Okay-- that's the bad and the ugly-- that is, instances in which the regular and honors classes are "blended" and in which a single teacher may have charge of a class comprised of (for example) 35 "regular" students, and 2 or 4 other students who are in the "honors" section (at least on paper-- in reality, they sit with their "regular" classmates during class time).
The GOOD mostly revolves around teacher implementation of a rather sorry or shabby beginning framework. DD has experienced a few of those:
1. Additional instructional time devoted to those "extra" topics that the honors class covers.
2. Grouping the honors students with one another for in-class work that is a group effort (discussion, games/thought exercises/labs).
3. Letting the honors students do BOTH the "regular" exercises (and participate with those classmates who are in the majority, say, to discuss a particular novel or topic) and ALSO to meet/work as a smaller group in breakout sessions on the more advanced material TOO.
4. Allowing students to come up with more open-ended assignments that still meet instructional goals, and/or allowing the honors students to out and out SKIP some of the more inane "regular" assignments so as to devote more time/energy to the more meaty honors assignments like term papers and student-inquiry based labs, etc.
