How do you convince more African-American and Hispanic high school students to sign up for demanding college-level Advanced Placement courses? If you’re Fairfax County Public Schools, you take away their other options — even if the end result is more students taking the least challenging classes.
Which is why Restore Honors Courses and Fairgrade are currently circulating an i-petition protesting FCPS’ stealth phase-out of upper-level English and Social Studies honors courses in schools where AP is offered.
When classes resume in September, rising juniors and seniors will have just two options: General Education or Advanced Placement. Nothing in between.
Because FCPS itself recommends that students take no more than two or three AP classes of their four core-subject areas, phasing out honors courses will force many students into regular classes that do not adequately challenge them, violating FCPS’ own requirements for a “balanced curriculum” that addresses all levels of student achievement.
Getting rid of honors also makes FCPS graduates less academically competitive, Megan McLaughlin, a former Georgetown admissions officer and Duke admissions reader who is running for the School Board, told The Washington Examiner.
“Standard-level courses are not considered rigorous, and college admissions officers will be puzzled by FCPS juniors and seniors taking less rigorous classes as they head into college.”
This significant policy change was made without a single public hearing — or a vote by the elected school board. One of the largest and wealthiest school systems in the country would be expected to expand students’ options and tailor its academic offerings to a wider level of student achievement levels. But FCPS’ two-sizes-fit-all mentality is going in the opposite direction.
To boost their GPAs, the highest-achieving students will load up on too many AP courses than is prudent. Meanwhile, students with time-consuming extracurricular activities such as sports or band will forgo the additional challenge of honors and take Gen Ed courses instead.
Other students, for whom not-too-hard, but not-too-easy honors classes would be a perfect match, will struggle needlessly in AP courses they are not academically prepared to handle. FCPS’ own data indicate that about 30 percent of these students will wind up failing their AP exams.
“In trying to artificially solve the minority achievement gap, they’re not being fair to any students, including underrepresented minorities,” McLaughlin noted.
Peter Noonan, FCPS assistant superintendent for instructional services, told the Washington Post that “traditionally underrepresented minorities do not access the most rigorous track when three tracks are offered. But when two tracks are offered, they do.”
But actual data from Woodson and other high schools for the 2004-05 school year show otherwise, according to Fairgrade member Louise Epstein (who is also a School Board candidate).
In their sophomore year, about half the students took honors English and the rest enrolled in standard English classes. In 11th grade, however, only a quarter signed up for AP, while three-quarters took nonhonors courses, representing an academic step backward for a full quarter of the class.
An honors class in the junior year is the perfect preparation for a student who is thinking about taking AP in senior year. An honors class is also a good compromise for bright students who need a challenge, but not as big a challenge as AP.
Why is FCPS eliminating honors classes when it already knows from past experience that more students will be taking the least challenging courses available — exactly the opposite of what FCPS claims to be promoting?
That’s the question school board members should be asking at their work session on July 18. Parents across the county are anxiously awaiting the answer.
Barbara F. Hollingsworth is The Examiner’s local opinion editor.
