<p>By Nancy Zuckerbrod, AP Education Writer | February 22, 2007</p>
<p>WASHINGTON --Large percentages of high school seniors are posting weak scores on national math and reading tests even though more of them are taking challenging courses and getting higher grades in school, say two new government reports released Thursday.</p>
<p>“The reality is that the results don’t square,” said Darvin Winick, chair of the independent National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the national tests.</p>
<p>Nearly 40 percent of high school seniors scored below the basic level on the math test. More than a quarter of seniors failed to reach the basic level on the reading test. Most educators think students ought to be able to work at the basic level.</p>
<p>The reading scores show no change since 2002, the last time the tests were given. “We should be getting better. There’s nothing good about a flat score,” Winick said.</p>
<p>I’ve seen this as a big problem in our underperforming (especially urban) high schools. Even the kids who manage to pull a 3.0 or 3.5 GPA are still failing standardized tests. In fact, many of them even fail their midterms and finals - but the teachers factor other things into their GPA heavily enough to offset that. Then the kids are shocked that maybe they aren’t quite the student they thought. It’s a bad situation.</p>
<p>This is predictable in any decentralized system, whether it be education or Dairy Queen. I can tell you that my grading scale is not what it once was, even for college students. This is human. When a kid is better than anyone in the class, that kid gets an A, even if that kid would be a C student if placed among less able students.</p>
<p>Both my kids, two different high schools, are really noticing this in their classes. It seems as though their schools are telling so many kids that you gotta take AP and Honors. So, we have kids taking Honors, who should be in standard classes, and kids in AP, who should be in honors. And, all of them are finding themselves overwhelmed. My kids complain that their Honors courses have been watered down with all kinds of busy work/extra homework … and projects in order to get the grades up. My daughter’s best friend is in an Honors World History course and making mobiles … the kind they did back in elementary school, and it’s worth a test grade and a half. My daughter’s just thankful she took the AP WH. So many honors/gifted kids were complaining, as well as parents whose kids had never done poorly in school, when they took AP Bio as freshman and did poorly on tests they weren’t prepared for, that the teacher was always coming up with extra ways to earn points. The busy work intensified, and then, when they took the AP exam, too many couldn’t pass.</p>
<p>One of our good teacher friend says when she was stingy in giving As and generous in giving hard work, her life was hell. Parents complained, kids complained.</p>
<p>Now her life is good - no hard work asignments, easy grades.</p>
<p>As I posted in an earlier thread, in an effort to boost college admissions, some sub-urban schools have eliminated the standard college-prep track. In those schools, standard college-prep classes as “honors.”<br>
Thus, even the worst students can boast that s/he has takne an all-honors curriculum.</p>
<p>Another “scam” is to offer an AP course, but never have the students actually sit for the AP exam (would be suspicious if, after earning grades of A and B in the class, none of the students scored more than a 3 on the exam). </p>
<p>Worse still, some lower performing pvt schs are scrapping their AP programs, so that the student body, most of whom are not AP caliber, aren’t penalized for not taking a more rigorous course load.</p>
<p>I don’t know why colleges </p>
<ul>
<li>focus more on grades which are easily manipulated by indiv schools (even w/ coaching, sandardized tests like the SAT are a bit ot an equalizer)</li>
</ul>
<p>-don’t insist that schools offering AP classes,</p>
<ul>
<li>limit the AP exemption to poor schools</li>
</ul>
<p>I definitely agree. Whenever I hear people disparaging the SATs, they tend to hold up GPAs as a shining example of equalization - a 4.0 student is better than a 3.5 student, right? But an A in one class is not an A in another. That’s why I like APs. My school (magnet program in a large urban HS) is not well known, but when my transcript shows that I got C’s in classes where I got 4’s and 5’s on the APs, it shows that our grading scale is far more deflated than the norm. Nearly all my grades are based only on essays, labs, and tests, with an emphasis on the latter.</p>
<p>“But an A in one class is not an A in another.”</p>
<p>Very true. There are also teachers out there who play favorites, punish kids who reveal that they already know the material, etc. ALL of these measurement systems have serious flaws.</p>
<p>However, InvertedCommas, if you, with your 5s on AP exams and lower GPA, apply to a school such as the University of Michigan, where GPA is God (or at least God-like), you have an extremely good chance of being deferred, if not outright rejected. My National Merit Finalist S was deferred when Michigan calculated his GPA as (I think) 3.5, despite the fact that he attends one of the most difficult high schools in the country (admission by exam, all-Honors and AP curriculum).</p>
