Vancouver School Board Is Eliminating Honors Programs | Hacker News Reader

Vancouver School Board Is Eliminating Honors Programs

reason.com

22 pointsversion_five49 comments

As someone who is graduating from the IB program and who had previously taken honors, ironically enough, I see this as beneficial. The main value of public school is interacting with a diverse group of people, but in IB and honors the students were too (relatively speaking) anti-social and self-similar. In 9th grade I made more friends in my P.E class because it was more diverse and not in spite of it. The non-honors students also weren't dumb, they were distracted with enjoying their high-school experience which I find to be commendable.

Why not just make school harder but increase grade boundaries just like IB [1]. Additionally most of the IB students were self-learning, so its not like the school is doing much.

[1] https://www3.dpcdsb.org/STFXS/Documents/IB-2018-05_Grade_Bou...

I think a lot of the people who find this to be controversial are people who went to high-school pre-internet dominated learning, and who see honors as something necessary for "brighter" students to be able to succeed.

Would be curious if anyone has any studies supporting either arrangement. I remember hearing from a lot of professors that the average learning of a group grows when you mix people of different skill levels and that splitting classes on skills leaves everyone but the top students far worse off.

Sure, it may raise the skill levels of one group and at the cost of another group who is held back because of the pace.

But shouldn’t public education be dedicated to make society as a whole more intelligent and not a few individuals who are “gifted?” Doesn’t society benefit much more that way?

Yes, but not at the expense of holding other people back.

Trust me, being asked to play 'second fiddle' so that someone else can have the same 'outcome' but without doing the work, is far more discouraging and damaging to those who put in the work.

Merit, and hard work needs to be recognized, not ignored.

You just echoed your last point and school already has a method for recognizing hard work, grades.

So does the work load and pace stay at the average classes setting? Or does it scale up to the honors classes and leave more kids behind? Getting an A in an honors class is more valuable than an A in a regular class, just like how placing first in the olympics is more prestigious than first at the county meet.

As a former "honors"-program student, I found that the main value of the program was the group of like-minded peers, whom took their educations seriously, were competitive on academics, extracurriculars, and other achievements. The actual material wasn't terribly different than the regular classroom.

I had also been in regular classrooms, where the "cool kids" were the ones who weren't "keeners", goofed off in class, who had sexual experiences the earliest or who would drink and do drugs at a young age.

Counter point: maybe the regular classrooms develop that culture because all the gifted students were removed and it creates an echo chamber and a self fulfilling prophecy.

I'm skeptical. If the minority gifted* students could change the culture of the regular classroom the bullied nerd wouldn't be such a trope.

*Let's say that by definition, gifted = a small top percentage of students.

You'd be surprised. Having 2-3 gifted students who can explain basic concepts to the "average" kids and help them with assignments takes a significant load off the teachers back (who can then focus on helping kids with serious learning difficulties).

This is a terrible approach to teaching. I’ve been in high school classes where I played the TA role, and when I couldn’t switch to another class I started skipping. It slows down the students who learn too quickly for the class, there’s no point for smart students to drill concepts as much as the others.

As someone who was in equivalent programs in the US, I can tell you my experience was that most people in the normal classes didn’t really care, and that attitude is far more likely to discourage the 2-3 gifted students than it is for gifted students to somehow lift up all the other students.

As others have said, gifted students weren’t just smarter students, they were mostly the students who cared.

> Having 2-3 gifted students who can explain basic concepts to the "average" kids and help them with assignments takes a significant load off the teachers back

Calling @treis who claimed[0] 4 days ago that "Nobody is talking about forcing the high achievers to do the teacher's job". Well, here ya go.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27563940

I think this is more an argument for smaller class sizes and more individualized instruction, not necessarily eliminating honors classes altogether.

There's a significant shortage of teachers in the US & Canada, especially for math & sciences, so I'm not sure how we could realistically reduce class sizes in the short to medium term

Yeah, fair point. I guess from my perspective (my sister is a teacher at a charter school in Iowa that does have lower class sizes and much better educational outcomes) smaller class sizes seem like such low hanging fruit if the objective is simply to improve learning, not over-specify some testing metric.

