As an urban public school educator, I love it when the public becomes “informed” on the mess that urban public schools truly are. On comment focused on AP courses. At my urban high school we have 490 students taking AP courses out of a population of 1800. I’m thrilled to announce that our average ACT score is 15.1, where as even the community college requires a minimum of 16 to register for classes. Our school prides itself on involving over 25% of the student body in AP courses...see where this is going. MOST have NO business being in a regular course, let alone an honors course, LET ALONE AP courses. Lipstick on a pig gentlemen, lipstick on a pig.
I hear you, krug. In my neck of the woods there was an escape valve for the good kids: the Honors and the AP classes. Those classes had prerequisites that kept the thugs out. Students could actually learn something there!
But then someone complained that our Honors and the AP classes weren’t diverse enough. So the prerequisites were dropped. Thugs were assigned to these classes even if they didn’t request them.
I’m sure you can fill in the rest.