The national avg for number of children in the US is 1.86.
Data for income based on family size: https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/Fam_Inc_SizeofFam1.xls (though I could not quickly identify # of wage earners for those stats, so it is possible that they are skewed by multiple wage earners vs. dependent children.)
Fwiw, large families are far from the norm, and a family our size (8 children) is an anomaly even amg “large” families. I couldn’t find a statistic on family size, income and one wage earner, so I can only make this comment based on personal observation which obviously has zero statistical validity, but all of the families we know with large families (say 5 or more children) are professional families and almost all are in higher income brackets (judge, dr, engineer, business owner, commercial real estate management, etc.) (They are all Catholic homeschooling families with moms who are college graduates, so my data is even more skewed.) I only know 2 large families who are not in a higher income bracket, but they are still solidly MC and stable (still single family wage earners just in lower paying fields.)
Because I’m a helicopter, I met with the school before my kids began HS and asked for a breakdown of AP scores in the various AP classes over the last few years. It was quite illuminating. For some AP courses there were 5s and 4s and for some there were none. In some classes there was just one 5 and then all low numbers. When I dug further, I figured out there was a homeschooler taking the AP exams that year and that student’s scores were being reported in the school’s report.
I didn’t ask about grades in the AP courses where there were no 4s or 5s. I have to assume there were As in the class, because most parents and students cared a lot about grades at this school.
I was using AP scores as a way to measure the content of the classes. I didn’t really know what other measure to use.
@alh An article about Manhattan status symbols from ‘Business Insider’? Your idea of an anecdote or is the income and offspring issue unsettling to you?
Of course there are. One district in our area gives a BC calc course, but has the kids take the AB test because the kids did poorly on the BC exam. Kids get As in the course labeled as BC, but which really isn’t a BC course. There have been reports about the proliferation of AP courses in some districts where the rate at which kids take the associated test was very low and the passing rate even lower. Our district works hard to try and have almost every kid that takes an AP test pass, preferably with at least a 4. That means there are limits on who can take those courses. But the kids end up well prepared for college.
Depending on the AP test, getting a 5 is not that difficult. My youngest took AP bio as a sophomore in 2013, right after they changed the structure of the test. That year less than 5% of test takers got 5s and for 2015, about 6% got 5s so the scores and grades maybe should be aligned. For AP psych, about 20% of the students got 5s, which would suggest some 5s may not be worth an A in a HS course. But HS courses include labs, homework, and other requirements. Just because a kid gets the equivalent of an A on the final, doesn’t mean they will get an A if they failed the mid-term or never turned in a lab report.
My oldest got 5s on APUSH and Bio tests, along with 800s on the SATII, and B+ in the classes because he did not seem to do as well on the mid-term and some tests as he did on the AP test or missed a couple of labs or assignments, or something else. He did very little review for the AP and SAT tests. It is not clear to me if the HS teachers gave harder tests or graded differently, or it really was his underachieving ways that led to this.
Of course then his sibling got a C+ in AP Chem and a 4 on the test. Probably some of it due to missing or sloppy lab reports.
At the time it was frustrating, but I blamed them not the teachers.
I’ve been reading all of these posts about AP classes, tests, credits and such and can’t say I’m not happy that my son’s school simply doesn’t offer them. No “honors” classes either. He goes to a good school, public, that doesn’t get “ranked” very high because of the lack of AP’s but if you look at SAT/ACT test scores, they do about as well as any “rigorous” school.
Their philosophy? If students are ready to take college level courses then, well, they simply walk down the street and take them at U of Mich. Many kids do. They don’t weight grades, don’t compute class rank. Of something like 115 seniors, there are something like 7-8 National Merit semifinalists and 4-5 finalists in every class.
Maybe if we weren’t so obsessed with labels and ranks, kids would just take the classes that were appropriate for them, and that would be that.
It certainly would seem to make a difference if there is a university down the street, parents are aware that their children can take these classes, and the high school cooperates.
Our school stopped ranking several years ago but there is no indication that numbers of students in AP classes decreased. I think they might if grades were not weighted, though. Students must maintain a B average or better to continue to take the AP version at the next level, though. And, students not taking an AP class can still sign up for the exam if they feel ready.
Once the high school stopped ranking students, admissions rates to elite schools seem to have improved.
You have to be careful, and not all schools are like the ones discussed so heavily in this thread. There are many schools for which the AP program is the major reason why high schoolers are able to take advanced classes appropriate for them. I am quite confident that if it weren’t for AP Calc, most schools would not offer a Calculus class.
I don’t society has changed, I think you just live in a different type of community now than when you were growing up. I bet this is the case for most parents on CC.
@warbrain You really don’t think society has changed? I think the extended financial dependence of adult children is a change. Graduating from high school and working your way through college was a reality when I went to college. Not a single one of my siblings lived at home or relied on my parents financially after high school graduation (except possibly moving home for summer, and even then, I don’t think any of us did that except maybe 1or 2 summers. Most of us had jobs and apts near our universities.)
I wonder if the financial dependence of students on parents for college attendance has led to more parental involvement in the college selection process? (my parents didn’t even know where I applied to college.) Has that led to more investment in high school classes bc the involvement in the selection process (combined with the Internet and easier access to profiles, rankings, etc)? Has that led to more pressure to keep up with the Joneses academically? And it all just spirals? (I do think financial dependence and easy access to info/comparison have to play a role in this somewhere.)
No real idea, but I do believe society has changed and the teenage yrs and young adulthood are different from when my siblings and I were growing up. I just am not sure how easy it is to pinpoint or generalize.
