@Noah
My mom went to a one-room schoolhouse with one teacher for all of grades 1-6 all in the same room. Can you imagine having to be that teacher?
@Noah
This is ongoing at our school. Gifted is embedded in regular sections, but students have to sign contracts agreeing to different expectations or they can just be placed in the regular part of the class. Guess what the kids choose?
Seems to me like it could work if it’s done right. One of the things that characterized honors in a lot of my grade school/junior high/first high school was independent study. It worked perfectly fine for me to be in the regular class if I was left to do my own thing and work on honors stuff. The year that the school tried eliminating tracking and to force everyone to participate in the same classes was a disaster; we were all bored out of our skulls and terrifically disruptive.
I did physics this way for years, usually the honors kids just wanted to solve the problems (do the math) while the regular kids frequently drove the discussion with a practical/conceptual understanding of the problem (avoid the math). For my classes it usually worked out well for both groups.
@LearningFacilitator4
I described in another comment how I’ve taught precal/calculus this way. I agree, it can work well, maybe especially for the math-y subjects.
Seattle Public Schools is doing this. They call it honors for all and say it is to increase equity because they didn’t like that mostly white and Asian kids were testing into honors classes based on the traditional merit based system. Under the equitable system all the kids take the same class and there’s an extra credit project at the end of the semester that kids can do for one week to earn an H on their transcript. As if that’s going to fool a college system like the UW and their admissions department isn’t going to know that students coming out of the largest district in the state aren’t taking real, rigorous honors classes anymore. I attended a high school open house last year and walked in on a parent of an advanced student grilling a math teacher about how the school was going to meet her kid’s needs. The teacher was dodging her questions and giving the district line about well, there’s extra math in the handouts that the kids can do on their own if they want. But the parent just kept pressing him and eventually he gave up and admitted, The advanced kids are bored. We don’t have enough work to keep them busy. Our only focus is trying to get the most behind kids to understand the most basic math concepts. SPS enrollment has fallen from 53,000 to 49,000 since the pandemic. They’re preparing to close 20 of our 70 elementary schools next year. But they just keep doubling down on driving away the families that care the most about academics and student achievement. A school board member literally told an upset parent at a school board meeting that if he didn’t like the way SPS is run(ning itself into the ground) he should take his family and leave. Ideology is a hell of a drug.
@Tony1
And let me guess, any parent who opts for a private school because of these kinds of things is treated like THEY’RE the problem. Seems to me that some schools forget that most parents ultimately care about what’s best for their own kid. At the end of the day, that’s going to take precedent over ideology and politics. I believe that public schools are a good thing, and I support them, but if I were a parent of a child zoned for a crappy district, I wouldn’t martyr their education and opportunities in the name of that. Parents need to support schools, but it’s a two-way street, the school has to appease the parents. (within reason, of course) I think these schools also don’t realize that academically involved parents have a disproportionately positive effect on the school and it’s not good for anyone to drive them off.
@Tony1
Also in the Seattle area in the Eastside in a district with a well established advanced learning program. Well my child’s school just tried to deviate from the district and create this integrated advanced math class. The parents came down on the principal swiftly and she backpedaled. It’s disturbing though to see this kind of mindset trying to infect the Eastside too.
That’s not what honors is supposed to be. It’s not supposed to be more work, its supposed to be the same work but they go at a faster pace through the curriculum. In 2 weeks they shouldn’t be doing the same thing anymore. Stuff that a normal class learns in 2 months, the honors class should do in 1 month. It’s not more work, its a faster pace. It sounds like they’re learning at the same pace if they’re in the same class with the same teacher, just honors kids will be given more work to fill their time while the other kids catch up, like early finisher work that any normal class would have. But that doesn’t mean they’re learning more. They’re just doing more work to learn the same thing, when in theory the honors kids could learn the same thing with less work. It’s completely backwards. I’ve seen it at middle schools that way because they don’t have the resources to divide the class and it always ends up with the honors kids a bit resentful. In high school, that’s crazy to me to even consider that.
@BookwormBard
Thanks! That encapsulates pretty well my concerns about it. My kid reported this AM that their History teacher said that Honors was just stricter standards. So for a test, if you’re on level, you could maybe get 7 wrong and still get an A, while if your Honors you can only get two wrong to get an A. It seems to imply they are taking the same test? Could be my kid misunderstood but this continues to make no sense to me at all.
@sheldon
Yeah that sounds like they’re learning the same thing, which seems pointless to me, but I’m not someone that gives a fuck about grades. Are kids learning as much as they could? That should be the guiding question I feel.
I had classes like that in high school. It wasn’t ideal, but it was either that or no honors classes. An experienced teacher can scaffold for advanced students the same way they do in other, more typical inclusion scenarios. It didn’t prevent my ex from going to Princeton.
I was labeled gifted when I started school in 1975. Over the next 12 years, I would be subjected to every flavor of pull-out, enrichment, mainstreaming, standalone permutation of education possible. And really my best experience was when I had zero contact with the larger school. Any time I was in a regular class I got bullied unmercifully. Later, I worked at a magnet school for students gifted in sci/math. They had all also been bullied in their regular school, often including physical violence. It was not until they were in a completely separate school that they felt comfortable and safe to express themselves and be who they are. They called our magnet school Heaven for Dorks. I know that the US edu system is falling apart for everyone, so I don’t expect that the kids who are bored or bullied in mainstream classrooms are going to have their needs met by simply being punished with more work.
I do it and my students love it. This way I can sell them on taking the honors class and if for some reason it becomes too much to handle they can drop the honors special projects and still do good in the regular class. I routinely get my best students into honors this way. Also serves to motivate students too anxious take the honors class to try it a second semester after they see a little more of what it Is. Think of it as scaffolding the part of scaffolding where you are supposed to give the students who get it’ a challenge well now the challenge can actually give them something they can walk away with instead of just extra work.
My daughter did this for 9th grade english. She is considering doing it again for 10th. After 10th, she can start down the IB track. It worked out well for her last year.
I was a high school teacher forced into doing this. It sucked hardcore. I would rather have had more classes and no planning than the combined class, for the kids’ sake as well as my own.
That sounds completely pointless. The entire point of honors or gifted programs is to give kids a chance to learn in a faster-paced environment with more breadth and depth to the subject. Not just having them do extra work for no reason at all. To be completely honest, it’s also a relief to gifted kids to get away from the herd a bit and be around their peers. Not having to go at the pace of the slowest student, having much better classroom discussions, and having fewer distractions/interruptions from disruptive elements is a breath of fresh air to most gifted kids. And even if a kid isn’t gifted, if they are in honors classes they are probably actually trying to learn and succeed. Not all the time, not universally, but usually. I’ve always been the person who learns quickly and then helps the students around me when they get stuck. I was a tutor in high school, college, as an adult. I enjoy teaching and helping others. I love that expression on their faces when the metaphorical lightbulb goes on and people get things. But while helping others learn has helped me really solidify concepts and skills, it’s still nice to sometimes be in a class where nobody needs the help and I can focus on my own learning.
The term you’re looking for is differentiation, and is intended to avoid tracking students and, essentially, offering everyone the same quality of education. It’s BS. It is awful. I’m sorry for your kids.
Not enough money or numbers to run an honors class. The teaching will probably be directed to the regular students, and your kid will be doing his or her own enrichment with those extra assignments. Sad. This is the direction of education—I’ve seen it in public and private.