There has been a lot of misinformation circulating in our community regarding the “detracking” of OPRF High School’s freshman curriculum. The misleading narrative is that the school was eliminating Honors and Advanced Placement (AP) courses. In fact, the exact opposite is true, freshmen in our middle “College Prep” tier have been moved into higher curriculum and rigor honors courses. This was done as a part of the school’s efforts to increase the number of students in the ever-increasing array of higher-level courses.
The decision to detrack was the result of an in-depth comprehensive review of the school’s freshman curriculum and academic data, which the administration undertook in the 2018-19 school year. The data confirmed what was obvious by looking into the school classrooms. College Prep (middle track) classes disproportionately enrolled students of color, while honors and AP classes disproportionately enrolled white students.
The data also showed that this difference was not based on ability. We found that about 70% of our College Prep students had PSAT scores that aligned with their peers in honors classes; they just were not taking the honors classes. Years of efforts to shift these enrollment trends had proven unsuccessful, so a different approach was necessary.
With the enthusiastic support of the high school’s faculty and board of education, the district decided to eliminate only the College Prep level courses for freshmen in English, History and Science and replace them with honors-level courses. This change would help to ensure more students would be prepared to take advantage of the vast array or Honors and AP classes offered in their sophomore, junior and senior years.
Kudos to our faculty who spent the next three years putting in a remarkable amount of work to prepare for this change. They looked at what other detracked districts had done. They put in tons of hours of revamping lesson plans and participating on professional development programs. They spent countless hours collaborating on how to support students who need more help, while also challenging our more academically successful students.
In 2022-23 the revised freshman curriculum was launched. Current juniors and sophomores are the first two cohorts to experience the detracked, honors level curriculum and freshmen are halfway through our third year of it.
So how is it going? Consider this information recently provided by our administration:
• Is the district doing what they said they would do?
Yes, instead of about 50% of the district’s freshmen enrolling in honors prior to detracking, now about 80% of freshmen take a single honors-level curriculum in all of these three subjects.
• How are the students doing on standardized testing?
Freshmen take the PSAT 8/9 in April each year. The two classes of freshmen who have gone through the detracking experience are performing right on par with their peers from before we detracked.
See the table below the Ave PSAT Score from the spring of 2023 & 2024 the two years after we detracked.
Year Ave PSAT Score
2018 993
2019 1005
2022 1001
2023 990
2024 1007
Last year our freshmen performed better than classes before detracking.
• How are the students doing beyond freshman year?
We need more years of data to really determine trends but the initial signs are positive. For this year’s junior class, which is the first to have detracked, 24% of all course enrollments are in AP classes. That is up from no higher than 19% over the previous four years. For our Black students, 13% of course enrollments are in AP classes, up from no higher than 9% over the previous four years.
By no means does this mean complete success. The administration has been consistently clear that there is much work yet to do, but the early signs tell us something very clear: we are moving in the right direction.
Unfortunately that is simply not the story you hear from certain community members who are “cherry picking” data points to suit the story they want to tell, one of doom and gloom. However, if you look honestly at the data — you will find that this is a school moving in the right direction.
It will take several more years to know for sure if the district’s efforts are truly succeeding. But so far detracking appears to be having the effect we were hoping: More students are realizing that they can take on tougher challenges and achieve greater levels of success that they may have thought possible.
As a community isn’t that what we want for all of our kids?
Fred Arkin is an incumbent member of the District 200 school board who is running for re-election on April 1.