This is an opportunity for you to consider some of the ethical issues educators face and how they can and should be resolved. Provide your recommendations to address further action. Read the details of the ethics case study in the Content area of Week 2 and answer the following two questions.
Summarize the situation happening at Royal High School. In your summary, make connections to ideas of tracking or ability grouping from the course lectures and textbook.
What do you believe should be the outcome of this situation? Why?
Your responses should contain at least three in-text citations from the assigned textbook. No outside research is needed. The paper should follow APA format, including double-spaced text, 12-point font size, and 1” margins. Your case study answers should be a minimum of 750 words. Submit your case study answers to this Dropbox by Thursday at 11:59 pm CT.
Case Study 1
Ms. Perez is the chair of the English Department at Royal High School. For the past ten years, the school has offered English classes for college credit, but starting next year the school will offer Advanced Placement (AP) classes. The principal, Dr. Gordon, has requested that Ms. Perez and her department create a series of advanced English classes. These classes would allow a student to take advanced English classes starting their freshman year. Dr. Gordon argues that it would allow students to be more prepared to take AP English when they were seniors. Dr. Gordon also wants Ms. Perez and the English department to decide how students will be admitted into advanced classes.
Ms. Perez understands Dr. Gordon’s logic and agrees that advanced English classes would help prepare students for AP English, but she also does not want to exclude any students from taking an advanced class. She feels that every student should be allowed to enroll in an advanced class if they choose to do so. Another English teacher, Mr. Dyson, disagrees, saying that the department should create strict admissions criteria for students to be selected to take advanced classes, such as a required GPA, teacher recommendations, and a sample essay. Mr. Caine, another English teacher, feels that instead of offering advanced classes, teachers should try to make every course challenging and relevant. Mr. Caine also asserts that AP class enrollment disproportionally contains higher income and more white students. Offering AP and advanced classes, he argues, would segregate students at Royal High School with lower-income and students of color enrolled in regular classes and higher-income and white students enrolled in advanced classes.