The class of 2025 will be the first class at Niles West and Niles North to graduate, having been enrolled in “stacked” English classes since their freshman year. Along with this change to the English course offerings, there was also an “unpairing” last spring of the double-period combined reading and English classes for struggling students.

In the spring of 2021, District 219 approved “stacking” all freshman English classes. Stacking classes refers to putting students from all levels into one class and offering them the choice to opt into honors credit if they want to. Previously, English classes were tracked, which occurs when students are set up on a specific academic path based on their prior class level, standardized test scores and teacher recommendations. For example, if a student is enrolled in honors English during their freshman year, they will be expected to continue with honors and AP English classes for the rest of their high school career. Opponents of tracking argue that it might prevent regular-level students from trying honors-level classes.

Niles West and Niles North English department directors Michael Kucera and Sara Klos originally presented their proposal for this change in April 2021 alongside then-Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction Sandra Arreguín. The Board voted to approve their proposal, and Klos and Kucera updated the Board on the implementation of stacked English classes in Oct. 2023, at which point sophomore, junior and senior English classes had been stacked as well. Stand-alone honors English classes are no longer offered, although AP English Language and Composition is still offered for juniors and AP English Literature and Composition is still offered for seniors.

“Detracking of classes in education is supported through decades of research. In addition to increased and personalized learning for students, it moves the district toward its vision of equity and anti-racism by addressing racially predictable opportunity gaps,” Kucera and Klos stated in their slides presented to the Board and shared with Niles West News.

Kucera and Klos argued that stacking English classes would stop tracking in the English curriculum.

“It’s about getting everybody exposure and access to the opportunity. I don’t believe in separation, like this is high school, one of the only times where you’re separated by perceived ability, and I think so many people change so much from day one of their freshman year to day 20 of their freshman year…it doesn’t depend on somebody telling them that they’ve decided they’re smart enough for it,” Kucera said in a fall 2024 interview with the Niles West News.

According to Kucera, there has been an increase in minority students opting in for honors credit at both Niles West and Niles North since stacking was implemented. However, the data shows a constant amount of African American students in the class of 2025 opting in for honors credit at 2%; an increase in Asian students from 15% in second semester of the 21-22 school year to 19% in the second semester in the 22-23 school year; and a small increase of White students from 17% in the second semester of the 21-22 school year to 18% in second semester of the 22-23 school year.

“The point wasn’t to get more underrepresented students to opt in; it was really to get more diverse perspectives into our classroom … diversity shows up in all sorts of ways. It’s not just cultural. There’s a lot of academic diversity, and everybody should hear from all the minds that we have in this school,” Kucera said.

Some students enjoy having a class with both credits offered as it gives them an opportunity to take either class without the hassle of switching their classes, teacher and schedule.

“I think it’s a good opportunity to have honors and regular in the same class because…they have an opportunity to take [either] credit and students don’t have to change their [schedule]…I don’t think I would take honors if classes were not stacked,” freshman honors English student Zarinah Nizami said.

Though stacked classes bring in a diversity of students, some teachers find the mixed levels of students challenging.

“I still think that it’s impossible to reach every single student. I feel like there are too many levels in the classroom, and I don’t think I know how to reach every single kid at the level that they are at in just 42 minutes,” English teacher Tijana Stosovic said.

Kucera does not believe that this is a considerable issue for teachers and stands by his idea that stacked classes will always be a good thing.

“We’ve always had a big spread of students, so my question is, what actually changed other than acknowledging that we’ve always had this huge spread of students? Some teachers do struggle more than others,” Kucera said.

Some teachers agree with Kucera and feel that stacking classes pushes students for the better. English teacher Michele Lewis has seen that stacked classes motivate her students to improve their work ethic.

“Oftentimes, I find that the students who would not have opted to take an honors class can be motivated to take their reading, let’s say, more seriously,” Lewis said.

Many honors students feel as if they are not being challenged enough because teachers are not giving their full attention to honors work in their effort to accommodate both levels. This leads to some honors students not performing well in future AP classes, as they were not fully prepared for the workload. Senior Ayesha Muhamed chose to take the honors option in her stacked English classes her freshman and sophomore year and took AP Language and Composition (also known as Great American Writers, or GAW) her junior year.

“I could have been way more prepared for GAW if I had just [stand-alone] honors freshman and sophomore year. I feel like the reason why GAW was really hard for me was because it was such a big jump from sophomore to junior year [English]. I ended up dropping it after one semester because it was just too hard,” Muhamed said.

When stacked classes were first implemented, Grace Cherian was a freshman and felt that her freshman English class was too easy for her, even once she had opted into honors. Now a senior and a National Merit Commended Student, Cherian reflects on the experience of taking stacked English her freshman year.

