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Just found this quote from another article about the change at ETHS:
"The following year, honors-only sections will be eliminated in freshman biology."
Taking this to its furthest conclusion, the law of unintended consequences kicks in. 1. They eliminate classes that cater to the top 5% of academic performers. 2. That population shifts to private schools where they can get more challenging instruction. 3. Along comes a low-income kid who's brilliant.....now he/she no longer has access to advanced courses because they no longer exist in the public school and private schools are too expensive.
Add in that all the mommies and daddies paying for private schools will now object to property taxes being used to fund public schools and it gets even uglier.
And down the crapper goes ETHS. Then the board of ed will wonder why test scores are plummeting across the board, determine that they need to throw more money at the problem, and increase property taxes even further. It's a self-imposed death spiral that anyone with an IQ greater than their shoe-size could see coming from a mile away.
Well, all I can say is that Evanston is getting what they deserve by electing these yahoo liberals to their BOE. Hope they like paying those property taxes! Really though, the kids (especially the high achieving low-income kids) are the ones who will suffer the most. Sad.
To say this decision was idiotic is putting it lightly, IMO. My husband and I met in Evanston and although we live in Chicago now, we were basically planning on moving back to Evanston when we are ready to have kids. This decision, however, is a big problem for me. I see it as just phase one of the school eliminating the honors program completely, and considering I don't have any kids yet, I can only imagine what the school's quality will be like in 15 years.
This is sad on so many levels. It is going to hurt property values, definitely. I was considering Evanston because it's slightly more affordable than Wilmette/Kenilworth/etc. and while I've known all along that ETHS wasn't spectacular, I thought it was probably good enough. I went to school in a district that was very diverse and had its share of issues, and I turned out just fine. But, that school at least had an honors program!
What really irks me is the BOE turning it into a racial issue. I don't think this has anything to do with race. A standardized test cannot tell what race its taker is. How can a standardized test discriminate? I think performance in school and on such tests has much more to do with a child's home life. Do the parents care about school/education? Did/do they read to their kids? Etc. I believe that those are the factors that determine which students do well and which ones fall behind.
I guess the BOE in Evanston wants to create a more "diverse" school by ensuring no exceptional students of any race want to attend ETHS. I sure am not going to pay Evanston's ridiculous property taxes so my kids can attend a substandard school or so I can fork out a ton of money for private school. If I'm going to pay for private schools I may as well stay in Chicago where the taxes are lower.
What I also don't understand is how the teachers are going to possibly be able to provide a good education to a class with so many different level students. They haven't been able to do a particularly good job prior to High School or there would be more students qualifying for the honors program in the first place. What makes the BOE think they'll suddenly be able to do it now that they're trying to accommodate slightly below average, average, and above average kids all at the same time?
While I'm not a fan of this change at ETHS (especially since I'm an Evanston resident with high-achieving kids), let's be fair about what the new plan really is. ETHS is not eliminating Honors; they're eliminating a "Straight Honors" freshman class that has historically been all white. All kids in the new mixed Humanities class can still earn Honors credit by doing Honors-level work, and the hope is that some minority students take advantage of this opportunity to distinguish themselves rather than being labeled as "not Honors material" when they walk in the door.
For those that fear Honors or AP will go away, that's just silly. The goal is to get more minorities into those classes above the freshman year. And some classes, like math and foreign language, will never be de-tracked because the skills build year-over-year in a more concrete way; whereas all kids come into high school with very little experience in humanities or biology.
That said, I think it will be very difficult for teachers to teach effectively to such a broad spectrum of kids, some of whom will (obviously) be able to progress at a much faster pace than others. But I will keep an open mind, as the stated objective is to teach the Honors curriculum to all kids, allowing the most capable to dive deeper into the material.
While part of me, strangely enough, sympathizes with SloopyJ I fear reality is probably closer to what others expressed
In my best dreams I want all kids to do very well in school and have the confidence to say, from day one of their freshmen year -- "regardless of what has happened up until now I have as much potential to be Valedictorian as any other kid"... Nothing more "American Dream" than that!
That potential, however, assumes that kids really can overcome almost anything and experience says otherwise. Kids that are poor readers or just do not take school work seriously are flat out going to get run over if the teachers truly assign "honors level work to all" in a true combined history / English course of humanities. It will be no fun for the teachers having to deal with the immaturity that generally goes along with underachievers either. Undone assignments are common among regular level students, and honors kids tend to be exceptionally cpable of self-managing to the point of getting frustrated with the laggards.The best kids won't suffer so much as just be all the hardened against wasting their time with so-called classmates that have neither the temperament nor the skills to produce the same kind of analytic papers and discussions that are expected of honors students.
From my classroom days I can completely relate to the desires of a school board / administration that has high minded ideals of getting all students to perform at a superior level. As I recall the efforts to have a mostly "de- tracked" curricular model served mostly to DERAIL efforts of teachers to get kids to understand in anything more than a "lowest common demoninator" way or risk getting so many kids DISTRACTED that one really would have classroom management issues on ones hands. Even worse was when some loafer would see the "unfairness" of an honors type kid getting credit for 'extra effort' and their whiny self-important "my kid is never wrong" parents would force teachers to allow the loafer kids to turn in such a project (probably done entirely by the enabling helicopter mom / dad) to boast their grade from failure to passable.
