ditto, Our public school there is no gatekeeping on any classes. very few get 1 or 2s…maybe 10-15% - though.. varies a bit by course. And, some kids, like mine don’t bother studying AT ALL so probably could pull of a 3 if they really tried. The test is required if you take the class…
Among the students in my APCSA classes, the majority can fit in three categories - aiming for 4/5, willing to put in as much effort as possible (may or may not get 3), doing minimum to take advantage of the GPA booster from AP course. My observation is that the second group is slightly larger than the first. Among these students, about a dozen took CS courses in college and told me that their APCSA experience (even if not passing the exam) was very helpful. Many students (at the ages of 15-18) are not mature enough to regulate their own learning. They couldn’t reach the depth required to pass the exam; however, they did acquire the core concepts and some connections among the topics. When they are more mature to form a decent way of studying, the prior knowledge shows its benefit. For this reason I don’t turn away students whom I know are not likely to score 3 or above, yet, and I tell them up front it’s okay to score 1 or 2.
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I am sure that for both AP and DE, this depends tremendously on the high school. For some topics such as calculus-based physics, I am guessing that high schools may struggle to find great teachers. But this is just based on my S23’s experience taking math and physics in college, and observing an extremely wide range of preparation in other students who came in with AP/DE, from poor preparation to excellent.
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Probably depends on the subject. Calculus is much more standardized than history in college courses, for example. So an AP course and test in calculus is more likely to match a college calculus course than an AP history course.
Also, some subjects in college are less well evaluated and graded by a final exam that an AP test is like. An example is English composition, where grading may be only on essays and papers, but no final exam.
Specific subjects may require prerequisites, however. Students entering high school may have different placements in math and foreign language, for example.
True, but there are ways to work around this. To qualify for a calculus class in high school, a student generally needs to be on the +1 track and have taken Algebra I in middle school. If a student became interested in taking AP calculus, they could potentially double up on math with geometry and Algebra II in order to then be on the +1 track. Foreign language prereqs are a little harder, but many schools offer Foreign Language 4 as an AP class, which does not require that a student received foreign language credit in middle school.
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5 posts were split to a new thread: How DE classes are viewed by ad coms
“Whatever academic “track” a student was on in middle school should not determine or limit a student’s options in high school.”
I mean yes, but also no. Merely having been on such a track (e.g. move in the middle of the year and there’s only space there), sure. But if the same factors that put the kid into the lower track in MS, would apply in HS, then why not? Why ignore solid data (grades, performance, behavior…) unless something indicates there has been a change?
I think sometimes people view Honors/AP as some kind of prize or award that should be dealt out evenly. Ideally, it is the right match for the students and the material.
I mean, would we say, “Not having made the Varsity team in high school football shouldn’t determine whether you make the Varsity team in college”? In theory, a miracle or late maturity could make a difference. In practice, yes, how you do in the previous years is an extremely strong predictor of what will happen next.
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Because changes happen, and how is a student/family to provide data that something has changed? How many times do we talk about the change in maturity or executive function skills that occur between junior year of high school and senior year? Or from the start of senior year to the end of senior year? Much less the changes that might occur between even bigger gaps?
There are times that brain maturity is a major factor. A student (perhaps one on the younger side of the class) may have had a hard time learning a concept in 6th or 7th grade, but once their brain matured a bit more, they were able to quickly grasp the concept and be successful. Because they had a hard time grasping a concept in 6th or 7th grade meaning they didn’t get started on the +1 track in middle school, why does that mean they can’t double up on geometry & algebra II to get into a calculus class in high school or switch from a regular class to an honors class?
Or there’s also the evidence of what opportunities were present for a person. There’s a lot of evidence out there that screening for giftedness is very uneven, to put it mildly. Most districts/states don’t do universal screening. So either the parents ask about it or sometimes a teacher might suggest that a student be screened. But there’s a lot of evidence that teacher biases influence who they suggest for screening. And a kid who’s been acting up in their class is rarely suggested, even if that kid is acting up because they’re bored out of their mind with the material that is presented at far too slow a pace for them.
For a personal example, my grades in elementary and early middle school were not stellar. My parents told me there was no need to be thinking about low admit schools if my grades didn’t reflect a chance to be accepted (and yes, I was already interested in colleges by that point). But then in seventh grade, I changed schools and a switch flipped and my performance changed completely.
If a family wants their kid to try an honors class, what is the harm in letting them? If the students’ grades suffer, then so be it, and the next year they could drop down a level if they wanted. Or maybe the student and family would be satisfied with lower grades but with a higher level of rigor than a higher grade in a class with a lower level of rigor. (Note I’m talking about regular vs. honors here, not skipping prereqs.)
Some high schools don’t have football teams. Or maybe someone was playing a variety of other sports in high school but never football. But when they arrive in college and are playing a pickup football game with friends or intramurals, maybe they realize they enjoy it and want to try out. So although it’s certainly not the norm, it’s not unheard of. Why do we want to eliminate that chance for kids?
These articles have examples of athletes who didn’t play a sport in high school who then played in college, or didn’t play a sport in college but then made it to the pros, etc.
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100%. Seen this more than once.
