Dumbing Down America

If you had set out to produce animosity between the races, you could not do better than this. You can do what numerous schools across the country are doing-- eliminating honors classes, thus dumbing down classroom instruction-- because the makeup of the classes is insufficiently diverse.

This means, to be very clear about it, that these schools are going to punish the best students because the worst students cannot keep up. When the worst fail to keep up, this makes them feel bad and the fools who run these schools believe that making them feel better by allowing them to undermine the educational prospects of those who do better will solve some great social problem.

Among the problems is solves is this--  more and more children are being removed from public high schools, either to be enrolled in private schools or homeschooled.

The rebellion against educrats has been roiling the nation for months now. With good reason. The children whose education is being sacrificed on the altar of equity are unlikely to have warm, fuzzy feelings about members of different races. If your chance at Harvard or MIT is being compromised because you are not allowed to take Honors math, or calculus, in the eleventh grade, you are not going to become a fearless social justice warrior.

The Wall Street Journal has the story:

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. 

If the goal had been to produce equal, rigorous education that school administrators would have improved the quality of teaching in the non-honors courses. 

The situation in Culver City is hardly unique:

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. 

Again, students who do not take AP courses suffer. They lose out on the chance to attend the best schools, because their minds are being compromised by inferior teaching and by classes filled with students who cannot keep up and who undermine everyone else.

The statistics are clear:

Culver City English teachers presented data at a board meeting last year showing Latino students made up 13% of those in 12th-grade Advanced Placement English, compared with 37% of the student body. Asian students were 34% of the advanced class, compared with 10% of students. Black students represented 14% of AP English, versus 15% of the student body.

What does the new regime look like?

His ninth-grade daughter, Emma Frigola, said she was surprised and a little confused by the decision to remove honors, which she had wanted to take. She said her English teacher, who used to teach the honors class, is trying to maintain a higher standard, but that it doesn’t always seem to be working.

“There are some people who slow down the pace because they don’t really do anything and aren’t looking to try harder,” Emma said. “I don’t think you can force that into people.”

Naturally, there has been a blowback. Some schools have scrapped their equity initiatives when faced with parental opposition:

Several school districts have scaled back plans to eliminate honors classes after community opposition. San Diego’s Patrick Henry High School planned to eliminate 11th-grade honors American literature and U.S. history last year, but reinstated both after listening to students and families, a district spokeswoman said. 

At the least, we know that students who take honors courses profit from them. Punishing said students will do little more than produce a climate of racial animus.

Those who support cutting honors classes point out that the curriculum of honors courses often doesn’t differ substantially from regular classes. Honors classes often move at a faster pace and the students complete more assignments. Some can boost grade-point averages or give students an advantage when applying for college.