Eliminate high school honors classes to increase diversity?

According to some definitions of "diversity" that I 've encountered
100% diversity = no whites at all.

(not that there 's anything rong with that)





David

That's odd, O'George, i didn't see any reference to a "celebration of diversity" in the article cited in the initial post. Perhaps my request was not clear to you. You wrote about a political judgmennt. The decision to discontinue the honors classes was just that, a decision, not a judgment. Now, you might allege that the decision was reached for political reasons (not demonstrated), but that doesn't make it a decision a judgment. I don't think honors classes should be discontinued, and Joe gave some very good reasons to keep honors classes. But neither do i think the overheated conservative rhetoric which has appeared in this thread to be justified.

If it pleases you to make a distinction between a decision and the judgment that led to it that's OK with me. If you believe that resisting attempts to create the illusion of statistical parity in the face of real (if impermanent) differences is a consequence of overheated conservative rhetoric and not a foolish policy based on a perverse form of racism, I suppose that's OK too ... though I think less of you for it.

So then, you're saying that the judgment that white students are represented in greater proportion in honors classes than their proportion in the general student body is a political judgment? I don't think that's very reasonable.

I don't give a rat's ass what you think of me, O'George. The overheated rhetoric to which i referred were implicit and even explicit statements in this thread to the effect that white students outperform minoritystudents as a matter of course, and one member even suggested the reason was genetic. (That flies in the face, by the way, of the research done by Binet and Simon.) I also refer to the sarcastic comment suggesting that if not everyone can benefit from honors courses, then no one should; which was followed by another sarcastic comment to the effect that since not everyone qualifies to attend college, colleges should be eliminated altogether.

You can hardly see the posts in this thread for all the straw men which have been set up.

It sure is not an academic worthiness statement....why are you even looking or caring about the racial mix? The only reason I can think of is that you are politically motivated. If you demand that the racial mix be changed you prove beyond doubt that you care more about your political goals than you are about the pursuit of academic excellence

The school where I teach has to bus in students from a nearby ghetto if their parents choose - and a contingent of about 8 students have been bused in for two years. The administration is curious as to why these bused in students aren't rising to the level of the other students - since they've had the benefit of the same education for two years.

You have to understand the intangibles operating. Whose parents check behind homework - CAN help with homework, because they know the material... aren't off at a second or third job, leaving the child to babysit for a smaller child... What you get at school can be IDENTICAL to an Honors Student - but what's going on at home can change the result drastically. If your parents are speaking ebonics or just incorrect English, it bleeds through in to their child's speech and language learning. The white kid who has an "intrinsic" understanding of how to break down words in to their components and make educated (and correct) guesses on the vocab section of a standardized test starts from a completely different jumping off place than does his counterpart from a home where speech patterns/words/phrases aren't shared with the dominant culture...

Actually, I support abolishing Honors courses. Students can be met where they are by the various differentiation teaching methods. Just need to get colleges on board re not discriminating against students who don't have classes called "Honors."

then how do you propose that the universities will be able to distinguish between the smart kids and the not smart kids?? Are you going to routinely give the kids who would have been able to get into the honors class higher grades? Part of your job as an educator is to help sift out the brightest of the bright so that we can get them started at the university on the more demanding careers. We dont want to waste time and money putting substandard kids into majors that they can not successfully complete and carry out a career in.

There is no such thing as a substandard kid.

Our society has just decided that some kids - generally black ones - are genetically inferior, and not worth our time or money. It's not true, Hawk. They are capable of the same successes as the white kid sitting across the aisle. This isn't just a do gooder's feel good speech. I swear it's true.

There are some kids with organic malfunctions - but they come in all colors - and even THEY can learn - with caring teachers who know how they learn.

An entrance essay - GPA - SATs... I'm not saying we "give out smiley faces" as grades to everybody. Differentiation sometimes means choosing a more difficult, dense piece of literature to write the persuasive essay on - The student is responsible to write it correctly - but opts for a less rigorous read.

Individuals have all different levels of individual intellectual abilities..some best fit onto the work world as a hair dresser, some as auto mechanics, some as scientists. I would not want my tax dollars to go for trying to make the hair dresser into a scientist, and given all the problems that we have to solve I want to best person in the scientist job that we can find.

I agree that all kids have some gift or another, but some kids are certainly intellectually inferior. You as a teacher can't get around genetics, and only rarely around the culture and home life of your students.

No, the school record needs to record who has done the less rigorous work....if you as educators don't do that then you have failed the society. You get paid by the taxpayers, you need to do our bidding....do your best to help each student be all that they can be sure, but also help us to get each kid where they are best suited to help the collective be successful. Your responsibility to help sift the kids so that we can get the right ones to the university, and then get them into a degree that they are suited for, is not optional.

