<p>OT, I was googling for AP Music Theory and found this link that mentioned CC. Interesting read that’s related to the number of APs.
[MIT</a> Admissions | Blog Entry: “Some comments on topics of interest”](<a href=“http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/before/advanced_placement_international_exams/some_comments_on_topics_of_int.shtml]MIT”>http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/before/advanced_placement_international_exams/some_comments_on_topics_of_int.shtml)</p>
<p>Calmom:#279
Very true, I think the ability to choose is what great about US. Opportunities are ample for anyone who is willing to invest time and effort to learn and make use of it.
I think parent and children need to work as a team and make the best use of the schooling system by talking to teachers, and administrators.
You never know what will happen unless you ask. So those who won’t ask has 0% chance of getting the accelerated path.</p>
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<p>Very nicely articulated. We use that “better to ask forgiveness than beg permission” line a lot in our house – along with “It never hurts to ask; the worst they can say is no.”</p>
<p>Calmom, you really don’t understand. Half a dozen emails sent back and forth with an administrator? It’s nothing to me, now, but now I understand self-advocacy. My parents would never email an administrator, nor would they ever encourage me (indeed, they would probably DIScourage me) in such an act. At most, they might have told me to ask once and see if anything comes of it; “just a little bit of reminding” = self-advocacy = being persistent. And as others have said, just because YOU weren’t pushy doesn’t mean that others, doing the same thing that you did, were not, in order to achieve the same result.</p>
<p>I am aware that EQ refers to emotional intelligence/maturity. However, who is to judge this? How is it measured? I have much skepticism for IQ tests, much less EQ tests. Simply let the student AND parent AND administration decide together, for each individual student, whether acceleration is appropriate in a particular academic and social context; but if that conversation is held about one exceptional student, due to “asking,” why would you not want similar practices extended to all exceptional students?</p>
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Sure. Ask away; it’s your right and your privilege as an involved parent-advocate. However, IMO it is/was unethical for the school to grant your request, however polite it was, in the circumstances that you have portrayed (i.e. your intervention was not extended as an opportunity to everyone).</p>
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VP phrases it in a way that perhaps you will be able to better understand. You benefited from an unfair exception because that’s how things work in America. I understand this and have adapted accordingly; however, you should recognize that this adaptation is necessary and the transition period can be much longer than your lovely six-year-old D piping up; that it is, fundamentally, an unfair exception. Because life is unfair. We recognize this and deal with it, but nonetheless we can work to make it MORE fair for others in the future.</p>
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This is, unfortunately, the reality of the status quo. My position is that if the inequality is discussed and publicized, perhaps school systems will change this status quo, and those who don’t ask will no longer have a “0% chance of getting the accelerated path.” If I may paraphrase your position, calmom, in the hope that you will correct me if I get it wrong?
You believe that this status quo is fair because anyone can self-advocate and achieve a similar result. Furthermore, such self-advocacy shows responsibility and initiative; without such self-advocacy, the student who receives no acceleration but “needs” is probably not mature enough to handle the responsibility anyway.</p>
<p>Have I represented your position accurately? I’ll try my best to refrain from snark, since you tend to misinterpret it.</p>
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<p>Yes. And your parents immigrated here, right? And the immigration tends to flow from Asia to America and not the other way around, last time I checked?</p>
<p>If I immigrated to Asia, I wouldn’t complain about the cultural values there because I would have specifically moved to take advantage of whatever greater good I thought I was getting from that older. So I don’t understand why America is simultaneously so appealing you all risk everything you have to come here, but then you insist on applying values from your home country and getting all upset when those values aren’t seen as American values.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl: I think your post is a bit harsh.</p>
<p>Fairness and equal opportunity for all, which Keil advocates, are fine american values, as are pushing the envelope and taking advantage of opportunities presented to one. American values are not all internally consistent and one can appreciate the various ones without negating others.</p>
<p>And please, referring to “home country” is bit condescending. I am speaking as one who immigrated at age 10 (my parents choice BTW, not mine) and consider this to be <em>my</em> home country.</p>
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What “exception”? And what is “unfair” - no one else wanted what we asked that year, either before we asked or after we arranged it. If they had wanted it, they could have spoken up.</p>
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<p>Whoa! She is observing something that is inherently unfair in the status quo and expressing a desire to make it less unfair. I think that is a quintessential American value. It is also an American value to provide equal educational opportunities to every child regardless of who her parents are.</p>
<p>We have focused on immigrants but the same argument holds true for children of non-immigrant parents who for some reason or other are not involved in their children’s education (eg incarcerated, alcoholic, uneducated, bigoted, or simply uninterested).</p>
<p>vp: may I point out to you that bigoted parents are often quite interested in the content of their childrens education ;)</p>
<p>calmom: Let me give you a simpler example. Suppose a high school teacher agrees to change a student’s grade from, say, a B+ to an A-, because the student stays back after school, “asks nicely”, and perhaps, offers to write a paper for extra-credit . Now, suppose there are five other kids in class with a B+, do you think it would be “fair” to them to not tell them that of this opportunity to improve their grade by writing the extra-credit paper? </p>
