in school, then it’s up to you as a parent to get them on that level. As a community, we don’t value education. A lot of us don’t even use conjunctions when speaking. Most behavioral problems start in the home. If the kids aren’t paying attention, disrupting class, not studying, and not doing their homework, then the school isn’t the only problem. We’ve seen videos of what these teachers are dealing with. Are the parents creating relationships with the teachers? Are the parents showing up to the PTA meetings? Are they checking the homework? Just because the other side says something, doesn’t mean it’s entirely untrue.

Here we are asking to lower the standard in education, while simultaneously saying we aren’t getting hired for jobs just because we’re black, and need affirmative action. It’s sending the message that we really can’t measure up. That simply isn’t true when we apply ourselves. Black folks at the top of our game dance circles around everyone else.
 

Professor Emeritus

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I’m just not on board with the idea that black folks need our hands held, and never taking responsiblity for any of our failures.

That has literally jack shyt to do with anything I wrote about. Your entire argument is based on your assumption of a false talking point.




Even if the courses are subpar, the kids are STILL failing subpar courses. You have to work within the system. If you see your children aren’t doing well in school, then it’s up to you as a parent to get them on that level. As a community, we don’t value education. A lot of us don’t even use conjunctions when speaking. Most behavioral problems start in the home. If the kids aren’t paying attention, disrupting class, not studying, and not doing their homework, then the school isn’t the only problem. We’ve seen videos of what these teachers are dealing with. Are the parents creating relationships with the teachers? Are the parents showing up to the PTA meetings? Are they checking the homework? Just because the other side says something, doesn’t mean it’s entirely untrue.

Screaming, "Do better Black people!" obviously is not a realistic way forward. So what is your actual solution? Because you're not proposing one.

I don't reject your way of doing school because I think Black kids need their hands held. I reject it because it verifiably doesn't work. And it doesn't have jack shyt to do with race - I've worked in school systems in multiple US states in white-majority, black-majority, and latino-majority schools, as well as overseas. The problems are universal - it's only a question of which student populations are actually subjected to those problems.



Here we are asking to lower the standard in education, while simultaneously saying we aren’t getting hired for jobs just because we’re black, and need affirmative action. It’s sending the message that we really can’t measure up. That simply isn’t true when we apply ourselves. Black folks at the top of our game dance circles around everyone else.

No, it is not lowering the standard, it is RAISING the standard. That's why you don't understand.

The primary reason for creating honors classes is so honors parents can separate their students from the majority and take the resources with them, then say, "fukk y'all" to the other 85-90% left behind. The standards become much LOWER for those kids, because the system and the activist parents don't care what happens to them so long as their own kids are taken care of.

Like the research I shared shows, gifted kids perform equally well whether you have honors available or not, but the rest of the kids perform substantially worse when students are pulled out for honors. Creating an honors track doesn't raise the standards for the gifted kids because there are plenty of other ways to enrich their curriculum even when they're mainstreamed. But creating an honors track substantially depresses everyone else's education.


The goal is to work for schools that serve the entire student body better. Honors tracks work against that goal. Do you want the entire school to have high standards? Or do you only want a talented tenth to come out ahead and the rest can flounder?
 
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The goal is to work for schools that serve the entire student body better. Honors tracks work against that goal. Do you want the entire school to have high standards? Or do you only want a talented tenth to come out ahead and the rest can flounder?

The only reason I mentioned race is this specific story is about black and Latino parents wanting the AP courses eliminated.

This is a dog eats dog world. There are parents who want better, and that is perfectly fine.

Your proposal gives no reward for doing better. That is not how the world functions. If one man gets a job, he is not sharing his bank account with you. Kids need to see the value in excellence. We have to compete in society, and black people need to work twice as hard, and be twice as good. Even in high quality school districts, you have AP courses. All those rich suburban kids aren’t honor students. So if a child is gifted, applies himself, and wants to learn, he should have the option of an AP course.

If someone’s mentality is, “I’m not good enough. I guess I’ll stay at the bottom,” they aren’t going to make it. That’s not something you learn in school. Teachers are not your children’s parents.
 

O.Red

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I feel this is all intentional. It is not to make the children or parents feel better about themselves, it is to make sure a non-competitive underclass is continuously produced.
These are not mutually exclusive
 

ISO

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The United States is not Finland.

At least in NYC, charter schools have reduced the so-called educational racial achievement gap. Schools that are 100% black and Latino, most under the poverty line, and often housed in the very same buildings as several public schools have a much larger amount of children scoring 3's and 4's rather than 1's and 2's on the standardized tests. In one year 5th graders, Success kids from Harlem, scored higher as a whole than 5th graders in all of New York state on the Math test, even higher than those in affluent nearby Westchester suburbs like Scarsdale and Briarcliff Manor.
 

Wildhundreds

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The main difference between people who learn faster or better than others is interest.

Some people see education as a chore. One they avoid as much as they can and one that does not please them during the process.

Some people are interested in learning. Some people enjoy learning.

Let us please allow for the kids who treat school like jail to be in one location and the kids who truly want to learn as much as they can in another location.

You wouldn't take all the people out of the theater for a romantic comedy and force them to watch a brutal horror movie.

Let these kids over here do their thing and let the others do what they like too.

This is by far the most realistic post in this thread. And when you have a room of eager learners and those who hate classes, is when the problems begin.
 

Suge Shot Me

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The primary reason for creating honors classes is so honors parents can separate their students from the majority and take the resources with them,
What resources? At least at my high school, the only difference between AP and non-AP classes was the curriculum, the textbooks and different teachers for some.
 
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