The Soviet Union used to decide kids' career tracks when they were in Middle School. We don't do that here.

I help all students excel. I'm about expanding their options, not diminishing them.

we dont decide what these kids do, but we need to have a record that accurately reflects what they have done. You seem to want to muddy the waters, which is intolerable.

this nation is about meritocracy, as such the normal course is for doors to continually close to us as we go through life. If a kid does not do a rigorous high school curriculum the door to a intellectually rigorous career should mostly close to them. Somebody is going through that door, and it should be the one who is most deserving, the one with the greatest chance of success ...the one who has shown the willingness and the capacity to do the work required.

All classes should be Honors' Classes, using differentiation, peer teaching and high expectations for all students.

I've worked in a school modeled on this one - where the student body is formed from the lowest performing students in local public schools.

http://www.upcsinstitute.org/

Look at their stats.

The door shouldn't be shut on any of them. If they aren't doing their work or meeting expectations, their grades will reflect that.

Our bidding.

Not your bidding.

why? At most only 40% of the kids are going into a career where a univeristy degree will be helpfull, do I need my prep cook to have gone through honors history? Is it even a good idea to give all of these future prep cooks the hope that they might become a university history professor then then after they have done all this work over years (though less well than the smarter kids) we bust their bubble and tell them that the only job open to them is a job where no academic skills are required...that they just wasted all of those years learning stuff that will not get them anywhere? This tend to leave people demoralized and angry. This person would have been much better off if he was told in his soph year that he was not looking like he was going to be a good university candidate, that maybe he should consider vo-tech courses. He would have at least used those two years to learn something that was useful, and their would be no bubble popping at the end either.

that would be fine, if the one who picked the easy book knew from the get go that because they picked the easy work the best grade that they can get is a B, that the grades will reflect the quality of the work they do, so that if they want an A they had better chose to do the more rigorous work. I doubt your are willing to do that though, because you want to pretend that the person who read "the Color Purple" has done the same level of academic work as has the one who read "Ulysses"...and you also think it is just fine to keep everyone else in the dark about what happened because OMG, if the university found out then they would be no longer equal *SHUDDER*. You want to measure not the level of ability and work, but rather to which degree each person did his best. This information how ever is useless to the collective, because we need to figure out who is the genius and who is the idiot. Your lack of willingness to help with that task calls into question your value to the collective, and whether your salary might better go to someone who was more willing to assist the ones who pay it.

BTW: I do appreciate that you want the best for each of your kids, you are probably a great teacher, but you have obligations that you seem to have forgotten about.

If 'all classes should be honor's classes', I guess we should change the meaning of the word 'honor's.

How would eliminating high school honors classes increase diversity?
The curriculum would be standardized and homogenized to meet the needs of the 'average' and you'd lose variation at both ends of the learning spectrum.

I think it's biased, paternalistic and blind to another's culture to assume that EVERY student, no matter what his or her racial or socio-economic background- is interested in the same result from education.

I work with a white guy who left school at 16 with no qualifications (what would be called a highschool drop out in the US) and he's more well-read and intelligent than I can ever hope to be.
And he's fulfilled in his 'career' - yes- 'career' not just a 'job' -which is teaching the trade of painting and decorating to men in prison.
I am working with him to embed functional skills (literacy and numeracy to GED level) in his workshop trade for the men who don't want to come to education but need numeracy and literacy skills to achieve their NVQ (diploma) and I was supposed to write the curriculum - and he's ALREADY WRITTEN IT! And it's incredibly thoroughly and creatively done.
I couldn't improve on it. I've not seen a numeracy textbook written by a PhD in math education that could improve on it.
And he didn't give a crap about university- and he still doesn't.
Why do we automatically assume that every student (bright or not) does?

There is a need for tradespeople in the world. I don't know about any of you - but I couldn't live without them.
What they do is not lesser in any way than what I do.
It's just as necessary.
Maybe we should stop trying to convince everyone we care about diversity and truly embrace and celebrate diversity in our culture, instead of trying to make everyone the same beneath their skin.

It was mentioned earlier in this thread that the Russians test kids during the equivalent of American middle school age and determine their career and educational path. Well, so what? Until the mid-80s, so did the British. The French do so as well.

The odd thing is that the American right is crazy for standardized testing but the Brits have modified their testing system because they came to believe it was too rigid.

I think our schools are not sufficiently challenging. But, what is wrong with training kids to become plumbers and electricians?

so do most Asian countries, though not that early I think. It is a critical part of a successful education system...But America's is deeply broken. Lashes comments point to where the problem is, it is not the money spent, it is not the quality of the students, not the quality of the teachers....it revolves around a broken culture. The adults running the schools no longer remember what their jobs are, so the job of education does not get done a lot of the time.