Do higher level (honors) classes in 'bad' schools have the better behaved students? (college, high school)

[taben]

One school our daughter is considering for high school is a inner city school with an advanced program as an option. The brightest kids are in a honors curriculum.
The school has some BAD kids...rough language, mean kids, etc. Some folks assure me that in honors courses, you get the good kids. Your child still has to deal with the rough kids at lunch, recess and other loose ship times. However, in the classroom in the worst of schools, the honors courses are usually well run.

Do you all find this to be true, as educators? In even rough schools with behavior issues, are the honors class children more well behaved...or is that a falsehood?

Would you consider such a school even IF the honors courses were okay knowing that on the bus, in the locker room, etc your child would be dealing with rough kids?
Ann

[uptown_urbanist]

I'm not an educator, so take this from a former student's point of view (and sometimes PT school employee in various random non-teacher capacities). I assume it depends on the specific school. My inner city junior high school in particular was pretty rough. The honors classes were great, and didn't have any behavior issues that I can recall. It very much functioned as a school within a school. I had some classes (gym, some non-academic electives) with a broader mix of kids. Based on my experiences I would definitely be open to a city school with some problem kids, assuming that there were indeed sufficient decent course offerings for my kid, and if I felt comfortable with the teachers and administration and didn't feel that the honors kids were being ignored or lost in the shuffle because they weren't the ones causing trouble or in need of help to pass tests.

For what it's worth, I also learned a great deal from some of the non-honors track kids, both the ones with the major problems, as well as those who for whatever reason didn't want to or weren't able to be in the more honors/college-bound track.

[golfgal]

My niece takes an IB program at an inner city school and while her IB classes are fine she still has band, PE and some other classes with the rest of the school and routinely gets to experience fights in class, hallways and other issues with the other kids in the schools. Her mom picked her up from a soccer game one day and had to break up a fight in the parking lot between the PARENTS. She has to be careful not to wear anything that can be interpreted at "gang" attire as well.

[DubbleT]

I'm another parent with a kid that went to a school within a school program.
I think my son's experience pretty much mirrors what uptown-urbanist has said.
DS received an excellent academic education, and he mixed from kids from all different walks of life which gave him another type of education. I'd send him to the same school if I had t do it all over again.

[nkosiek]

Depends on the strength of the administration in the school. If they keep the Honors classes strong and don't let in the problem kids because "they might change" then things will be great. I work in an inner-city school and we are instituting Honors classes next year, but am unsure of the roster for those classes. If they keep them small and with a core bunch of kids, things will be great but again to echo everyone else, your child will have classes like gym, etc with "regular" kids. As for bus and other issues, that's up to you. I went to an urban magnet school and it was awesome but we didn't have the issues that a regular urban school with some honors classes have.