It depends a lot on your teacher support and training. It also very much depends on what honors classes are like before this. Most schools I’ve been in don’t have huge differences between honors and non honors classes when it comes to work and curriculum. An honors biology class and a regular ed biology class all cover the same state standards and curriculum. I co-taught special education inclusion biology for several years and our kids outperformed the honors classes. Better differentiation helped all of the students do better. The real difference at the high school is course selection. Honors geometry and geometry are going to be very similar. It’s when you choose to take Ap classes, calculus rather than a consumer math class, college courses or other advanced options that the differences really show up.
They implemented this in my district in Oregon as well. It’s horrible both for both ends of the spectrum… as well as the middle. I teach 9th grade history and have kids who can’t read past a 3rd grade level sitting next to kids who read at a college level and I’m supposed to accommodate both? So yeah, we give the high flyers extra work to do by themselves because I’m too busy reading aloud and starting sentence frames for the kids who need the most help. It might be worst for the kids who are in the middle because we are too focused on challenging the overachievers and helping the lowest students that we don’t have time for kids who are normal. My admin told us that it was going to allow more students to earn honors credit. At first I thought, okay sure, that makes sense. But kids don’t want to stand out in class!! They don’t want to be doing extra work when the rest of their table group is doing the bare minimum. So most students who are capable of honors credit refuse to attempt it.
It is awful. There is one way that it can work - I know this because I was in such a class as a teenager - but you have to flip it - include the general kids in the honours class. Teach honours the same to all of them, but give easier exams to the kids not on the honors track, and during the course of the year make clear that certain parts of certain topics are not going to be tested for the ordinary level. The caveat here is that in my country the national curriculum was designed explicitly with this in mind and it worked as a result; trying on the fly to modify a dedicated curriculum to serve two different tracks is a tall order.
It sucks. I have several of those stacked classes. One group or the other is going to get the short end of the stick. At any given time one group or the other is going to be on their own.
This is not really an honors class - just like when elementary school teachers claim they differentiate for high ability learners, but they’re really just giving them extra on-level worksheets to do.
I taught science and history like this. Sometimes I did a baseline assignment that everyone did, and then an extension that usually involved synthesizing more sources, using higher level math, or comparing an event to another. Y’know, higher order thinking. Sometimes the honors students did a completely different assignment. I liked it because it was a student’s decision to take honors then. They could give it a try and if it didn’t work out, no harm no foul. Similarly, I could push kids that normally wouldn’t have signed up for an honors class to give it a try. It works well if you are really skilled at differentiating. If you’re not, it’s gonna suck.
Hahaha last year I taught Algebra 2, and had IB students, honor students, and regular students in the same class. Told me I was supposed to differentiate instruction and plan for small group instruction. And if I need enough time to adequately do that, I should stay late like they’re paying me enough for that! Gave myself a $13,000 raise by going to a different school.
This is my 16th year teaching honors English. This is ridiculous. Honors should mean faster passing and more independence, not necessarily more work. More work= busy work.
It can work but the honors work should be deeper and more challenging - not simply more of the same.
I actually taught at a school that does this and loved it. My school was a charter school thought so most of the students were there because they wanted to be and worked hard enough to get at least a B or C. For me, I liked it because the lower level students AND the honors students benefited from the experiences of their peers. I taught history so we would often have informal discussions on various topics. Frequently I would have honors students who would engage with the material in a really thoughtful, academic way. But I would also have the non-honors students who would often times have more practical experiences that they could contribute to discussion. Anyway, it worked well for me. That being said, I can also see how it wouldn’t work well in other situations or schools. Editing to add: I noted someone else said they tend to structure their class towards the honors students and then add scaffolding for the other students: that is also how I would run my class. I also would note that my honor students did not have more work per se, however, I had higher expectations of their work. So the non-honor students had to write a two page paper, then the honor students had to write a three page paper.
We had a similar set up when I was in honors PIG senior year. These were courses we paid for to get college credit as well and they stuck us in with the regular class as well. It was MISERABLE. We complained to the guidance counselor, teacher, and principal and were allowed to do our assignments separately in the library most days. We’d finish assignments and lessons days ahead of the rest of the class.
Ask if the students get honors credit.
I had classes like this. I graduated in the 00s. It sucked. I was an honors/AP student and they mixed us with middle and low level learners. It made me lazy.
This is actually the correct way to do honors instruction. There’s no reason to have intro bio and advanced bio. Just do bio. Content is not as important as skills.
This sounds awful. Half of the benefit of honors/AP is to separate your kids from the underachievers.
My son’s HS simply lacks the faculty to have separate honors and regular classes. They have to be combined or they just won’t happen. In his school, students get the same lessons, but the honors students have to do the honors assignments to get the credit.
It took the district I live in 18 months to find, vet, and hire a qualified biology teacher. They ended up having to pay someone $25,000/year above the salary guide to teach physics after searching for three years and the old physics teacher to finally threw his hands up and refused to postpone retirement anymore. There is a major teacher shortage. It isn’t just those lazy spoiled teachers complaining like some would like you to think. It is a major, kicked-the-can-down-the-road-once-too-often problem that is now revealing the reality of a bad and worsening problem. And that setup is some bullshit, I’m sorry for your child. That would work for some classes-I took AP Art in the classroom with regular art students mixed in- but it does not work for information-and vocab-laden subjects like biology or math.
They ended up having to pay someone $25,000/year above the salary guide to teach physics It seems like there’s a salary shortage more than an employee shortage. When they were willing to offer a fair price, they found an employee.
I run a mixed IB/local curriculum class. I teach IB but assess local for everyone and do extra IB evaluation. I have IB Fridays where IB students are doing IB practices and local students get to catch up or have 1-1 time with me. Works well for a 20ish class.
I’m a middle school math teacher. At a previous school teaching 6th Grade (in a 6-8 school), I petitioned the parent-led school council to end honors math for 6th Grade. I had pulled data that showed there was tremendous inequity in representation of our student body. The demographics of our honors classes did not resemble the demographics of the school. Nearly all students enrolled in 6th Grade honors came from the same feeder school. We had multiple elementary schools that fed into our middle school. I had students not in the honors classes that had far higher achievement scores. I had students in the honors classes whose achievement scores were below average. We were creating tracks when students were 11 years old that could potentially impact their future earning potential. I am a firm believer that all students are capable of learning math at high levels. I am in a middle school currently that does not offer a separate honors class. We have the highest math scores in the district currently—even compared to schools that are more affluent with traditional honors tracks. It’s possible to challenge students appropriately in a non-segregated setting.