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Chang plans for first 100 days; more Advanced Work classes to start
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Excellent
Now all the kids can be above average
In the particular subjects at which they excel? Sounds good.
The article is hardly more than a blurb, but seems to be saying that instead of completely separate tracks for a small percentage of students, Dr. Chang thinks more BPS kids should have the opportunity to step it up a notch in the subjects at which they excel.
As the parent of an AWC/exam school student and a very active member of those schools' SPC/SSCs, I think that's a great idea - for both the student body as a whole, and for the individual kids.
The social segregation of AWC/standard classrooms is something we (parents/teachers/admins) worked hard to mitigate - as we did for the students with significant SPED needs. It's just really obvious that school works better when the kids feel they're on the same team - and it makes for better young citizens in the long run. Making that AWC/Reg distinction less of a boundary and more of a permeable membrane means a more interconnected student body.
And on an individual student level, it's been clear to me that some kids have a passion/knack for a particular subject, but not necessarily every subject. These kids either go into AWC and struggle (and maybe get disheartened/burned-out), or remain in the standard classes and are underchallenged and bored. Both outcomes are bad.
Giving more kids access to AWC-level classes is going to be very logistically challenging, no doubt about it. But if Chang and Co. can figure it out, I think we'll end up with better motivated and educated Bostonians.
Oh please.
It's called raising expectations. AWC is pretty much crucial to getting bright BPS kids on the right track. Not a perfect system by any means but the best we have and yes, it needs to be more readily available in more schools.
Is it raising?
Time will tell how this plays out, but if the parents of all students choose to have them in Advanced Work Class (and what parent wouldn't?), and the classes are then recalibrated to the mean abilities of their new student body (including a majority who wouldn't have tested into AWC before), then it's a raising for many and a lowering for some.
It solves by fiat the "achievement gap" in AWC classes, but check in again ten years down the road and see how it affected exam school demographics.
AWC
Advanced Work Classes are not really the answer. Better to think quality vs. quantity in a supportive classroom environment.
Game Changer
Savvy BPS parents have long known that AWC is the main public school pipeline to the exam schools. Therefore, competition (and anxiety) to get in at 4th grade, based on a 3rd grade test, has always been exquisitely keen.
This will open the gate of opportunity for more BPS students to give it a whirl. Of course, the students will have to be willing and able to do the work. This is where a lot of kids learn the study habits and discipline to make it at the exam schools.
Well ...
I'm sure things are different now, but BPS did a great job of alienating/exasperating parents at our daughter's school over Advanced Work: An AWC supervisor basically told us that if we didn't get our kids into AWC, they'd fail to get into an exam school, which means they would fail at life and wind up living in cardboard boxes under highway overpasses. Then our principal said don't listen to her, the school had just as high an exam-school acceptance rate as AWC programs.
Great, don't you people have the same goal and work for the same school system?
In the end, we stayed with our daughter's school, she (and a ton of her classmates whose parents made the same decision) got into exam schools and, hopefully, she's now well on her way to non-cardboard-box status.
That having been said, I think AWC is a great idea and support expanding it.
Hmm.
We did have one AWC teacher tell the class of fifth-graders that the non-AWC kids who were hanging around outside their room one day making mischief were all going to end up cleaning toilets or in jail. Which isn't to say that she condemned all the kids outside her classroom to this fate, just the troublemakers, but it seemed a tad harsh. She was actually a terrific teacher though more than a little nuts--a touch of Miss Jean Brodie...
Anyway, I'm sure the culture split between AWC and regular-Ed classes varies a lot from school to school. This was a very poorly-performing school that also had AWC so the difference was particularly stark, as it was in my middle school some thirty-odd years ago. But I have heard about other schools that are performing as well as AWC classes--still, they tend to be few and far between and oversubscribed, right? Hard to say what we should be aiming for--ideally you encourage and support the broadest range of kids but...well, I wish I knew how.
My 3 kids went through the
My 3 kids went through the BPS in the 80's through the 2000's. Two went to AWC; one didn't. All went to BLS. So, I know it is possible to get into an exam school without AWC. However, that depends on whether or not the elementary school is able & willing to keep those AWC eligible students (and their parents) engaged and challenged. In my experience, that varied from school to school. In some schools, Principals wanted to hang onto those students; in others, they did not and even seemed to resent them and were happy to see them leave.
Needless to say, in BPS, touchy politics of race and class were often involved.
I do think AWC should be expanded and situated in more schools so that students don't have to leave their elementary school to receive a more challenging curriculum. I also don't think it should be solely based on a test score, taken in 3rd grade. Expanding it might even bring middle class families of color back into the BPS as well as retaining those already there.