The 'gifted' students should not be forced (or expected) to offload the burden of instruction from the teacher.

No, the more studious removed themselves to work at their chosen craft, and therefore can't be in two places at once.

Independent of individual honors' programs, California's Gifted And Talented Education (GATE) program in the 80's and 90's, AFAICT, consisted solely of IQ tests, i.e., timed triangle arrangement tests. I didn't see any point to it other than spending taxpayer money and/or for the education department to tick a box that they had a GAT program.

Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist wingnut, but a country should inventory its smartest students. I believe GAT programs are how it is done in the US. If this were the case, it seems plausible these students are tracked and recruited by intelligence (no pun intended) agencies and strategic opportunities later on if they meet certain criteria. Hypothetically, GAT data would feed such a human assets program.

Sacrifices right? While one group goofs off, does the minimum to get by, who for one reason or another are satisfied with mediocre grades... another group is sacrificing these things to develop their skills, it's not just in academia. I know people who worked hard on their Math, others worked hard at the Track/Sports, others worked at music instruments, and other activities and became top in our school. Sure, they had higher nerd status than the rest because they spent more time studying than socializing - but trust me, they didn't miss much.

Seattle is doing the same thing (see https://reason.com/2020/01/27/seattles-school-system-wants-t... and https://reason.com/2020/03/26/seattles-school-system-has-beg...). This is all in the name of “equity” (equality of outcomes) and “justice”, and is in lock step with the political movements we see in other highly progressive cities like Portland and San Francisco.

Looking at local dialogue on this from activists, politicians, and educators, I am seeing them label gifted education programs as white supremacist and discriminatory. But the reality is that the separation of good students and bad students is not avoidable. This isn’t a question of unequal resources. Seattle currently spends north of 23K per student per year on its public schools, and despite funding going up dramatically (nearly doubling) in the last decade, parents see no tangible improvements (https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/20000-pe...).

The reality is that unequal outcomes are a function of parenting, core values, innate motivation to work hard, and innate talent (genetics?). This movement to artificial hold back the best students, who deserve something better, is just sacrificing America’s competitiveness on the altar of progressive “justice” agendas.

If anything I personally would have benefited from leaving the classroom behind and put in an advanced learning class, and away from all the distracting BS like drama, popularity, drinking, partying, fooling around.. but alas it was not available to me, and by the time it was, I had no idea it even existed. No one is 'equal' in anything regarding talent, IQ, ability, aptitude and drive (and even popularity), it's impossible equalize all of this without causing major damage across the board.

>>white supremacist and discriminatory

But this story in particular is about Canada. I know that the professor specifically mentions racism, but this mostly benefits white people, which is fine because it increases diversity.

I'm curious who that one UBC prof is claiming to be victims of the "racist" honors programs. Vancouver is like 80% white or Asian (including South Asian) [1]. The disadvantaged groups in California: Latinos and Blacks, make up <3% of Vancouver in 2016. Aborigines similarly make up 3%.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Metro_Vancouve...

The elephant in the room is that it is mostly moderately wealthy Asians in these classes, but it would be odd to mention that directly. As someone who is neither Asian nor White, I would like there to interact with more Whites, simply because almost all of my peers are Asian as a result of being in these programs. Diversity in Canada is less about a narrative of fixing the past and is more about the fact that diversity in general is cool, so having more Whites also can improve diversity.

"equitY = "equal outcome" "inclusive model of education" = "we want to handicap top students" equivalent to participation badges We don't want feelings hurt, and we don't want people to feel that 'they're not good enough' because they didn't work as hard as the honors students do.

"Education officials don't like that some higher-achieving students are sorted into environments where they are more likely to succeed than their less-gifted peers, and would prefer to keep everyone officially at the same level to the greatest extent possible" So cut out all the variance, flatten the peaks, normalize the median, who cares if people are held back for the sake of 'equity'

Bland mediocrity in our world coming full force. What do some call it? Communism? Social Marxism?

>>"we want to handicap top students"

Why do you think this is true?

