More honors courses on the way

¿ No lottery for E-W likely next year

By Sarah Koenig

Enterprise reporter

For years, students in the Edmonds School District wanting rigorous classes have flocked to Edmonds-Woodway High School. The school offers a healthy selection of honors classes and an International Baccalaureate, or IB, program, an advanced course of study that gives a special diploma.

But that’s created a situation some feel isn’t fair for students living outside Edmonds-Woodways’ boundaries. The popularity of IB also has helped swell the high school beyond its capacity.

To solve both problems, the district wants to add more honors classes for ninth- and 10-graders at Lynnwood, Mountlake Terrace and Meadowdale High Schools next fall.

If their plans come through, it would mean that only students designated as highly capable would get into Edmonds-Woodway’s IB program in fall 2008 ¿ the lottery option would disappear.

“Classically in our district there’s been a big draw to the program at Edmonds-Woodway,” said Tony Byrd, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning. “We’ve been thinking about: How do you maintaining that quality program and simultaneously create honors and AP programs at the other high schools so kids make choices to come to their own schools.”

It’s especially difficult for families struggling with finances to send their kids to Edmonds-Woodway for the IB program, partly because they have to provide their own transportation there, Byrd said.

For next fall, officials are considering adding honors or advanced level ninth- and 10th grade courses in English, social studies, science and math at Lynnwood, Mountlake Terrace and Meadowdale.

Edmonds-Woodway will get no new honors courses next year because it already has them, said Ken Limon, assistant superintendent.

The details of the new courses, and whether they will roll out next fall for sure, have yet to be worked out.

The hope is that increased enrollment in the new honors classes will help grow the Advanced Placement, or AP, classes offered in 11th- and 12th-grade, Limon said. In the future, there also may be a special diploma for district students who take honors and AP courses.

Right now, students at district high schools can get an honors designation on their diploma for some classes in which they do extra work.

With the new program, honors offerings will be a more consistent package that’s organized, and there will be more actual honors courses, officials say.

The way students in the district get into the IB program at Edmonds-Woodway also would change.

Right now, there are two ways to get into the program. Students in the highly capable program, or who are shown highly capable by passing a battery of tests, can get in automatically and can apply in eighth grade.

Other students enter a lottery to get in.

Next fall, there will be no lottery option to get into the IB program as a ninth-grader. Officials hope that by adding honors classes to the high schools, students will stay at their own school and enrollment in IB will go down.

Students also can take the honors classes at their home high school and then try to transfer to Edmonds-Woodway for IB.

Officials had considered creating a new IB program at the new Lynnwood High School, to be finished in fall 2009, but that idea is now off the table, said Limon.

With the expanded honors program, the district would train existing teachers, rather than hire all new ones, Limon said.

The financial impact hasn’t been established.

Limon said the district needs to do a better job of reaching out to all students to draw them to higher-level courses.

“There are fewer students of lower socio-economic means and of color in our advanced courses, whether AP or IB,” he said. “It’s our strong desire to reach out and offer all opportunities to all our kids.”

Officials will probably do more work with elementary and middle schools to identify students who could take the courses, he said.

“We could improve our efforts when we say we have high expectations for all kids,” Limon said.