Oakton PTSA Supports Implementing Honors This Fall

Oakton High School parents expressed their support of restoring five honors courses to the curriculum this fall in a letter to the school board after gathering for a special PTSA meeting Monday morning.

The meeting came ahead of Monday night's at the suggestion of Principal John Banbury, said Oakton PTSA president Kirsten Rucker.

"In our meeting parents reaffirmed that honors courses would allow students the option to balance their lives according to their individual goals while allowing them to include middle-level courses that would better prepare them for college-level education," Rucker wrote.

In an interview Monday night, Rucker said Banbury called her in for a meeting Friday to discuss the pending school board decision on implementing English Honors 11, World History Honors 2, U.S./VA History, English 12 and U.S. Government for in-person instruction into the 2012-13 curriculum.

She said Banbury expressed concerns with scheduling, curriculum development and the effect on closing the achievement gap — all of which Madison High Principal Mark Merrell also mentioned were concerns of the vast majority of the Fairfax County High School Principals Association to the school board at Monday night's work session.

During their meeting, Banbury asked Rucker if she thought it would be useful to have the PTSA also discuss the matter.

"He said 'Those are my issues, but if my community wants this, and the school board says it's OK, then that's what we're doing,'" Rucker said. "I thought [a PTSA meeting] was a very good idea. I think it was a good idea for him because otherwise his perspective wouldn't have been heard. ... And I think information is always beneficial to have an informed conversation."

At the meeting, Banbury repeated his concerns to the group that included about 20 people, made up of parents, teachers, administrators and school board member Patty Reed (Providence), whose son also attends Oakton High.

Taking Banbury's concern into consideration, the group also identified areas of possible concern in implementing the honors curriculum by the fall term: "1) the spontaneous change does not permit teachers enough time to develop meaningful curriculum; 2) a third tier would limit the diversity of students in both regular and AP courses," Rucker wrote in her letter to the school board on behalf of the group.

"While parents would like to have all of the classes offered ... in the coming year, they would not like that done at the expense of a quality student experience," Rucker wrote.

The group also addressed whether using an AP curriculum without the requirement of the AP would be appropriate for honors-level courses at the meeting. The overall sentiment was that it would not be acceptable, but Rucker said one teacher's comment after the meeting made her understand how not having to take the AP test could lessen students' workloads.

"She talked about the volume of work the AP kids do just to prepare for the test, the test-taking strategies and that sort of thing, she said if you took that out of the curriculum and added the time at the end of the year because you're not stopping instruction before the test, it might feel a lot more like what the parents are interested in than it sounds like initially," Rucker said. "... My feeling is you may not want to be as close to the regular class as you would want to be toward the AP class."

Rucker said she and the PTSA prefer a "unique and separate" curriculum for honors courses, though.

The school board on whether the five honors courses should be implemented this fall at Thursday's regular board meeting. The meeting will begin at 7 p.m. at Luther Jackson Middle School in Falls Church.

This article has been altered to clarify Kirsten Rucker's preference for a separate curriculum for honors courses.