for a course that is supposed to be aimed at the top X% of students, what are the ways it can do that well, and what are the ways it can do that badly? In my experience, MOSTLY the modern incarnation of "honors" coursework accomplishes this
badly. These courses have been modified over time so that they are more "accessible" to all students, and in the process, they have been given short shrift in terms of resources, thoughtful development, curriculum, and staffing. They tend to be afterthoughts, administratively, and are often just the regular course with a few "bonus" items added on. They do come with grade weighting-- which is both a good thing and a bad one, frankly. It's good in that yes, it IS harder to earn top marks in one of these courses, and they ARE more work, which should certainly earn some kind of differentiated reward-- but on the other hand, this grade weighting makes them more appealing to TigerParents, which then often includes ever-more-strident appeals to administrators and teachers to make the courses "not so crazily hard." It's not too difficult to see where that particular train goes from there.
Honors courses in a virtual high school tend to be about:
MORE* coverage, more** work, differentiated*** assessment.
* often one or two units not included in the "standard" course-- which may meet with the honors class for instruction, let me also add, which means that the INSTRUCTION that accompanies the class may have huge gaps that the student is expected to fill on his/her own with nothing but the textbook and a few badly assembled slides for support... this is how my daughter learned organic chemical nomenclature and advanced grammar, for whatever that is worth-- neither of which was covered at all in the "regular" English or physical science course that was taught in tandem with the honors offering. So the regular class got instruction that aligned with the syllabus, and the honors kids didn't-- they got instruction on about 75% of what they were expected to learn.
** extra projects, extra lab exercises, extra research papers, extra writing, extra problems in homework sets, basically-- you'll do EXACTLY what the "basic/regular" class does, and then you'll do the more appropriate work
as well. Without instruction, as noted above, since these are "bonus" items for the "honors" courses only. No additional materials are really provided, though-- the student is on his/her own for much of that.
*** think-- more writing, and more "critical thinking" questions on assessments-- but the problem is often that those assessments are written by (and graded by, as well) those who simply have little understanding of the differences in "higher order" thinking skills. So expect that some of this is going to be aimed at things like eidectic memory, which is apparently a proxy for "advanced learner" in someone's mind.
The assessments often align VERY poorly with the curriculum that honors students have seen, btw.
OFTEN: the differentiation is in content coverage (there may be the extra one-off topic here and there) and in the number/extent of assignments, not in the depth/breadth of content, assignments, or instruction.
If you want genuinely more DEPTH/BREADTH in coverage, you'll probably be much happier with AP offerings. That's been our experience, anyway. They are genuinely faster paced and cover more material with less repetition. I do think that this is a function of the self-apparent reality that "Honors" coursework isn't really intended for the most
able of students, but those who are willing to WORK the longest hours at relatively simple tasks. Unfortunately, differentiation aimed toward that goal has eroded their suitability for many GT students, who are not really served very well by "more-more-more" as a differentiation strategy.
We have definitely worked out some tricks/tips to making this kind of course more suitable for truly GT learners-- and IMO, most of the parents on this board will need to use that kind of strategy.
Let me end by saying-- PM me if you want the nitty gritty details of how this seems to work with the public virtual school providers. (I'm recalling that you also use a virtual school, yes?)
