Posted on 02/05/2009 3:09:08 PM PST by reaganaut1
PORT WASHINGTON, N.Y.
...
After decades of grooming a handful of high school students in an exclusive research class to succeed in the elite national Intel Science Talent Search, school administrators this year, for the first time, required every seventh grader to do original research.
With similar goals in mind, the district has added honor societies in English, art and music — for a total of seven — to recognize students whose overall grades may keep them out of the National Honor Society. Since 2003, it has expanded its menu of Advanced Placement courses to 25 subjects and opened them to students who previously would not have qualified. And it instituted a policy prohibiting students from being cut from the orchestra, band and most sports, adding “junior varsity 2” teams to accommodate extra players.
...
The district’s unusual focus on these average students in recent years has pleased many but has also drawn criticism that A.P. classes have become less rigorous, students have been coddled, and music groups and sports teams have been saddled with marginal players.
Students in A.P. classes say that some teachers, now required to accept students who did not pass a qualifying exam or get a teacher’s recommendation, have been known to weed out the weak with heavy reading loads, daily pop quizzes, and zeros on biology labs.
Joe Barrett, 17, a senior, said his United States history teacher went to the opposite extreme in the 2007-8 school year, presenting “elaborate PowerPoints with music videos to keep people interested.”
“At the beginning of the year, it was funny, but then it just got tiresome because there wasn’t a lot of content,” complained Joe, who earned the top score of 5 on the A.P. exam in the class last May.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
/s
“My child is an average student at Port Washington Middle School!”
(Coming soon to an SUV near you.)
Public school is great preparation for a civilization that is approaching collapse, as ours unquestionably is. Maybe a 7th grader will do a music video PowerPoint to see it off.
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