Testimony by FAIRGRADE President Louise Epstein: Restore Honors Courses

January 27, 2012 by Greg Brandon

[The following testimony was delivered by FAIRGRADE President Louise Epstein during the January 26, 2012 Regular School Board Meeting.]

Good evening. My name is Louise Epstein, and I’m speaking as the president of FAIRGRADE.

Three years ago, FAIRGRADE persuaded the last School Board to change grading policies over Superintendent Dale’s objections. I’m back tonight on Round 2. I hope I don’t need to return for Round 3.

Let me start by busting some myths.

First, administrators said students are better off failing AP exams than taking honors courses.  Dale's staff cited College Board studies, which combined standard level and honors students into one misleading category. They never mentioned the 2010 Harvard study, which showed that students who took one honors course did better in the college intro course than students who took 2 years of the same subject and failed the AP exam.

Second, you were told TJ honors courses could not be used in other high schools because they were interdisciplinary. That’s false. At TJ, most English and history teachers did their own thing. Linking their classes just made it more difficult for students to get schedule changes. It also gave history teachers the benefit of the smaller class sizes required for English, which increased math and science class sizes.

Third, you were told honors teachers can’t start with the standard curriculum, and go in-depth on their favorite topics. That is exactly what TJ teachers do. It works well, and we have fine teachers in every high school who could do the same thing.

Please don’t rely on administrators or teachers handpicked by administrators for information. Instead, talk to a random sample of teachers in schools or your neighborhood. Ask them in private what they think, so they feel free to tell the truth.

Thanks to the FCFT survey, we know teachers overwhelmingly support offering these five honors courses. But, they do not want to be forced to use the AP curriculum.

There’s a reason most school districts weight AP courses twice as much as honors courses. AP courses are college-level courses that require much more homework than honors courses. For the sake of our students, let’s make sure that our honors courses aren’t almost as hard as AP courses. That would defeat the purpose of tonight’s motion.

Some principals have already tried to dissuade parents from supporting honors. They can undermine tonight’s motion, by ordering counselors to advise kids not to take the 5 honors courses, by ordering honors teachers to use the AP curriculum, by assigning inexperienced faculty to honors courses, and more.

I don’t blame our principals. After all, they are evaluated by the cluster offices, which report to the Superintendent. And, they receive information from the Superintendent’s staff.

Let’s not put our principals in a position where they have to choose between protecting their careers and doing what’s best for our children. Please make sure that the people who evaluate the principals are themselves evaluated on whether these honors courses are properly implemented.

More generally, no matter what the issue, please ask students, their parents, and classroom teachers what is going on. That will ensure that you are always working with unfiltered information.

Thank you.