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Notes -
I don’t think that high schools sports is a good analogy for honors classes. And I meant middle of the bell curve within students who take honors classes. The smartest kids will need educational experiences tailored to their needs (arguably honors classes might not be the best for the smartest kids). But for most kids in honors classes I would guess that their motivation is not “I’m so smart I need honors classes.”
Aren’t honors classes purely opt-in (no analogy for tryouts and selection)?
I would guess that more students pick honors classes because their friends are taking them than any other (explicit) reason, which you can’t always say for someone who makes the varsity baseball team.
I can't speak for the general case, but in my experience, honors classes did have some analog for tryouts, in the sense that the teachers had to be convinced that the student was qualified for the honors class. And in my experience, I couldn't think of a single case where students picked honors classes due to any sort of peer influence. The causality was always reversed, if there was any friendship at all; they were friends because they took the same honors classes together. And the reason for taking those honors classes was generally explicitly because of the additional advantage in education (or more cynically education qualifications as they appear to colleges - which can only work if the student also has the intelligence to actually get good grades there - it was generally considered common knowledge that a B in an honors class was worse than an A in a regular one) those honors classes (theoretically) provided them.
Oh, I see, the clarification about the bell curve makes sense. Either way, the effect of filtering - again, students couldn't just arbitrarily choose to take honors classes, in my experience, and had to actually be deemed qualified - would make intelligence a pretty important factor. Though obviously teachers' judgments are imperfect. And basically no student is going to think "I'm so smart I need honors classes;" rather, it's more "I'm smart/good at academics enough to take honors classes and excel which is better for my college prospects than taking regular classes and excelling (and I'm smart enough that the risk of taking honors classes and being mediocre is very low)."
This is fair, but I have anecdata to the contrary-- let's call it a draw on that one.
I like your characterization of a hypothetical student's motivation better here, it seems more plausible.
If I'm understanding your position correctly, you're saying that the primary driver for students taking honors classes is their general intelligence? I still think I disagree, and would argue that social factors are a bigger driver (when you take into account the whole distribution of intelligence in a given honors class). I'd be curious to know if there's relevant research.
Edit: singular possessive
No, you understand incorrectly. I'm not making any statement about the primary driver. I'm not sure if it's even possible to do the research to figure out what the primary driver is, so I'm not sure how you're concluding that social factors rather than general intelligence or something else altogether is a bigger driver. I'm just saying that, due to the filtering effect of honors classes, they're generally going to consist of students who are higher in general intelligence than the broader student population at the given school and grade. Teachers aren't perfect at gauging a student's potential ability to make use of honors classes, but I believe they're better than chance.
Ah, thanks for clarifying. I appreciate your points. All I have is my intuitive sense of why people choose honors classes. It sounds like my intuitive model of those people is different than yours. That's fine.
Edit: actually this wasn't your initial post, it was someone else. Apologies.
I went and re-read your initial post. My claim was that:
I went to American (US) public high school, and my recollection is that the main differentiator for the honors classes was that there was more schoolwork (more note-taking in english, more books to read) and the kids who took the classes were "better." Maybe that's not true across all high schools. I think that maybe International Baccalaureate (IB) or Advanced Placement (AP) would be better examples of places where true high-performers go.
I'm inclined to agree, as long as you're saying that the average intelligence is higher. Maybe that's too much of a nitpick, but certainly there would be overlap in the distributions of general intelligence in honors and regular classes.
I'd rather use standardized tests for this, wouldn't you? Or a combination of standardized tests and nomination by teachers of students with merit? Teachers have all kinds of biases, and some teachers are terrible (many teachers awesome).
Edit: clarification in last paragraph
100% agreed, and I don't think you're nitpicking at all, only clarifying. I probably should have written it out like that myself, but I generally take it for granted, because generally it's taken as a given when talking about intelligence - or more broadly any sort of traits with differences between groups - that the claim is only about differences in averages, with almost always large overlap between groups. It's not bad to write it out explicitly, though.
Also 100% agreed. Teachers are better than nothing, but that's a low bar. Standardized tests certainly have their own issues as well, but IMHO those issues are typically lesser than the issues with teachers and their biases (and/or plain incompetence), and schooling in general would be improved with a greater emphasis on standardized testing for figuring out where to place students.
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