by Elsie Rozario ‘24

For the 2024-2025 school year, Sherwood is continuing to limit the range of courses available to students by only offering honors or AP level US History, NSL Government, Modern World History, English 11, and English 12. Encouraging students to take more honors classes has benefits, since honors classes boost WGPAs and look favorable on high school transcripts. However, removing on-level classes ultimately hinders learning.

Honors classes are considered the “middle ground” between AP and on-level, with honors having a lighter workload than APs, but still covering more material than on-level classes. Students often take honors classes if they are unable to handle the time commitment that APs demand but still want a challenge. With many honors and on-level classes now combined, honors classes no longer serve as moderately rigorous courses due to their lowered difficulty. Having previously taken Honors English 11 and Honors US History, the less engaging curriculum of these classes prevented me from learning anything new. I fell behind compared to my peers, which made it challenging to later take AP and dual enrollment classes. Though it isn’t fair to force students who want an on-level class to do more work than they signed up for, it is also unfair to force other students to decelerate their learning.