<p>Well, I don’t consider it wanting to be a teacher’s pet, but I do question the validity of giving lower grades than the tests that measure mastery would indicate based on homework. If a person can master a subject without doing all of the problem sets, then that is just good time management.</p>
<p>When someone who is getting C’s on tests can get a B in a subject because they did the homework, but someone getting A’s on tests can get a C in a subject because they did not hand in the homework, some of which they probably did, there’s something wrong, imho.</p>
<p>Rant shared wit you ellemenope, (especially as the mother of a son)</p>
<p>cartera45, NHS was never about just grades. There have always been applications that showed desire to join and demanded attention to something more than academics. NHS has always mentioned character. If the boys were not interested in joining, that is there choice. There are more girls in NHS at our school as well, but most boys have made it clear that videogames are more important than academics in my area.
We do see many of the girls that are top of their class getting there more through hard work than natural intellectual gifts, but they are being rewarded for their commitment to excellence and their ability to persevere through the banal homework.</p>
Yes, but with whom? I think that for the first half of what you said, I agree–tests should show mastery of the material, and work done with an open book shouldn’t be able to pull it up too much. But for the second half, I think that an important part of high school is learning that you have to do and turn in work that you don’t personally value. It’s not only about mastery of the material.</p>
<p>I guess my recollection of NHS in high school didn’t support that it was never all about grades, but maybe those determinations were made behind the scene and I wasn’t aware of them. I don’t recall filling out any application and we were “tapped” in an assembly by other NHS members. Who was “tapped” was a surprise until you were chosen from the audience. I just assumed it was based on grades only.</p>
<p>In looking at the composite table, a boy has to score 2220 to be in the top 99th percentile, while a girl has to score 2190 (obviously, not a big difference).</p>
<p>Interesting charts, Hunt! FWIW, out of a class of 118 at my kids’ HS, all 3 NMFs and 1 commended scholar are female as are the people with the highest SAT & ACT scores.</p>
<p>cartera45–my high school was the same way, the selection process was by grades and teacher nominations. The nominations were more of a checklist of “yes, these kids are good in my class, no these kids are not” type deal. There wasn’t an application process like our kids’ school has now. We were just pulled out of class one day without warning. The process was much more objective that way. Now at our kids’ school, it’s an application process where the student has to write an essay, gather signed Affidavits that yes they have completed xx number of volunteer hours, get 3 teacher recommendations, etc. THEN, the adviser reviews all of the information and “picks” who is in NHS. While I am sure there are plenty of kids that don’t do all of this, I know several boys that have and did not get selected to be on NHS. It’s kind of common knowledge around school that boys have very little chance of being selected. Then you look at some of the girls that DID get selected and you scratch your head. We are talking boys that are top 10 in the class, schedules full of AP classes, 2 or 3 sport athletes, very active in their churches, band, etc. getting passed over and girls that have taken NO AP classes, do NO work at church, etc. that are on NHS. These are all friends of our kids so we do know what they are up to and where they stand in the class. It’s gotten to the point where NHS is kind of a joke at the school and that is sad.</p>
<p>Both of my kids were always strong students, but S got far more recognition for it. Overall, I found that because the girls tended to do better than the boys, the smart girls were the proverbial “dime a dozen” while the boys were treated as if they were special.</p>
<p>Both of my kids always did the homework, not as a "teachers pet/ kiss up thing " but because it is part of the job. we always emphasized just do it.</p>
<p>As for teacher favorites, we were thankful for any teacher who actually knew D 's name and any teacher who did not actively dislike S. The bars were set low, but what can I say.</p>
<p>S and D, although two grades apart had the same English teacher and the same assignment at the end of the year: create a portfolio of your work and exchange it with another student. Read and comment on each piece of writing of your partner and then summarize his/her achievement and point to places where improvement is possible.</p>
<p>D and her friends did the assignment as given.</p>
<p>S and his friends read their own and wrote about their pieces as if they were their friends.</p>
<p>S and his friends felt they saved a lot of work because they didn’t have to read another portfolio.</p>
<p>True, the boys out and out lied and cheated. Can’t condone that.</p>
<p>But the funny thing is they took on the harder writing assignment – they had to write in someone else’s voice.</p>
<p>I told S it was a risky business and made appropriate mommy noises, but I thought it was pretty funny and very creative (I didn’t tell him that.)</p>
<p>It really highlighted a different in the approaches of the girls and the boys.</p>
<p>I have trouble worrying about what we do to our boys when I see boys of less ability admitted over girls of greater ability and determination to keep up a certain stat. Some colleges (Vassar comes to my – sorry dear jym) are particularly egregious in this regard.</p>
<p>And when I see the amount of pressure Howard Dean and the DNC put pn the primary process to give us Obama and not Hilary, I don’t think males are in any danger of being eclipsed, even if women do out excel them in school.</p>
<p>A pretty, curvy young woman still have difficulty in the job market at the same time most people think she is a shoe-in for jobs and job hunting a piece of cake.</p>
<p>Interesting charts Hunt. I wonder if ACT numbers are similar.</p>
<p>There does seem to be a huge dispararity for 800 scores in math for male and female. The 30 point difference can be easily attributed to the Math score disparities? It only takes one additional wrong.</p>
<p>Right - I see the CR top scores being only a few percetange points apart and writing closer to 10% but math is at 2:1 ratio which is kind of ridiculous. I think women need to be complaining about SAT as sexist!</p>
<p>Texaspg, the SAT has already been proven to have tremendous gender/race/socioeconomic bias built in. I’m sure this is one of the reasons why it is simply a tag-up in terms of admissions and why GPA trumps test scores in admissions.</p>
<p>I find it hard to see how the SAT could have a built-in gender bias in the math portion–perhaps it reflects a gender bias in how math is taught.</p>
<p>Only the college counselor knows…
College acceptance-wise, though, one boy got into MIT (not a STEM kid, though- not idea what that was about). No other boys got into single-digit acceptance rate schools, but over five girls did.</p>
<p>In my son’s graduating class, they had an awards dinner with the top 10 scholars from all the neighboring schools. Most of the schools had 7-8 girls out of their top 10. My son’s school was the anomaly with 7 boys in the top 10 and of those, the top 4 (val and 2 sal’s) including my son were all boys.;)</p>
<p>Modadunn, and others, on this boy/girl thing, these days males have a edge in acceptance when it comes to the LACs, Catholic colleges and a lot of the schools where the ratio is becoming lopsided with fewer males in the school community. For whatever reason, more females are applying to colleges than males and it is causing this ratio. Wouldn’t be a problem except once the ratio tips too far towards the females, the apps and yields go down, so a school fights to keep things at a 60/40 split.</p>