<p>The “big deal” is having B+ students in the same classroom as remedial students … while at the same time school officials are pressuring the teacher to improve NCLB test results for those remedial students. It’s a heavenly situation for unambitious C students … unfavorable for everyone else.</p>
<p>Oh, come on! The OP’s school is going to have three levels of instruction. How many levels do you think a school needs? This isn’t merging the varsity with the junior varsity, and it’s not making the B+ students take special ed classes. </p>
<p>What if the OP’s school had five layers of tracking before, and now it was proposing to have only four? Would everyone still be screaming bloody murder about it? Would you put your social capital on the line and march in to your school board demanding five layers of tracking? Four? Is there some optimal degree of tracking? Does school size matter?</p>
<p>^ With all due respect, there are just two levels in our district HS … AP and “others.” The B+ kids aren’t getting into AP courses … some malarky about school AP Test Scores being too low historically.</p>
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<p>Well, IMO they’re pretty much the same darn group of kids, so I don’t see the big deal. I don’t see how you all differentiate between honors and AP.</p>
<p>For secondary schools, three levels is sufficient, IMO.</p>
<p>PG, at my sons’ school there is a huge difference between honors and AP-level courses. The reading material in English, for example. The highest-level class is reading The Iliad freshman year while the honors level is reading “The House on Mango Street.” Nothing wrong with the Sandra Cisneros book, but you just get a different level of motivated students at the highest-level course. I know kids who have gone back and forth between the levels, most moving up because the level of discussion is so much more interesting at the highest level.</p>
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<p>Here’s how our school does that–albeit not well. Every freshman MUST take at least one honors class in a core subject. What it did was dumb down the freshman honors classes for everyone. The really bright students, the ones who are interested in learning, don’t get a chance to distance themselves from the rest of the student body until junior year when the school offers AP and IB classes.</p>
<p>By then, many who excelled in middle school have decided that being smart is no longer cool and they meld into the middle-of-the-road group.</p>
<p>This is something I hope to address next year in my new volunteer position as liaison to parents of gifted students. Nothing says (yet) that counselors and the principal can’t assign the gifted kids into the same section of those honors classes as freshmen and sophomores to keep them excited about learning.</p>
<p>We’ll see how long before that idea gets squashed as “elitist.”</p>
<p>There is a big difference between honors & AP/IB from what I can tell at D’s school (there is also a regular level.) It’s not so pronounced during freshman year (no AP’s allowed) and even sophomore year (generally only 1 AP “allowed”) But junior & senior year there is a big difference in terms of what can be covered in a classroom, generally because of the motivation of the students. The kids in AP/IB expect to have a load of work and be challenged. The kids in honors may or may not have that attitude and if you’re in a class that has a majority of kids that aren’t engaged then things move slower.</p>
<p>For sciences, you can’t take the AP version of Chem or Bio unless you’ve already taken the Honors version of it, so it’s not one or the other. It’s one or both. In English the reading lists between the Honors & AP classes are different along with the writing assignments. </p>
<p>3 levels seems to work for our school, but it’s always so interesting to read these types of threads and see what a variety of options (and administrivia) there is across the country.</p>
<p>If special ed or kids who are far below grade level are included, then I question whether three gradations are enough.</p>
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<p>I would say all this course/track differentiation is <em>because of</em> the dumbing down of American public education. The reason I suggest this is because in the region in which we live in Canada, you simply don’t see the different tracks like you do in the US. In the US it’s as if all college bound kids have to take AP because the regular curriculum does not prepare them adequately. </p>
<p>Where we live, by contrast, for the most part the regular curriculum, that everyone takes (with some exceptions), is similar for everyone, and those going to college are well prepared. </p>
<p>Here, there is no need for ‘most rigorous’ courseload evaluations or imposed courses with exams you have to pay for designed by some external enterprise like College board. There is simply a provincial curriculum that everyone follows. So everyone takes- regardless of their future- english from grade 9 to 12, math from 9 to 12, science from 9 to 11 (but those going into sciences in college would take up to 2 additional full years just of chemistry, physics and/or biology). </p>
<p>It seems to work if you look at the fact that Canadian students do well in university (in Canada or the US), or if you look at international test scores- whether looking at the overall averages between countries by subject, or comparing the top 5% of kids in each country.</p>
<p>But I think this leveling and comparability of students has to be happening at the elementary school level and in terms of leveling of quality and financing between schools at the elementary level. That is unlikely to ever happen. And highschool is too late for that.</p>