“While it may be helpful to students who would’ve been placed at a lower level, it more often than not holds back the students who are ready to be challenged. My [freshman year] teacher was fun, but I had already learned most of the material years earlier, so many of the lessons felt pointless… Looking back, I actually think I lost some of my skills because I was not using them,” Cherian said

Combined English and Reading Classes

The other major change in the English department was the unpairing of the double-period English classes, also known as F19. According to two former teachers of the combined classes, the teachers were notified of the discontinuation of this model at the end of March 2024. This gave teachers only four months to adjust their curriculum, something that typically takes a year to do.

According to Kucera, there were multiple reasons for the un-pairing of F19 classes, and it was an idea in the district for many years prior.

“I think there are reasons for a district perspective, there are reasons for a logistical perspective, there are reasons for a philosophical perspective…It was a long time coming…It’s like death by a thousand paper cuts, it was a lot of little things,” Kucera said.

F19 was designed to help freshman students who needed more support to access the Freshman English curriculum. The district offered a double-period class: 42 minutes focused on reading and 42 minutes focused on English. This allowed teachers and students to form connections with each other to fulfill social emotional learning goals and improve academic issues one-on-one. English teacher Mary Jo Schnabel taught the class for many years and saw how the classes helped students academically and socially.

“F19, I thought, was a really beneficial program…students got that freedom to ask questions that you might otherwise not ask…I think there’s a higher amount of kids failing in their general English classes just because the level of support isn’t there,” Schnabel said.

The Niles West News reached out to Assistant Principal for Student Services Page Powell for the number of students who failed the first semester of Freshman English in the 2024-2025 school year but did not receive a response.

Former F19 teacher Jason Schmitt believes that discontinuing these classes was a bad idea implemented by district administration and worries what the consequences of removing the classes will be for students.

“I don’t think it’s the best choice for students. I think a lot of reading kids really struggle in the English classes. Given that it’s a four-year English requirement, I worry that it’s going to cause more kids to get off track for graduation,” Schmitt said.

There is still a reading elective offered, but it is a one-period class not connected to students’ English classes. Schmitt has seen negative effects of the classes being disconnected. Before, in his combined classes, Schmitt was able to support his students in ways he cannot now, such as teaching his reading students the full text of “Romeo and Juliet” by using the embedded English lessons and resources that the time allowed. This is something he lost this year, and is now not able to fully break down “Romeo and Juliet” to his reading students.

“I hear from my reading kids about their struggles in their English classes, but I don’t have time in my reading group to support their English class because there is not that overlap that we used to have,” Schmitt said.

More Stacking to Come

Gonzalez sees the benefits of stacked English classes and has discussed what detracting other subjects such as math, science and social studies would look like.

“We’re looking at ways we can create more opportunities for students to access that higher level work at the end…In math, it’s nowhere near that, and so it’s going to be a little bit more of a multi-year transition to get to that particular point…science for example, it might be easier because the majority of kids take bio, so that might be an easy entry way to look at what a stacked class might look like…within [science and math], it’s a lot more to tackle,” Gonzalez said.

Science and English Language Learners (ELL) teacher Poonam Patel believes that stacked classes could work but would be difficult in a biology class because of the different pacing of standard and honors curricula.

“I believe stacked classes have their pros and cons. In theory, it sounds great, but there are some very significant challenges… Let’s take regular level biology and honors level biology, the regular students enter biology still lacking some of the fundamental skills and scientific knowledge that honors level students already possess. Honors-level students are in a classroom with an accelerated pace where the content is more in-depth, [the curriculum] skills and rigor challenge them in ways that a regular class takes more time to practice for the students to develop. I would anticipate that I would not successfully reach the various needs of my honors and struggling learners on a consistent level, limiting their ability to reach their proximal zone of development,” Patel said.

Math teacher Daniel Larrabee imagines the complexity of teaching a stacked geometry class.

“I can see [honors students] not getting as many challenges they are used to or have the possibility because of stacked classes. If you are in geometry class, there are so many different topics, [students in honors and standard] would be learning two very different things,” Larrabee said.

Social Studies teacher Daniel Kosiba teaches stacked electives as well as full-year core history classes. Kosiba believes that stacked electives are good because they give students who are passionate about the class an opportunity to challenge their learning. However, he believes that stacked core classes do the opposite of what the administration originally planned.

“I think that people who argue for stacked classes say that it helped detrack, but it actually doesn’t. What it does is promote tracking inside the classroom instead of making tracking a separate thing. I think it’s better to give more options when it comes to required classes. Give more options instead of just saying you’re detracking, which you actually are not, and making it more difficult for people to actually have a shared learning experience in a classroom,” Kosiba said.