Well it seems my days of at saying to libs that love, love, love OPRF & ETHS that "of the two Evanston at least has decent numbers to back up it's reputation" may be numbered.
I can't see how a lawsuit would work to change this, but the tide of informed parents and high performing students that will seek out schools to better challenge them will result in some nasty negatives...
Funny thing too is I see this as sort of an extension of the same wrong headed "eliminate the vocational classes" mindset that now pigeon holes every kid on a college prep track. I personally know some vey bright and talented people that are skilled machinists, carpenters, mechanics and technicians that would have never gotten to where they are if not for great vocational education programs in high school. Sadly most of those guys (and few gals) are on the far side of 50 and there are no younger people to replace them. Heck of a "chicken and egg" problem when people complain about lack of good paying industrial jobs! With a coordinated plan the US once upon a time did have a very innovatation oriented indsutrisl base, with workers that actually knew from hands-on experience how the stuff they sold was built. Now so many companies sell stuff that was made in a far away factory the only way to 'innovate' is to change up the marketing....
Many of the ills in American public education come from the issue of money...or lack thereof. Today's bleak economic times make funding an issue. More so in places with less money to begin with. American public education...from top to bottom...has been failing for a long time now. We're not a caring society, that's for sure. And money is not own down (look at the failed NT bond issue), but the dispairities of down has grown to an enormous age.
Simply put, the further down you go the economic ladder, the less funding takes place. And the less society, or at least those in power and calling the shots, care about.
One might look at ETHS's closing down of some honors program as a financial move; certainly our times gets us to think all issues are financial bottom line. But, of course, this one is not about money, but about how we offer education.
Chicago puts its elite students in high powered high schools...Northside, Payton, etc. It's a big city and has the critical mass to segregate that way. Not so in Evanston. One city, one high school. And all it can do to deliver services to those who are priviledged (and, let's face it, priviledged often means white) is to track. It is done to give higher functioning students the challenges it needs. But being done with the ills of society, it is still segregation, although not the blatant or even racist form that one associates with, say, Little Rock's Central High School of yore.
I graduated from ETHS in 1964. Ancient history. We were different from all around us. We had black kids. And though their percentages were, I believe, below 20%, they defined the school for those outside the Evanston community. As I said: we had black kids. And that seemed to make all the difference in the world to the Nileses and New Triers and Highland Parks that surrounded us. And to the Chicago media which pounced on every meaningless racial incident (that wasn't) and made it big news.
Today' world is vastly different. And the discussions we have here seem to me to be out of another era. School enrollment, more than anything else, reflects upcoming demographics and those demographics are decidedly non-white. And they are no longer about Evanston alone but the "real world" that now surrounds it. In about 10 years, non-white enrollment will exceed the magical 50% mark nationally; by the 2040s, whites as a whole are expected to fall to minority status; there will be no majority race, only a plurality one.
That's the new America, the one that is rising joyfully with diversity but suffering incredibly by the inequities of our society. It is those inequities and our refusal to deal with them nationally that will poison all, from bottom on very much to the top. New Trier will sufffer from ETHS realities because those realities are its own.
Every bit as much as whites escaped Chicago in the 1950s and 60s to end up in the likes of New Trier, thinking we were leaving our troubles behind us. When suburbia didn't work, others escaped to the Sun Belt. Today's America has no place to escape. McManisons with 5 car garages don't only kill the dream on the South Side of Chicago or at ETHS; they kill it in Winnetka, too. We have killed the goose that laid the golden egg.
Much of the mentality I see here, IMHO and with no disrespect meant, seems straight out of the second half of the 20th century, America in assent, America exceptional, America on top. Poverty and minority invisible.
That's not how life works. Reality says if we're not all in it together, we're all screwed. A rising tide raises all ships and our tide doesn't rise. We tie the funding of our schools to property tax; can you think of any worse way to treat the underpriviledged in our society than that.
We talk here about ETHS being in competition with other high schools around it, Evanston in competition with other communities. What we don't get is that if things are out of kilter at ETHS, in Evanston, they are everywhere else to. We're interconnected. And we are one.
And the 20th century is now long gone.
Unless New Trier, GBN, GBS, Highland Park (with its own minority issues), Deerfield, Stevenson, etc., star to think in terms of...
WE'RE ALL ETHS...
then we're all screwed instead.
There is no wall or gate that can keep ETHS out of your community. We are all one.
Eths spends around $20k per student. That is about double what gets spent in CPS. the reason for that is that folks in Evanston let the school board put the big ol' turnip press to their liberal little hearts and squeeze while all the cheap skates in Chicago would stuff their aldermen into garbage totes in the alley if they had tax bills that were doubled.
How in the name of anything resembling sanity can you believe this is about anything even remotely like Little Rock?
