I couldn't help but have a few cynical thoughts as I read the paper this morning regarding Burke's new AP Academy. I felt the District 20 constituent board members summed it up. Mr. Ellis hadn't even heard of it...I wondered how many other District 20 constituents would say the same thing if asked the same question. Do the other District 20 principals even know about it? The District 20 Chair and Vice-chair agreed that we need to address the needs of District 20 students first before adapting curriculum developed to recruit students outside our district. What's the drop-out rate at Burke now? 50%? How are we addressing that? Better yet, how are we addressing our students entering Burke either at best unable to read at their grade level or at worst unable to read at all?
Now, you're telling us there's an AP Academy? Let's go back to Mr. Ellis who I believe is a true representative of our community...I wondered if the reporter asked him if he knew what AP meant? AP stands for Advanced Placement...college courses taken in high school to allow a student to receive college credit. HUH?? I know...we just keep asking for trade. Many of our kids are college bound, but many just want to get the hell out of school with the skills to make a decent wage. They tell us they have a trade program through a partnership with Trident Tech, but they don't and now they expect us to get excited about our kids receiving credit for English 101?
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for keeping our expectations high, but you're not even close to addressing what our kids need. Get real, CCSD. Quit worrying about what's going to make the adults look better and focus on what's going to help the kids DO better.
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Having had experience with AP courses, I know that to truly make an impact on preparing students for those high school courses the academy needs to start as early as the 7th grade. Ninth grade is too late if you are trying to qualify as many students as possible, so clearly politics played its usual role in this set up. Where did CCSD think these 100 desired students would come from? I believe the answer is that they didn't think.
Interesting...thanks for your comments. We do tend to "go through the motions" here in District 20, don't we?
Where are they going to get the teachers? We don't even have an English teacher for our 8th graders at Burke and now you want to get teachers qualified to teach AP courses?
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