We moved back to my hometown when my S started 1st grade. When I went to HS, AP classes really meant “college equivalent”. We only had a small core group of students who were the “AP kids”. There was just one class of AP calc, AP physics, etc. Most kids took the “regular” versions, including many that went on to Harvard, Stanford, etc. No concept of weighted grades, but we did get ranked, so if you took an AP class, you did so because it was the right level for you. I went on to a college that’s still in the top 20 engineering schools and was one of the very few freshmen who had placed out of freshmen classes because of AP credits. I took my SAT’s exactly once.
35 years later, same HS, kids are graduating with 10+ AP classes, and it seems that they’ve become to mean “college prep”, and AP tests are just another set of standardized tests college-bound kids are expected to take. They’re also taking the ACT, SAT in all the various flavors numerous times. I don’t know how much money ACT, the College Board, etc. make on all of this, but I’m guessing that “industry” has grown exponentially.
There was ranking but no weighting in our HS either when I went. Also, there was an accelerated science track that did not allow kids to take AP Chem or AP physics. I believe that was changed soon after I graduated so more kids could take AP classes.
I think weighting is appropriate. The level of effort required to get an A in an honors class and most AP classes at our HS is much higher than for a regular class. Of course not all AP classes require the same level of effort but they are all weighted the same. Our HS weights honors and APs equivalently (which is appropriate here). Others give a 0.5 point boost to honors and a full point to AP.
I’d still like to see your link Just One Dad. Because those I found are focused on the test-optional movement- i.e, that GPA predicts better than those std tests, anyway. And that many other factors are important. So the context changes the one-liner. It’s different than simply saying that GPA is the strongest predictor, by itself.
Also, why should the grade in Ap calc mirror the std test results? A grade is based on your semester of work. There are some private high schools that have a class called, eg, “AP calc test prep.” I’d expect those to hone in on the test itself.
I don’t know about grades vs. test scores for other classes. I have asked for schoolwide data about some AP test scores in the past, and they generally seem to be better than the nationwide average but not dramatically so.
I haven’t asked about schoolwide grade distributions. Some of DS’s teachers mention the mean and maximum scores on tests, and pretty much no curving or extra credit is given. So, the mean test grade is probably around a C+ to a B in the AP sciences and somewhat higher in the humanities. Homework helps bring that up, I’m sure.
I’m pretty sure the grades in our AP Calc BC class are lower than the test results. There were likely a lot of kids who got Bs and 5s. A lot of people get 5s on AP Calc BC nationwide and at our school. There were a good number of Bs or lower in the class, especially if you count the seniors who mainly only take the first semester and then drop the class.
The harder grading in Calc is probably because the class is actually dual-enrollment Calc I and Calc II taught on the high school campus. As such, it has to be taught at a level that is transferable to the UC system. That includes a couple extra chapters on introductory differential equations that the AP test doesn’t cover. My son said the class final was of about equal difficulty compared to the AP test, but 2 hours instead of 3. Of course, you only need >65-70% on the AP Calc BC test for a 5. The midterm tests were not curved, but the finals were curved about 5-7%. Homework counted for maybe 10-15%, and there was no extra credit. So, the class functioned mostly like a college class, except that it met 5 days/week.
I think parents have changed as far as helicoptering regarding student independence. A lot of that is media coverage of crime against kids, even though the overall rates are decreasing. Roaming kids are actually safer now than they were back then, because kids have smartphones and GPS.
When I was a kid, I had a paper route and had to collect money from people monthly. The people in one apartment complex always seemed to be drunk or strung out, but no one said it was inappropriate for a junior high girl to be going there. (The newspaper just said to get cash from people in apartments–no checks unless you were a homeowner.)
Kids used to roam freely and be home for dinner. Now, they get driven everywhere. There’s another thread where some parents mention wanting to veto colleges to which their 18+ year old would have to, heaven forbid, change planes to get there and back.
My kids bike places within reason, and other parents “comment” on the distance from home where they see them biking. I don’t think that would have been a thing parents would have noticed when I was young. DS bikes about 12 miles per day on days when he goes to the local UC to do research after school. We just installed bike lights for both kids due to the time change and their increased afterschool activities.
I live in the same type of community, in the same area. Society has changed.
I perceive a massive decrease of resources devoted to educating the children of the middle class. I see it in strict gatekeeping for placement into the honors track and in the cuts to support for public universities and colleges. There are parents signing their children up to take extra academic courses from private providers, in order to game the gatekeepers.
I believe the competitive nature of extracurriculars in our area stems from the gatekeeping for placement into the honors track. Some parents go too far. It would be nice if the parents would agree to mutually disarm.
Our high school had few AP classes compared to the school that frazzled kids attended. Students still got into some pretty good colleges but admissions rates were higher, the pool of applicants smaller. Students who were ready to take college classes at a young age had often skipped grades and went off to college at an early age rather than linger in high school, piling on the AP’s and getting straight A’s. (We had number grades anyway.) There was no pressure whatsoever to participate in sports or to take music lessons.
We were expected to complete household chores, no matter whether our families could afford housecleaning help or not. I had a whole list for when I got home from school, and after that I was “free range” until dinner. Sometimes a friend would come to visit and help. I do not remember staying up late to do homework, and I had enough time after finishing homework to read library books for pleasure.
We would have been mortified to have had to admit that in high school, our parents were helping with homework or that we were getting tutored. That was strictly for “dummies” and certainly not to make smart kids seem smarter. Kids whose parents did not help with homework nonetheless went on to medical school, law school, and PhD programs. We trusted that homework was to give us extra practice, and for teachers to check over whether they had done a good job of teaching. If students consistently got a certain type of problem or question wrong, the teachers would re-teach.