Edit: happened with c26 - 5th grade math teacher recommended them for normal track in middle school. When we raised it with middle school, they took one look at their test scores (CAASPP) and moved them. To be fair, from their reaction when we requested the meeting, it seemed they got a lot of requests for kids who were clearly not ready but whose parents had ambitions. That said, agree a lot can change between 6th grade and8th grade. There was a test where kids could shift paths higher during middle school.
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Are these options typically/often restricted though? I’m asking because I don’t know. These things definitely happen in the school districts around me. I do see plenty of transcripts with geometry/algebra 2 doubled up. Or summer school math. I assume the goal is to get to Calculus in HS.
Where I am, students are only allowed to take a summer school class if they have already failed the class. They can’t take one to get ahead.
In terms of doubling up on math, it’s dependent on the high school, but generally quite challenging. Because a good chunk of the population is entering high school underprepared, a lot of our “block” high schools will have a semester of algebra prep before enrolling the students in Algebra I (or English I, etc). They tend to do that for every English/math class that has a state test for graduation (English I, English II, Algebra I, Geometry), even the honors sections. Because of that, while still needing to meet other high school graduation requirements, it’s a definite challenge. (ETA: Vs. a kid saying, just give me Geometry & Algebra II and let me skip the geometry prep class…probably because the school is taking the full year to teach geometry at a slower pace and really isn’t having geometry prep in one semester and geometry in a second semester.)
In terms of honors/regular distinctions, it’s also very dependent on the high school. From what I’ve seen, more often than not, they require the current teacher’s approval.
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That’s all so frustrating. I know you are fighting the good fight. I definitely saw my fair share of teachers and counselors telling my URM and/or disadvantaged students that ‘those classes (eg AP and/or honors) aren’t for you’. No matter how well they might have done in the pre-reqs or grown as a scholar during HS.
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There is only one exception to that rule in our school district - and that is to take geometry for advancement. It’s a separate class to those that are taking it to remediate a D or F grade.
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I wanted to say one more thing…I don’t know your state, but some states have virtual high school that is free or low cost. We have that in Illinois and we had some of our students (from the now defunct foundation where I was a college counselor) take geometry or alg 2 or whatever thru that as a lot of their public schools didn’t run summer school.
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Stepping aside from the fact that AP classes were supposed to be college level, this seems to be an endorsement of a prescribed curriculum. That’s not altogether bad if we are letting a group of experts in the field determine what students should accomplish in their rigorous classes (in a climate where every district wants autonomy.) The upside of teaching to the test?
Yes, I mean both AP and DE were “supposed to be college level” - I think that is something of a legal fiction. The first AP course to be obviously a high school [rigorous] course that was clearly a high school course (not college) was AP US History.
Even here in Cambridge, where some public high school students “dual enroll” for a couple of specific Harvard classes (not in the extension school) - those are known to be not exactly at the “Harvard” level.
Now, as to the endorsement of prescribed curriculum - I actually really disagree with this, but in a good way. Lots of districts have prescribed canned trashy curriculum (I judge this from my 30 year career across three public districts). In districts that hire well, anything a teacher creates will beat this hands down.
But moreover and critical to your point, AP does not prescribe “curriculum” in the same sense that districts do (buy this book and follow it to the letter). AP essentially provides what will be on the final exam and says, make a course that does this. There are suggested syllabi, but the teacher can also make his/her own and submit it for approval. Or, realistically, choose an approved syllabus and make it their own in the process of teaching the class.
I had by far the most curricular freedom when teaching AP, whenever there were administrators who felt like controlling curriculum. (Otherwise, I had control in general.)
Autonomy in curriculum, in my view, doesn’t mean that you maybe don’t teach the quadratic formula in algebra if you don’t feel like it. It means that you know the kids have to end Algebra 1 by understanding/using the QF, and so you create the way to get there. And, I think ideally the autonomy is at the teacher level, not the district level. People get twitchy about that, but think about how the “best” schools operate.
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So well put! My kid went to a school with both AP and IB. The teachers were very invested and very creative. And especially for IB (because many non-American kids needed their IBD with a good score to ger into unis in the home country), they cared about covering the material. But they knew what worked in their classrooms.
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I love hearing about the creativity and autonomy and innovative thinking going on in schools around the country. It is truly inspiring.
But these gifted HS instructors don’t represent the reality on the ground in many, many school systems around the country. And that’s why “teaching to the test” for the AP’s- at a minimum- provides some guidance to the befuddled language arts teacher who gets pressed into service as the AP history teacher, or the newbie chem teacher who all of a sudden has to teach physics as well because the physics teacher abruptly resigned in June. So in addition to covering the school’s chem classes (for all ability levels-- three different levels, each with their own textbook, pace, labs) the newbie is now frantically figuring out the two different physics tracks (college prep and AP) with three weeks to go before the kids show up in class.
It would be nice if we lived in the world some of you describe. But most of us don’t. Teachers are shuffled around like chess pieces (literally- a family member of mine who teaches history and civics was just switched out of coaching debate and onto chess, even though he’s a phenomenal debate coach and a barely competent chess player, let alone coach) and if you’re lucky enough to have a supportive principal, you may have a department chair who thinks a textbook written in 1970 is “adequate” for studying the Cold War.
We have a long way to go before the typical teacher in the typical HS in our country can create their own curriculum which surpasses that of the AP.
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Yes. But when a school does have a teacher who can do that, it’s great to give them the autonomy to fly.
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