Harvard's Fitzsimmons on transcripts: "what you see is often not what you get"

tokenadult · 07-18-2007, 09:50 PM

Interesting article on the College Board's attempt to regulate use of the "AP" label on high school transcripts:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/education/18ap.html

Quote:

And even in legitimate College Board AP courses, it’s hard to know what was taught until one sees the exam results.

mj93 · 07-18-2007, 10:33 PM

Just more proof of how bogus the Newsweek high school rankings are.

PKswmr76 · 07-18-2007, 10:38 PM

the Newsweek rankings are based on the number of AP courses a school offers?

"And even in legitimate College Board AP courses, it’s hard to know what was taught until one sees the exam results."

-does that mean that colleges put at least some weight on AP scores?

xjayz · 07-18-2007, 11:07 PM

Well, they do if you are so inclined to send your scores to them. It's hard not to acknowledge a string of 4's and 5's on AP exams. But again, the reason why APs are not a universal requirement is because not all schools offer them, and there are great disparities in the number and type of APs offered at each school. I know that one of my friends here at Harvard had no APs because nobody ever went to college. I know that another friend took a great number of APs because his school offered them. They really do put it into context.

quaere · 07-18-2007, 11:58 PM

Quote:

the Newsweek rankings are based on the number of AP courses a school offers?

The Newsweek rankings are based exclusively on number of AP/IB exams taken divided by number of seniors graduated. It's kind of absurd.

tokenadult · 07-19-2007, 04:57 PM

Quote:

The Newsweek rankings are based exclusively on number of AP/IB exams taken divided by number of seniors graduated. It's kind of absurd.

That is an absurd system for rating high schools, and all the more so because until recently it systematically excluded magnet schools for gifted students. And yet the school rated highest by that method in my state is, by all local accounts, a very good high school, and definitely a school that is on the radar screen of the Harvard admission office, as graduates of that school go to Harvard pretty nearly every year.

xjayz · 07-19-2007, 06:49 PM

I remember reading something on this forum that even the founder of the ranking system, Jay Mathews, said that he created this ranking system to create meaningful discussion about these so-called ranking systems (the most notable obviously being the U.S. News Rankings).

Interpret that as you will.

tokenadult · 07-19-2007, 08:10 PM

Funny comment, xjayz. Yes, I'm not sure that Jay Mathews really has a lot of his own credibility invested in the high school rankings, but they do get people talking.

siserune · 07-20-2007, 05:07 AM

Quote:

The Newsweek rankings are based exclusively on number of AP/IB exams taken divided by number of seniors graduated. It's kind of absurd.

It's not bad as a one-number summary. Like any other simple measurement, it has a decent correlation with the "quality" (whatever that is) of the school, some obvious defects, and some room for manipulation.

afan · 07-21-2007, 12:56 PM

Actually, it is an absurd method for "ranking", since it credits the school for the students taking AP exams, not for the students learning anything.

If every student in the school took 4 AP exams every year, and every student failed every exam, the school would be at the top of the ranking.

There are obvious ways to take into account the scores students get on the exams, and the board actually does this. The Matthews index is simply a shill to promote taking the tests.

It is truly meaningless.

kollegkid · 07-21-2007, 01:06 PM

My high school went up in the rankings this past year. It doesn't seem to matter that the average AP student score at my high school is below 3!

afan · 07-21-2007, 04:37 PM

In fact the fastest way for a school to go up in the rankings is for it to encourage students to take AP exams, whether or not they have taken AP courses. Get your freshmen in remedial math to take the BC calculus exam and your school score will go up.

tokenadult · 07-21-2007, 08:41 PM

That's why I think xjayz's reply has it about right: Jay Mathews came up with a fairly easily manipulated rating scheme, but perhaps he doesn't care much to refine it greatly, because his real point is that other rating schemes are also subject to manipulation.

afan · 07-21-2007, 09:09 PM

I hope you are right, but I have seen him hawking this as if it meant something.

the Times article does raise an important point about students and families perhaps being told they are getting a college level course when they are not.

quaere · 07-21-2007, 09:17 PM

I love the way this blog post deals with the Newsweek formula:

Quote:

...let’s consider a hypothetical school, Monkey High, where all of the students are monkeys. As principal of Monkey High, I require my students to take at least one AP test. (Attendance is enforced by zookeepers.) The monkeys do terribly on the test, but Newsweek gives them credit for showing up anyway. My monkey students don’t learn enough to earn a high school diploma — not to mention their behavioral problems — so I flunk them all out. Monkey High gets an infinite score on the Newsweek formula: many AP tests taken, divided by zero graduates. It’s the best high school in the universe!

(from here)

The post also quotes Jay Matthews attempting to argue that there is inherent value in simply taking the AP tests, regardless of scores, and that it is laudable that some districts pay for and mandate the tests, because "[i]t gives students a necessary taste of college trauma." ...sure.