With all the push toward academics, we send the message that blue collar jobs imply failure in our patriotic vision.
^truth.
And really, from personal experience/observation, instructional time DOES get diverted to helping kids in advanced coursework who are
truly drowning in those courses.
I also firmly believe that this state of affairs has led to the horrific situation in which "advanced" has come to mean "the same exact work level as 'standard' just A Lot More of It. Because... Rigor!"
Relatively few of my DD's honors/AP courses have been untainted by this phenomenon. AP Physics was one such course. Of course that one is under fire and "being revised" because it covers too much material, evidently, and the problem is that so few high school students
can learn that much in that short a period of time.
Now, maybe I'm wrong and my DD13 is actually smarter than 99.99% even of high-ability high school seniors, but I strongly suspect that the "real" problem with that class is that there were only 6 kids in it that COULD actually do the work successfully of the 22 who enrolled in the fall. At least, that is how many made it through Spring term. That represents two high school cohorts, totalling about 600 students.
Does that warrant the conclusion that this course is "in need of realignment" somehow?
I'm not so sure that it does. I think that what it DOES suggest is that most of the kids who are being groomed to THINK that they are "college-ready"
aren't. Most of those kids have NO business in a truly rigorous AP course.
Further evidence-- the crushing workload of AP Literature meant that only 9 of THEM finished the year, too, of the 29 who enrolled in the fall. Same deal-- all juniors and seniors. Honestly, I didn't think
that course was actually "college level." Neither did my DD. It was appreciably harder than the high school level English, true, but it wasn't rigorous on a critical thinking front, inherently. No focus on ripping apart literature, just kind of warm and fuzzy "appreciation" style exercises.
