This petition is to request that CVUSD reinstate 6th grade Pre-Honors English or add an official 6th grade Honors English class at Colina Middle School.

Colina Middle School made a decision to discontinue the pre-honors clustering of top students in 6th grade English/Social Studies in favor of fully blended classes. This change took effect this school year.

ABOUT PRE-HONORS ENGLISH

For the past 10 years, there has been an unofficial pre-honors English/Social Studies class at Colina, taught by Sarah Morton. The criteria to get into this class was based on 5th grade academic grades (as well as work habits and citizenship) and CASSP test scores. Top students were clustered together in an honors environment, allowing Mrs. Morton to go deeper with these students who truly need more from the curriculum than their average peers.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PRE-HONORS AND REGULAR/FULLY BLENDED CLASSES

The difference between the honors clustered class and the regular class is significant. As Mrs. Morton described it at Back to School night in 2018, the basic curriculum is the same as all other 6th graders, but the curriculum for Honors differs in depth and breadth. Having a class of honors students allows the teacher to consistently use higher level thinking strategies, higher vocabulary, critical thinking and problem solving strategies. Core lit novels are higher level in terms of content and with respect to the responses that students are required to elicit. With respect to writing, honors students grasp the basic organizational pattern so quickly that time can then be spent on improving their actual writing by teaching sentence fluency, word choice, thesis development, and other nuances of expository writing that cannot be addressed with lower performing children.

In a fully blended class, the teacher simply cannot teach at this level, which lowers the bar for the top students, and denies GATE and High Achieving learners the depth and complexity that they need and require, and that is their educational right.

GATE DIFFERENTIATION

According to the district website, GATE provides “qualitatively differentiated learning experiences for students with unique abilities and talents in all academic areas,” however, blending all levels in ELA/Social Science eliminates any possibility of true differentiation for these students in a core and critical academic subject. Colina continues to offer Accelerated Math to 6th grade students, so why not English? Plain and simple, they are now underserving this population of students.

Our highest achieving children and our gifted children deserve continued differentiation in the classroom with rich curriculum and deeper learning opportunities to best meet their educational needs. Bringing up the bottom simply cannot be at the expense of our brightest students, who need more from the curriculum than the standard provides.

Our closest neighbors, Las Virgenes Unified School District has official Honors classes in ELA/Social Science for ALL grades starting in 6th grade as STANDARD district policy.

Please sign this petition and forward to any parents whose children will be impacted by this change. Email the district employees listed below. Make your voice heard.

Mark W. McLaughlin

Superintendent

mmclaughlin@conejousd.org

Luis A. Lichtl

Assistant Superintendent of Instruction

llichtl@conejousd.org

Kenneth Loo

Director of Middle School Education

kloo@conejousd.org

Shauna Ashmore

Director, Student Support Services

sashmore@conejousd.org

Stefanie Caswell

GATE Teacher on Special Assignment

scaswell@conejousd.org