An open letter to David Douglas High School: Dear David Douglas School District, As a student taking advanced courses, I feel that David Douglas High School does not provide the opportunities I need in order to succeed. Time and time again, I feel ignored; I feel alienated. Often, I look at friends from schools like Westview or Sunset and imagine how I would have matured differently there, where advanced students are supported and spurred on. Instead, I attend a school where advanced students are ignored and those that are failing receive all the attention. Our priorities are flipped. We should be increasing the rigor of our classes and push those that are lagging to keep up instead of shoving our advanced students down the ladder of success. With one of the largest high school populations in the state, we offer measly selection of advanced courses, most of which come with restrictions in the form of prerequisites. Freshman year, not a single AP class may be taken. Does the school believe we aren’t able to handle the rigor? Students from other schools may be taking AP Human Geography or even AP U.S. History as freshmen. Instead, we prohibit our students from challenging themselves and we extinguish their passion to learn. Sophomore year, only AP Human Geography may be taken. At other high schools, students may be taking AP U.S. History, AP Economics, AP U.S. Government, or classes like AP World History and AP European History. Junior year, the trend continues. While there is technically no limit to the number of AP courses we may take junior year, the prerequisites for courses serve as a barrier. While we’re taking College U.S. History, receiving credit that can hardly be transferred to top colleges, other students may have already completed AP U.S. Government, which is a class that, at David Douglas, only seniors may take. Our AP program is a joke. We only offer AP Calculus AB, lacking the second part of the course: AP Calculus BC. Similarly, we refer to AP Literature and Composition as “AP English,” ignoring the fact that there is also a course called AP Language and Composition and that we do not offer it. From AP Biology to AP Environmental Sciences, we fail to offer courses that challenge students and give them an opportunity to succeed in college. While we provide a slew of dual-credit courses with Mt. Hood Community College, the credits simply pale in comparison to AP or IB. Simply put, prestigious schools will not award any credit to our “college” courses. Do we not expect that our students go on to a four-year university, possibly out of state? Is our expectation of students really that low? Has the school district already lost hope on the school population as a whole, believing that we will never produce a significant number of intelligent students? If we continue like this, of course we won’t. Even the brightest of students will eventually succumb to the demeaning curriculum we subject our students to. Even the hottest passions will be suffocated by our icy grasp. While we take pride in the diversity our school, our curriculum fails to address that diversity. We only offer three foreign languages and fail to offer a course to reflect our cultural diversity. Have we ever offered Chinese Language and Culture? Never. While we previously offered Japanese as the only Asian language at David Douglas, the class was cut years ago. Also, we only offer two years of languages, the bare minimum that most universities require. If we act as a bare minimum school, of course our students will be bare minimum students. How can we hope that our students will become successful when their education is inhibited by their own school? How can we continue to rejoice in graduation rates improvements when our most advanced seniors are less proficient in science and math than freshmen from Westview High School? How can we expect our students to excel when the courses we offer are less than mediocre? If we want to nurture the talent and intellect our students possess, it is imperative that we create more opportunities and classes to challenge our most advanced students and spur them on. If we continue to hold our students back, we are only killing their time. We will never be able to see their full potential. While I will never be able to take the advanced classes I am fighting for, my only hope is that future students will not have to feel my frustration. I hope that they will be able to learn to their full extent and not feel ignored by their own school. My fight is not for me, but rather, the future of our students and the future of our school. My request is simple. Please give some attention to the advanced students in our school, offer more challenging courses, remove the restrictions on advanced classes, and lastly, give our school a weighted GPA system instead of discouraging our students from taking challenging courses. A junior at David Douglas High School, Andrew Nguy
Posted on: Fri, 07 Mar 2014 02:29:22 +0000
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