About 12 percent of high schools have at least half of their 11th- and 12th-graders taking a least one AP or IB course. I figured that must be because school leaders weren’t taking into account the needs of students to be ready for college or a job. He said the tendency to sort rather than teach is rooted in a specific high school administrative routine — producing the Program of Study, otherwise known as the course catalogue. “A frequent result of this deadline pressure is a hastily cobbled-together collection of paragraphs, submitted by teachers and department heads, comprised largely of last year’s text, and edited by no one.”Middle school teachers are pressed into recommending which students going into high school should take honors courses and which should not. ADIt usually takes an order from above to change practices at high schools that keep average students out of AP and IB classes.

Source: Washington Post February 20, 2020 16:52 UTC