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Across the Chicago region, high school officials say they are making inroads in diversifying their advanced classes, but Evanston is considering the boldest step of all: eliminating an elite honors English course that has traditionally been offered to the highest-achieving incoming freshmen — usually white.
i will tell you the truth about most advanced classes, they usually don't teach anything anyways. the students are smart enough to know everything anyways. they just give them assignments and they complete them easily. it's redundant. the smartest kids usually don't even need teaching, they seem to just be able to take a textbook and absorb everything themselves. that's what i've noticed.
Addressing the article... I don't get how the regular classes can be considered less than "excellent" if they have good teachers. I also don't get why this is a racial issue at all. If it's based on scores and past work then there is nothing racially motivated about it. If you think there is benefit to giving top performers their own class you should go into that colorblind no matter what colors do/don't end up in the classroom. I wonder if their are statistics to support honors classes? If nobody is paying attention then maybe they can't be justified.
However, if honors classes are on the chopping block due to budget problems I can see why they might go. They are not to be confused with AP classes which grant college credit, and sometimes it's the least painful cut since top performers will be top performers regardless of what others in the class are doing.
This all sounds terribly familiar and I know there were threads about this kind of thing before. Wasn't there another school district doing the same thing last year or is this just more of the same?
Minorities are poorly educated because of poor educators and their aptitudes are going completely ignored and are also discounted. Do you think all minorities are going to have the superior aptitude in "English" to the point where they will excel in English Honors? Minorities have aptitudes in other areas.
How do I know this? Because that is what I experienced when I went to school. I have a master's degree BTW. I'm no cretin.
I was in English honors in high school. It was a terrible class. We had to read books that emphasized feminism and male hatred. Everything was biased and pedantic. Everything involved groupthink. The teacher helped selectively and would withhold information. Horrible experience. I can just imagine what the less guided and less supported minorities experienced. I had great role models in my family. Everybody related to me at least has a bachelor's degree from a reputable university. During open house the white teachers were stunned that my parents were actually articulate, evaluative, and fashionably dressed.
The College Board each year sends me a form to fill out in which I have to detail my efforts to get more under-represented kids into AP classes. By that they mean ethnic minorities and girls.
The funny thing is that my under-represented group is white males. The school is 80% Black and the AP numbers are 65% female. About 15% of the school's enrollment take AP classes.
No, I don't think it's race baiting at all. I read the article..it is what it is no matter how hard you try to deny it.
They are doing this to achieve diversity.
Lower the bar so that No Child is Left Behind. It's as simple as that.
From the OP link:
"The proposal to eliminate the honors-only class comes at a time when the Evanston high school has repeatedly failed to meet federal academic standards, requiring a major school overhaul to increase student performance.
The school spends more than $20,000 per student, one of the highest per-pupil expenditures in the state. But while white students have consistently scored high enough on state tests to meet the standards, black and Latino students lag far behind, according to state data."
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