<p>^I’m so sorry for your son HeliMomNYC!!! I really think the admissions procedure being utlized by the University of Michigan Undergraduate Admissions Department needs some serious reforms, so that it takes into account the rigor of the courseload as well as the other factors like EC’s/standardized test scores to a greater extent. In the status quo, a student who takes a very weak courseload(1-2 AP’s before graduation), has a 24-26 ACT score, and has a 4.0 UW GPA consequently has a MUCH higher chance of being admitted to Michigan, with greater consideration for scholarships to boot, than another student who enrolls in the most rigorous school curriculum available(8-10 AP’s before graduation), a 33-36 ACT score, and a 3.5 UW GPA.</p>
<p>The local high school’s AP Calculus AB semester exam was an eye-opener for me: the kids took the exam one day, then next class period they worked in groups to go over their answers. The grade for the exam was based on what they turned in after they had met with classmates & adjusted answers. I couldn’t believe it! The kids in that class are in for a rude awakening if they think this class is representative of a college course. At least the exam was made up of the type of questions they will have on the AP test. In the AP grammar/comp class, the semester exam was 100 multiple choice “let’s make sure you read the book” questions covering the four novels they had read during the semester. Again, good luck in college if those kids think that exam is representative of what they see in a college class. The adults in charge need to find their backbones and stand up for what is right. If it’s an AP class, it needs to BE a college-level class in terms of work & expectations. Of course, when the kids don’t have to take the AP test, no one really knows just how unprepared the kids really are.</p>
<p>And people wonder why I don’t send my kids to the local high school …</p>
<p>As for the U of M issues, I agree that it’s really unfair. However, it IS a public college, and it is only right that the top kids in MI public schools be accepted into our public flagship U (from a taxpayer’s point of view). If these kids have not received an adequate education to prepare them for U of M, this is a problem that the whole state — including U of M — needs to work to fix. Public colleges exist to serve the public, after all. It may exclude some “better” students in the process, but again, it is a PUBLIC school supported by the taxpayers. Fair? No. But life isn’t fair. (By the way, U of M gives extra points in its admissions formula for tougher schools, which helps to level the field for those who are in more rigorous high schools — not sure if that extends to OOS, though)</p>
<p>IMHO many state schools tend to weight GPA’s and Class Rank heavier as admissions criteria than do similar quality private colleges. The reason is simple, it is an extremely legal and subtle way of fostering racial and (in state) geographic diversity. This is neither an attack nor a defense of this practice just an observation.</p>
<p>You guys are assuming that the standardized test scores are accurate reflections of ability. I disagree-- I think the test scores reflect the ability to guess well while under time pressure. </p>
<p>Most people can read this and correctly answer all the questions, but of course you have no clue what it means. But some people would be really thrown for a loop when encountering something like this… and they are going to test badly. But in terms of real-life knowledge – the ability to read and study and explore the topics in a classroom, analyze, make connections, draw inferences – and explain what they are doing either orally or with a written presentation - it may be a very different story.</p>
<p>Similarly, with math – a standardized test gives no opportunity to “show your work” or thought process, and students who understand math concepts but simply work problems out a little more slowly than normal are going to tend to score worse – possibly simply because they run out of time. I mean, they say Einstein never memorized his multiplication tables and that he was prone to basic arithmetical errors – so it is very possible that a teacher is seeing a different side of a kid’s ability in the classroom than the tests measure.</p>
<p>Finally… students often blow off the nationally normed tests like the ones referred to in the Boston Globe article. I know that my own kids never took them seriously. Students are tested to death these days, and (if they are like my kids), they absolutely detest even having to go to school during the testing weeks. Many simply go through and randomly fill in bubbles. There is no motivation at an individual level for them to do well, especially at the high school level. I mean these kids are going to put their energies into studying for the ACT & SAT, and ensuring that they pass any required high school proficiency exam to graduate – they are not going to have much patience for the other tests. I know for a fact that both my kids at times just blew off whole sections of the other tests – it was something they joked about. </p>
<p>I think there is a huge problem with the tests. There may be grade inflation at some high schools, but I didn’t see much evidence of it at my kid’s public high schools. What I did see is that there was a very tenuous connection between norm-referenced standardized test scores and actual academic performance.</p>
<p>“another student who enrolls in the most rigorous school curriculum available(8-10 AP’s before graduation), a 33-36 ACT score, and a 3.5 UW GPA.”</p>
