Posted on 02/17/2023 10:54:30 AM PST by karpov
CULVER CITY, Calif.—A group of parents stepped to the lectern Tuesday night at a school board meeting in this middle-class, Los Angeles-area city to push back against a racial-equity initiative. The high school, they argued, should reinstate honors English classes that were eliminated because they didn’t enroll enough Black and Latino students.
The district earlier this school year replaced the honors classes at Culver City High School with uniform courses that officials say will ensure students of all races receive an equal, rigorous education.
These parents disagreed.
“We really feel equity means offering opportunities to students of diverse backgrounds, not taking away opportunities for advanced education and study,” Joanna Schaenman, a Culver City parent who helped spearhead the effort, said in the run-up to the meeting.
The parental pushback in Culver City mirrors resistance that has taken place in Wisconsin, Rhode Island and elsewhere in California over the last year in response to schools stripping away the honors designation on some high school classes.
School districts doing away with honors classes argue students who don’t take those classes from a young age start to see themselves in a different tier, and come to think they aren’t capable of enrolling in Advanced Placement classes that help with college admissions. Black and Latino students are underrepresented in AP enrollment in the majority of states, according to the Education Trust, a nonprofit that studies equity in education.
Since the start of this school year, freshmen and sophomores in Culver City have only been able to select one level of English class, known as College Prep, rather than the previous system in which anyone could opt into the honors class. School officials say the goal is to teach everyone with an equal level of rigor
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Thanks. I knew there had to be more to it than that. I know that AP classes help a *lot* when one gets to college - at least financially and in terms of admissions.
Yeah, I had excellent teachers, and some of them were nuns, very dedicated to their students. Every few years my family moved, so I changed schools several times as a child. Every time I went to a new school I had to learn to adjust to the kids, the school, the teachers, the unwritten rules of behavior.
I am very lucky that several in those early years noticed me, for the right reasons, and gave me challenges. That’s where I thrived.
I went through public schools. I could read at an 8th grade level at 6 years old. I got bored and quite paying attention.
I had a lot of catch up work to do in middle school, but got my butt in gear and graduated high school with decent grades.
There cannot be racial equity. There are significant differences between the races in intelligence and physical ability. A fact that must never be mentioned. But it’s undeniable.
Harrison Bergeron
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron
[btw, wiki lies: there’s NOTHING “satirical” about the story ...
full text of story:
https://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html
I have studied and taught in schools where grades were required. (Once I gave too many high grades and got disciplined for it, but there were other circumstances.) However, the only system that works is a meritocracy. You cannot force everyone to achieve at a single level.
The greatest mistake educators ( and philosophers) make is to seek to have equal scores in proportion to physical descriptive terms. Who ever said that a hospital in a racially divided community must have staff at the same proportion as the races in the community? If I ever saw that hospital, my car would leave skid marks.
One thing that could help would be to select and keep good teachers in public schools — when I was let go, it was not based on my teaching (or grading) it was based on my seniority. That was a very dumb thing that the teacher’s union insisted upon. Good teachers are part of the solution, and good parents and home support is another. I do not think race needs to be a factor if the above two things are in place.
So, to accommodate the average and below average student EQUITABLY, college bound kids have to find other means of learning so they can be up to speed when they enter higher education.
I guess it’s OK as I understand most students entering college aren’t up to speed anyway. Or is it that school counselors are encouraging average and below average students to enter college.
I don’t mind admitting of being average intelligence. I did not go to any advanced classes. I had no interest in advanced classes. I had no business in advanced classes. Anyone else who is not in advanced classes... Deal with it.
The Communists believe in achieving equality, by leveling peoples’ ambition.
Basically the only path to becoming well-off in Communist countries was to join the Party, that’s what the people with ambition did, even if they didn’t believe in Communism. Everyone else just accepted whatever crumbs came their way, all equally miserable.
He has threatend to do it because the College Board's AP class in "Black history" includes CRT.
Anxious student wanting to get into Midvale College
The WHOLE name, too!
You’re mistaking education for the primarily purpose of modern schools . . . Babysitting.
The ignorant are far easier to rule.
Publik skrewls are doing their part for Deep State.
This is true for the most part, right now, but an aspect that has been neglected is the importance of getting the right focus and creativity for the others. Almost every child in the "slower" class can do much, much better than he is doing--with the right teaching.
I went to junior high and high school on the campus of a teachers' college, and that thinking was at the root of much of the education of the future teachers.
Teaching kids to love learning is a delicate endeavor. You can't just mouth it. You have to construct things so the kids will simply be engaged with what is happening in the classroom without having to have that concept put into words.
I wasn’t thinking so much of vocational programs, although they are great. I was thinking of the percentage of kids, whatever that is, who will be learning in a less-advanced curriculum simply because they did not meet the criteria for advanced learning at that time.
Many of them, if not most, could do much better with illuminated teaching methods that are geared to children with their test results.
That’s what Marie Antonette thought; too.
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