<p>I wonder about the labeling of kids as ‘special ed’. What is included in that category? Does that cover problems like attention span issues or failure to sit still during class time? If disruptive behavior is included, the classroom environment could be dicey.</p>
<p>We have experience with differentiated instruction.</p>
<p>Differentiated instruction is neither.</p>
<p>They just gave the kids that can handle it harder problems. There was no actual instruction. It was a complete waste of time.</p>
<p>One can call a course AP/Honors/Regular but the proof is in the pudding.</p>
<p>At our HS (the ‘best’ in the city), about 100 of 500 seniors (20%) take Calc AB (BC is not offered). Sounds reasonable until you find out that only about 30 of those kids actually even take the AP test and the one year I heard about, 17 kids (3% of the senior class) ‘passed’ meaning 3 or above. </p>
<p>So just because one is in ‘AP’ class doesn’t necessarily mean jack squat. It’s all in the execution.</p>
<p>Years ago, when I went to high school, there were at most two levels for each subject (and not all subjects had multiple levels). The two levels were regular and honors; honors included AP courses when appropriate (at the time, there were only about six AP courses at the school).</p>
<p>For example, in math, there were regular and honors Geometry, Algebra II, and Precalculus, but Algebra I only came in regular (under the assumption that the better in math students were a year ahead) and Calculus only came in AP (BC only at the time, though they later added an AB option). English had only regular for freshmen; honors was offered to sophomores, juniors, and seniors (with senior being designated as AP). For English, you had to get a teacher’s recommendation to move to the honors version the next year.</p>
<p>But back then, there was not a huge push by parents to push students into honors courses even if they were really not suitable for the honors courses. Only about 8% to 15% of the students were in the honors English and math courses, presumably those whom the teachers in high school or middle school noticed were boredly acing the regular courses.</p>
<p>starbright–With all due respect, Canada doesn’t have the huge populations of non-English speaking immigrants and ghetto dwellers (yes, I would call many of our urban wastelands ghettos) that the U.S. does.</p>
<p>Our school system is failing to teach these kids, many of whom just drop out and disappear. Guess what the graduation rate is in our mid-sized city? 50%. One reason we moved to the suburbs.</p>
<p>*Not blaming everything on the “school system” but something needs to be fixed. The attitude some of these kids pick up at home…they’d be better off in an orphanage, which was the solution in years past. Those kids at least got an education or work experience.</p>
<p>excuse my rant!</p>
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<p>About 15% of the US population is foreign born, while about 17% of the Canadian population is foreign born. Source countries for immigrants in Canada include many where the primary language is not English, according to [Citizenship</a> and Immigration Canada](<a href=“http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/statistics/facts2009/permanent/10.asp]Citizenship”>http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/statistics/facts2009/permanent/10.asp). And Canada itself contains a significant minority of citizens whose primary language is not English.</p>
<p>Does that count all the non-legal immigrants and their offspring that go to public schools? Also far more poor and illegals have more children than the wealthier so the percentage of kids in schools from such backgrounds is much higher than in the overall population.</p>
<p>When I was in school, classes were tracked, when my kids were in school, classes were mixed ability levels and 'differentiated" That sounds like a nice full inclusion idea, but as people have said above, it is tough for a teacher to truly address a wide variety of student levels. The brightest kids are not benefited by this. If you can switch to a school which allows ability grouping, that is the best you can do for your bright kid, IMHO.</p>
<p>“Foreign born” includes immigrants (both legal and illegal) and those who have naturalized to citizenship.</p>
<p>Of course, the US immigration system is broken. Legal immigration is too difficult, and illegal immigration is too easy. And no one wants to really fix it, since the debate is dominated by loudmouths who are either thinly disguised racists, or who accuse everyone else of being racist.</p>
<p>One note on Starbright’s comments. We lived in Canada for a few years and HS there did have all the kids taking English and math, etc all 4 years. And everyone takes the same provincial final exam in grade 12, so that means the classes are the same? Nope, not at the school my kids attended.</p>
<p>They tracked the math, science, and English classes. If you were in the top track you did much much more strenuous challenging work all year, then took the same final as every one else. This final ended up being pretty easy and counted for around half your grade for the year. Most top tracked kids were earning Azs or Bs. Bottom tracked kids did vastly easier work all year, building up some nice points, but the final was very tough for them and they would squeak through with a C or D (some of them, and this is all anecdotal). So it pushed and challenged the brightest kids whilst supporting the struggling kids. I was extremely impressed with the way the system worked there.</p>
<p>“socialist little minds?” Wow. Maybe they have to merge classes because funding has been slashed by capitalist republicans with small brains.</p>