"The plan closely mirrors California's recent efforts to discourage students who are proficient at math from taking calculus any earlier than their classmates" . This is holding people back, stunting them, in other words putting a 'handicap' on them

a) That doesn't prohibit them from learning calculus on their own

b) High-school is a terrible place to learn calculus (or anything). Online resources are often far better.

> High-school is a terrible place to learn calculus (or anything). Online resources are often far better.

This is pure, steaming bullshit you're just making up post facto to try and pretend your beliefs are consequence-free. I was never particularly strong at math-- nowhere near smart enough to get a math degree and so I went into engineering instead-- and I had two years of calculus (AB and BC) in high school, which was an enormous asset in engineering classes.

Single-variable calculus should be considered the floor of what the highest-achieving students can do in math by the end of high school, and here you're saying it shouldn't even be the ceiling.

>>steaming bullshit you're just making up post facto

What are you saying? My Gr.11 chemistry teacher would literally play YouTube videos instead of teaching the material himself. My Physics teacher would make YouTube style videos (on a different platform) but she told us to also watch YouTube videos from other teachers because they were better!

>>floor of what the highest-achieving students can do in math by the end of high school

The highest-achieving students are often self-taught

I wouldn't say it would stop anyone.. I just posted the quote to show the intent behind the action, which I find disgusting. The internet has been amazing for me and others to learn anything at anytime - there are no barriers for anyone to learn anything they want and if people are willing to put in the time and work, they can achieve anything.

Is that literally their intent or is the writer assuming that is their intent? The publication is trying to push a narrative to appeal their audience, that is why that isn't quoted from the school board itself.

Because they take away the forum for them to demonstrate their ability. Would you be against ranking students? Then when you apply to college or jobs how would I demonstrate my abilities?

They would just let you in, I guess and pass you too, because they wouldn't want to hurt your feelings, or hold you back in any way... after all you deserve equal outcome with everyone else regardless of merit, skill or ability right? Scary stuff.

Kids at the bottom need more help than kids at the top. That's Marxism? I thought it was common sense.

No, the Marxism is in having kids at the top being leveled down because of the kids at the bottom in the name of "equity" / equality of outcome.

"Equity is a noble goal, but it should be obvious that taking away resources from smart teenagers in order to make them more similar to their lower-achieving peers is the height of idiocy."

Nah, we saw what happened with No Child Left Behind. They replaced education with test-prep. The schools who performed poorly got their funding cut or closed altogether. The schools who performed well got more funding. They took resources from the kids who needed help, and gave them to the kids who were already succeeding.

That’s not what Marxism is

The truth is that Marx is a boogeyman and it's easier to summon a century of propaganda than formulate sound criticism of a policy.

Or many of us are just trying to find out a proper term and qauntify an ideaology that keeps rearing it's ugly head every few months or so using a different buzzword.

This ideology comes straight from the totalitarian outcome of the French revolution and its thinkers, eg. J.J. Rousseau, Robespierre, but also from the Catholic church itself. The Vatican "pezzonovante" preaching for poverty vows while sitting on solid gold shitters in luxury palaces build by slaves, not much different from modern day "celebrities" flying private jet to their luxury houses while preaching the "green new deal".

That’s not what communism is

You can argue as much as you want about what is theoretically is, but this is exactly how all practical attempts ended up, aiming the lower common possible denominator.

It’s not an argument about if communism is a viable system of government. Communism and educational practices have nothing in common.

I made no argument about viability, merely about facts.

Of course they do have something in common, indoctrinating the youth is the foundation of any regime.

Affirmative Action: Anti-Intellectual Edition:

- Eliminate SAT and ACT as admissions criteria

- Lower admission standards to where merit doesn't matter

- Accept as many student "customers" as possible

- Everyone gets an A+ for participation

- Graduate everyone

- Axe honors programs because they're ableist

- Bus the white and Asian gifted kids 3 hours a day to the "magnet" under-performing schools when there's a perfectly good school 0.1 mi / 0.2 km away from them (ask me how I know)

- Disband Gifted And Talented programs, because you know, ableism again

- Stop offering The College Board - Advanced Placement (AP) exams because it gives smart, dedicated students an "unfair advantage"

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