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Scholars and journalists have also ignored the odd and potentially harmful ways these [wealthy] schools have stratified their students. There is a class system imposed, without much thought of how well labels such as honors, regular, and remedial fit the children involved.
That's Irvington!
A district employee has told me - this is a quote - "Irvington is the most heavily tracked school district I've ever seen."
I've been talking for quite awhile now about the fact that when Christopher was in grade school he was tracked out of calculus in high school. He was 8.
He was tracked out of calculus in high school and no one told us he'd just been tracked out of calculus in high school. In fact, we were told that the tracking of children into "Phase 3" as opposed to "Phase 4" didn't mean anything at all.
Same deal with Honors courses in the high school except worse.
There is a lengthy, top-secret admissions process requiring students to write and submit an application essay. [update 7-2007: it's possible now that the student's teacher selects the essay to "submit"]
The admissions process is so lengthy and so top secret that parents now have to sign letters stating that they know their children have decided to put themselves through it, a requirement obviously intended to ward off parent fury when our kids get shot down. If we don't sign our kids can't "apply"; when our kids don't get in we can't get mad because we signed. [update 7-2007: although the parent sign-off is indeed a rule, my neighbor was not asked to sign a consent form acknowledging that her son was "applying" to 9th grade English honors for next year]
The admissions process creates an elite consisting of, I'm guessing, perhaps 25% of the class.
These kids will be prepared to take SATII subject matter tests when the time comes.
The rest of the kids will not be prepared to take SATII subject matter tests when the time comes. Or so I'm told by other parents.
If a parent asks, "What if my child didn't get into Honors but wants to take the test?" the guidance counselor gives him a look that says, "Why would he want to do that?"
So that's the plan. Twenty-five percent of each class, I'm guessing, will be prepared to take SAT II subject matter tests.
more fun with guesstimating
The reason I'm guessing is that the selection and rejection numbers are secret, too.
No one knows how and why one student is chosen over another, including the middle school teachers.
If a parent asks a middle school teacher what his child can do to improve his learning and performance to a level that will get him into Honors, the middle school teacher will say she doesn't know, and she doesn't.
This year a middle school teacher told a parent that she had no idea how the admissions process worked, adding that, "Frankly, some of the choices surprise me."
There is no public value, none, placed on hard work, ambition, and striving. None.
Hard work, ambition, and striving are the quintessential properties of the pushy parent, so blech.
yet another irony
The irony of our situation is that our school discourages and devalues the precise qualities of character & temperament that got the parents "where they are today." All of the wealthy parents here are working rich; the dads, and not infrequently the moms, are extremely hard workers and always have been.
Meanwhile the "non-working" moms aren't out shopping. They're 24/7 raising kids and shouldering the volunteer work for school and town.
Many of these moms and dads started out middle class and attended middle class schools, public or Catholic.
The dads often have stories like this one.
Ed grew up in Levittown, PA, which was at that time a factory time. A lot of the other dads were steelworkers. He was a smart kid, but he didn't like to read or work too hard in school. He liked to play outdoors with his friends. When he was in 6th grade his teachers complained to his parents that he wasn't applying himself.
When he got to high school he went into some Honors courses, but decided not to take Honors English because it was going to be too much work.
The teacher of the regular-ed class threw him out.
He told Ed he had no business taking the easier class; I think he may have actually walked him over to the Honors class and deposited him there.
So Ed took Honors English. Better than that; Ed got serious and took Honors everything. Maybe he would have gotten serious on his own, maybe not. His school made sure he did. In the vernacular, his school had "kicked his butt." I think he used to do as much as 4 hours of homework a night every night. When he was a senior he applied to Princeton and got in. He's been building on his Princeton education ever since, and he owes his Princeton admission, at least in part, to his Levittown schools.
My neighbor's husband has the same story, only for math.
He decided to take regular math instead of Honors math.
The teacher said, "You aren't going to get out of Honors math just by taking my class."
Then the teacher gave him extra work - hard work - to do for the whole school year. (Talk about differentiated instruction.)
Another friend told us that the nuns shaped him up. He was an athlete - would have played college ball if not for an injury - and his working class family wasn't the Waltons. He was spacy and disorganized to boot.
In high school one of the nuns collared him, sat him down, and told him he had to get his act together.
Then she worked one-on-one with him every day after school until he did get his act together.
So today he has a life. He has a life because his school saw he could do a lot better than he was doing and then worked with him until he did it.
More than a few of the "pushy parents" here in Irvington, the ones who get their kids into courses where they don't belong, managed to get to Irvington because back in the day their schools pushed them.
That's the irony. I have never heard this story in Irvington. Never. I don't expect to.
In this wealthy, successful district no child is ever pushed up.
More than a few are pushed down.
Jay Mathews on the class struggle
Jay Mathews column on wealthy schools, AP courses, SAT scores
are wealthy schools worse?
value added comes to Westchester
7 comments:
I don't think tracking is bad in of itself. The problem is limited mobility between tracks.
I much prefer the term "ability grouping".
Even though I know "ability grouping" is most beneficial to the students, I do think there should be a system to accelerate kids from one level to the next if they show the potential.
Our form of tracking is bad in and of itself.
As bad as it can be.
Did I mention the part about how non-insider parents widely view the selection process as "political"?
I don't know whether it's political (I tend to doubt it - or, rather, I tend to doubt that it's political in the way people think it's political).
The fact that parents believe this, and are allowed to carry on believing it contributes to the atmosphere of fear and barely suppressed rage around here.
Let me stress: no one involved in the "admissions" process can or will give parents an answer as to why his child was rejected.
Nor does anyone offer the kids a straight answer.
Instead parents are told that the school has determined that their 8th grader will not be taking any SAT II subject tests 4 years from now.
In lower grades I favor Engelmann-style tracking, the kind of tracking that allows you to teach a group of kids almost one-on-one via scripting, choral response, et al.
I don't know how that develops and evolves as kids get older and more mature.
I tend to think that if the schools are good tracking should be disappearing by high school, the same way it disappears in college.
In college you have prerequisites for courses, but you don't have people making judges about your core "ability."
As usual I'm on the exact opposite page from everyone else.
Our school "levels" (good word choice) kids in K-5, when their learning rates are at their most different, then tracks when kids are 13 and everyone's developed (or should have developed) some core facility with the basic subjects.
I just find it astounding that our high school gets away with this.
Every parent in town has college as a goal, and our high school has set itself up as the gatekeeper.
I had a whole different concept of college "prep."
I hear that parents got fairly heated at the 1000-Day Night. They repeatedly asked how the Honors selection process worked.
The principal and guidance counselor repeatedly did not answer.
Finally one dad said, "I don't understand why you can't answer this question."
There is some good news.
It looks like the middle school is planning to move to an objective selection process - although "behavior" is still apparently going to be part of the deal, which I question.
We'll see.
In any case, they're moving to a MORE objective system, and this year they're going to send letters to all the kids.
Last year the kids who were rejected had to find out they were rejected from their friends who were accepted.
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