<p>That almost exactly describes my son, evil<em>asian</em>dictator.</p>
<p>OTOH, S is not crying in his cappuccino over his Michigan deferral. He has five acceptances to wonderful schools and is waiting on four more decisions. He was also rejected outright at UNC-CH, so obviously he didn’t “flip their switch” (with apologies to whatever wonderful CC parent originally coined that phrase, which I now use constantly. I owe you residuals.) My reason for posting his stats and story is cautionary. Before S applied to Michigan I didn’t realize how heavily the school relies on GPA. I found that out here on CC, and his deferral, when it happened, was not a surprise. Just trying to pass on what I’ve learned…I have no magic solution for grade inflation/deflation. I’m comforted that (hopefully) S will be able to comfortably manage college work at whatever terrific institution he attends.</p>
<p>My son got whacked on his Spanish grade because he didn’t bring a blank white t-shirt into school to make a t-shirt for “language week.” The language department has a no-mercy rule on late homework, so he failed Spanish arts and crafts dropping his A- in the class to a B. I understand getting work done on time, but this seems draconian for what amounts to a third-grade crafts project.</p>
<ol>
<li>The data over the last 10-15 years show that average GPA’s for students taking the SAT have increased by as much as 1 point while the test scores have not moved much at all.
2.Although many states show improvement on their own exit exams there does not seem to be much corresponding improvement on the AP scores so there is some question as to whether state tests are really measuring learning.</li>
<li>The correlation between PSAT (SAT) and AP scores is good in many subjects. It is so good in Physics that I can, in over 95% of cases, predict the AP physics test score using the SAT math score and the results of the first test given the fall. Because AP scores do correlate with success in college classes and are correlated with SAT, I would support the conclusions of the College board that rigor of clases along with SAT scores are as good of a predictor of college success as anything else on aversge.</li>
<li>The idea that test “guessing”, test , prep, bad test taking etc is a as significant as some say is questionable…With the error bars we are usually talking about (for good students ) 50 points. Also students do get to retake them so having a bad day will not penalize the student. I would agree that like the SB-IV and some other IQ tests the ceiling effects may matter for very talented students. Tests such as the AMC and AIME can help differentiate in those intsances.</li>
<li>Doing tests for time reflects what often happens in college. Many classes give timed tests, often any are multiple choice. Professional exams for many fields have time limits. People who cannot finsh them in time do get penalized.</li>
<li>Certainly scores and maybe even grades are not the sole indicators of geninous, ability or creativity. But where they are not there usually other indicators. In these cases perhaps the school choice needs to be adjusted as the peers at the college will usually have gotten in on the test scores etc.</li>
<li>People argue that multiple choice tests can’t test deeper knowledge etc. That is totally false. Tests can be constructed to measure higher level conceptual understanding in a multiple chice format and also be used to understand misundrerstanding depending on choice of distractors and question structure.</li>
<li>Many state schools use SAT’s as first cut for scholarship and admssion. Some, like Texas guarantee admission based on class rank. Others like California use scores classes plus an essay but unlike Michigan, do not require any recommends either from the counsleor or teachers that could give insight to a students strengths. There is not a "right " way. I do know that once a student passes the first cut at Michigan, the recommends and essays play a big role in determing major scholarship offers from departments.</li>
<li>In the case of a really rigorous high school that systematiclly grades students lower (I went to one) I have see that colleges often “know who they are” and adjust for that. I see the students from those schools usually having no problems when it comes to getting into top schools</li>
</ol>
<p>A friend of my son took a very conservative approach to her hs course selection. She stayed away from certain teachers/classes in order to preserve her GPA, and has been successful so far (she’s at the top of the class). Although she has taken the same number of APs as S, they have been in the classes which base grades on a lot of projects and homework, rather than tests and labs. However, she can’t get out of the low 1200 range on her SATs, and has not been very successful on the AP tests.</p>
<p>I am a proponent of using test scores in conjunction with the academic average. If my son’s acceptance chances were based ONLY on his GPA/academic record, I would have recommended he make different curriculum choices. He would have stayed away from AP Bio, Physics, and Calculus and taken softer classes. He would have taken five hard core academic classes every semester instead of six. The fact that he could take on more rigorous classes and “make up” for an occasional B with higher test scores allowed him to challenge himself without fear of hurting his chances.</p>