Yes, I taught high school, including AP classes. I never found that the honors classes that I and my peers taught really helped those students aspire to any greater heights. It only made it easier for those kids to segregate and ensure that they would be in class with their friends/close peer groups. The non-honors, non-AP classes were only the “leftovers” (a self-inflicted term) and they worked hard to live up to their reputuation. AP will allow those with high aspirations to continue to follow their paths – we will continue to send them off to Ivy League, etc. schools. Hopefully, some more of the honors kids will decide that they can be AP kids. And as long as the teachers are well-trained and understand how to tap into the various learning styles of their students in the non-AP classes and push them to greater heights we may see a rising tide of achievement from the bottom up. I will choose to be optimistic, thank you.

Do you have a child who has been a freshman at DHS in the past couple of years? I do. Have you taught high school? I have.

What’s your stated proof?

And I’m not fear mongering. There is no reason to be afraid… for those who were frightened.. my apologies. It’s just not an optimal situation but there is no reason for fear.

No, I guess that the problems aren’t en masse, but there are problems. Does DHS work for some kids, yes. Does it work for kids who have very high aspirations? Does it work for kids who are struggling? Maybe, maybe not. We shall see when the current freshmen and sophomores graduate.

Behavior problems mean burned out teachers. Burned out teachers do not deal as well with motivation and behavior problems.. so the problems get worse.. so the teachers are more overwhelmed… and the cycle goes on.

It will be interesting to see how this stew of reducing special services coupled with leveling tastes after a few years.

A lot of this is about money, as in shortage of. The special needs/behavioral programs in CSD have all new terminology, acronyms, and procedures for who qualifies for what. Best I can see, it means less kids get services which hurts all the kids because kids with inadequate attention distract everyone from the day to day business of education. But if you ask CSD administrators about this, including those over special needs programs, they will tell you that kids used to be labelled unfairly in the past when all they needed was some “tiered” interventions. I would be ok with reducing the labelling if it didn’t mean decreasing the number, intensity and cost of providing services to these kids. Were that many kids really overdiagnosed with problems? I doubt it. We’ve raised the bar for who is needy enough to get costly interventions but increased the number of children not adequately served and the risk that the entire classroom will be affected.