The kids that were previously in classes with other motivated high performing ETHS students will now be randomnly seated next to some do nothing slacker that might be an academic laggard for no better reason that to seem hip. There are plenty of uninvolved non-minority parents to go around too wen in Evanston! Somehow I doubt they do much to support high property taxes or the push by clueless activists to shift funding to some Mike Madigsn controlled pot of income tax increases...
How color blind does the country have to get before some folks put away the race card?
Tracks exist in pretty much every high school, even the most Lilly white rural spots. The reason is pretty much the same that there are NBA pro teams and there are other lesser leagues -- some people are better at some things than others and if Michael Jordon played in some Greek Euro basketball league he would have run up two hundred points a night against thel likes of an Alexi Gianoliss. If you want senators with as little talent as some failed banker than go right ahead and mash all the schools down to some artifically homogenized pap...
Last edited by chet everett; 12-15-2010 at 06:28 AM..
Chet (and others), I'm not really disagreeing with you that this proposal does a disservice to top kids. It's hard to buy the administration's claim that those students will continue to be challenged at the highest level. And I am concerned about that, quite frankly.
Still, some perspective should be kept. It is ONE FRESHMAN CLASS. OK, with Biology coming, it's two freshman classes. Two freshman classes in which, yes, the top kids might not be as challenged as they possibly could be, but doubtfully in such a way as to permanently damage them or destroy ETHS's reputation.
Do I think this proposal will have the results the Board is hoping for? Simply put, no, I don't. But I certainly do hope that a few "diamonds in the rough" are discovered among the minority population.
And again, I think we should resist the "slippery slope" argument here. Humanities and Biology are uniquely conducive to freshman detracking because everyone comes into high school with little formal experience in either. Keep in mind, both classes will still be tracked above the freshman level, and the first-year curriculum will be differentiated (easier said than done, I know) to challenge higher-ability kids.
Finally, ETHS will never do away with its Honors/AP track, because that would clearly kill the reputation of the school and the college placement opportunities of its students. This program is really about trying to get a few more kids of color into those programs.
What does OPRF have to do with this? Indeed, District 97 (not the high school which is 200) is going even more toward tracking in the lower grades, like the oldfangled reading and math groups.
Chet (and others), I'm not really disagreeing with you that this proposal does a disservice to top kids. It's hard to buy the administration's claim that those students will continue to be challenged at the highest level. And I am concerned about that, quite frankly.
Still, some perspective should be kept. It is ONE FRESHMAN CLASS. OK, with Biology coming, it's two freshman classes. Two freshman classes in which, yes, the top kids might not be as challenged as they possibly could be, but doubtfully in such a way as to permanently damage them or destroy ETHS's reputation.
Do I think this proposal will have the results the Board is hoping for? Simply put, no, I don't. But I certainly do hope that a few "diamonds in the rough" are discovered among the minority population.
And again, I think we should resist the "slippery slope" argument here. Humanities and Biology are uniquely conducive to freshman detracking because everyone comes into high school with little formal experience in either. Keep in mind, both classes will still be tracked above the freshman level, and the first-year curriculum will be differentiated (easier said than done, I know) to challenge higher-ability kids.
Finally, ETHS will never do away with its Honors/AP track, because that would clearly kill the reputation of the school and the college placement opportunities of its students. This program is really about trying to get a few more kids of color into those programs.
I agree with you that this isn't the end of the world. But, I do think it is doing more of a disservice than anything and is not likely to have the results that the BOE claims it should. I don't think a measure like this would ever have been passed at all if the BOE hadn't used the race card to drum up everyone's emotions.
My bottom line though, is why would I put myself or my kids in a position to attend ETHS when there are other schools out there that haven't taken this (IMO stupid) measure? I wouldn't. I'm just one family, but my husband and I are smart, hard working, and give back to our community. We will not move to Evanston if this is still the case when we're able to sell our house and although we're just one family, if there are others like us, that is surely a blow to the town.
Edsg25, you point out that shortly, America will have no minorities, but will be a true multicultural society. I agree with that.
So looking into the future, when ETHS looks more like Maine East-- "Seventy four percent of the school's students speak a language other than English at home. Students speak 52 languages, according to the school's count so far. " Will it still be appropriate to kill programs that cater to the top 5% of achieving students? When that's a mixed bag racially, will we still want to give lower achieving kids a chance to shine (at the expense of the majority of higher and lower achieving students who would do better in a customized environment?).
This is a race issue only because the board made it a race issue. The high achieving freshman happen to be white. Evanston has already had 8 years to pony up and give kids a chance to show what great learners they are. By counting which heads are what color, they're the ones missing the point of placement according to ability-- not race, not gender, not income, etc.
Once again, this policy is a disservice to all the students. Not just the high achieving ones. Teaching to a mixed bag of comprehension and abilities makes the lesson weaker for all who attend it.
And whoever said this isn't about budgets-- I disagree. All kinds of specialized programming is getting its funding cut. If they can find another excuse to justify it besides money, that's the one they'll put out in public.
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While part of me, strangely enough, sympathizes with SloopyJ I fear reality is probably closer to what others expressed
