Clackamas High School drops honors courses, renames itself after Salvador Dali

I invented the part about Salvador Dali, but it's something the school should consider, if I understood the first part rightly.

Clackamas High School is dropping honors courses from its curriculum because its leadership thinks that bright and hard-working students will do better at their studies if they sit in the same classroom with underperformers, the Oregonian reports.  Another reason the school is eliminating honors courses, according to its principal, is that the honors students don't match the school's demographics: not enough of the honors students qualify to receive free or reduced-price lunches.  The article continues, "To broaden access to advanced classes, Clackamas no longer requires students to meet certain standards, such as letters of recommendation or a minimum grade-point average."  I think that means that Clackamas High School doesn't think that doing well in introductory math is a prerequisite to doing well in advanced math.  I hope I'm misunderstanding what the school is doing, but I've read the article three times already and it comes out the same surreal way each time.

Comments

[Jill]

Getting rid of the requirements for honors classes is a good idea. Students that have moved from out of district aren't able to get the letters of recommendation required and aren't able to take the honors classes even if they are smart enough to do them. Also smart kids with behavior problems usually don't get the letter either.

As for the gpa, say a kid is really good at English classes, but not other subjects. They deserve to be in honors English if they are good at it, regardless of how they do in other classes. The point of getting rid of the separate honors classes and requirements is to allow more students to have the opportunity to do honors classes. The requirements are outlined in the class so that kids can see what they need to do to earn the credit. That way students that might not have taken the honors class because they thought it would be really hard or a lot of work actually know what is expected of them and see that they can actually do it.

The article didn't really explain the program very well so I can see why it seems so surreal and stupid to most people. The point is to give all kids equal access to a good education, which is what schools are supposed to do anyway.