<p>By your logic, it would be fair, because the five kids with the B+ did not advocate for themselves, and seek out that opportunity. The teacher is under no obligation to publicize the extra-credit opportunity. By Keilexandra’s logic, it would not be fair. I understand your point, but I agree with Keil on this.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl - I am not applying my “home country”'s values. (And I do not consider China my home country, but that is not relevant to this discussion.) I am citing the cultural values that I was raised with as an example of immigrant cultural values that differ from American cultural values, leading to perhaps a tendency not to teach American-style self-advocacy. I cited them to illustrate the institutional privilege that Americans (so I presume; if it is an inaccurate assumption, forgive me) such as calmom exercise unconsciously in insisting that anyone can self-advocate to an equivalent degree. Moreover, I cite as evidence of calmom’s view the following:</p>
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<p>To which I will not bother to reply, since I will just be reiterating for the nth time what I have already said and what other posters seem to be able to understand, even if they do not agree with me.</p>
<p>And VP is right–I certainly didn’t learn from Chinese culture to value equal access and opportunity. That is purely attested to the American civil rights movement.</p>
<p>A school administrator or teacher should not agree to a special educational request merely because someone asked for it and asked for it first. A person charged with adminstering public funds has an ethical responsibility to consider all the information at his disposal–information beyond the simple fact that someone’s mom is standing in his office or e-mailing him about her child’s need. He must consider the data he has access to: the current and expected future state of school funding, staffing, and class size. He must consider the standardized test scores for affected students, determine optimal resource deployment, and evaluate the consequences of setting a precedent of agreeing to the request. If he agrees to the request, will that best serve the needs of the child without negatively impacting other children? Will he be able to agree to a request from the parent of every child with the very same need who asks for the same accommodation thereafter? If the answer to that is no, he won’t be able to, then he must not agree. This decison can’t be capricious–it can’t just be dependent on some mom asking, so she gets. What if he learns that there are 10 kids with higher class and standardized test scores in math, who need to be challenged more than that mother’s child? Should he agree then? What if he knows he can only move a maximum of 3 of those children to a higher math level because of class size or scheduling considerations? Should he agree to the mother’s request that her child be one? What if that mother is his sister or wife? A decision to implement an enrichment program of any size should be based on a favorable cost-benefit analysis. It shouldn’t be a unexamined, knee-jerk reaction to some parent bugging him for it. </p>
<p>You have a dozen brownies which you distribute to your class of ten kids. One child comes up and asks for a second helping. Do you give it to him? After all, he took initiative and asked!</p>
<p>Keilexandra, I don’t see how it is “unethical” for some school administrators to work to accommodate a specific request that was made. No one was denied anything, no resources were expended that were taken from anyone else. </p>
<p>When my son started high school, he wanted to take Spanish, so that’s the class he signed up. But when he arrived at school, he found that he was assigned to French instead. Why? The Spanish class was full. Other students were allowed to take Spanish. Was it “unethical” that he was forced to take French instead?</p>
<p>I’ll put the whole thing in different terms. You want there to be hard and fast “rules” that apply to everyone the same way. Well – here’s the “rule”: If you want something above and beyond the regular curriculum, you have to ask for it. That’s the “rule” we followed.</p>
<p>Vicariousparent, as far as I know, in high school kids ask for the opportunity to do extra credit assignments to raise their grades all the time. It’s pretty standard practice-- whether a teacher agrees to it or not is their business, not mine. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t care what opportunities other kids were given with relation to their grades – my kids were responsible for their own educations, not anyone else’s.</p>
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In my son’s case, the school principal knew that my son had been identified as gifted largely on the basis of his mathematical ability and that he scored 99% on standardized tests. The principal also knew that my son had taken a placement exam and scored appropriately for algebra. Had he been enrolled in any of the middle schools in the district rather than the K-8, he would have been placed in algebra based on that exam – the only difference was that he happened to be attending a school in the district where the course wasn’t currently offered. </p>
<p>I never said that we asked for something inappropriate – I wasn’t playing the game of trying to get my kid into a faster math “track” or making my kids look better on some future college application. </p>
<p>Again – we “asked”. We didn’t demand or insist, and of course the school administrators had every right to look at the data and make a judgment call over whether the request was appropriate. I am sure that if others had asked, they would have been treated with the same consideration – if the principal had a group of 2 or 3 students all wanting algebra rather than 1, he might have made a different suggestion as to how to accommodate that group. But he had 1, and that 1 kid was without a doubt the strongest math student in his class. So he did what he could for that 1, and did not make a minor problem into a massive one by turning a request for individual accommodation into a need for implementation of a new program. </p>
<p>Anybody ever hear of the concept of “independent study”? I’m asking because I’m trying to figure out what you ethicists would have the school administrators do for every occasion that my kids arranged for some sort of independent study rather than a formal course. (And to Keilexandra – the “rule” about “independent study” IS in writing in the school handbooks … but the burden of coming up with the plan and initiating the request lies entirely with the student).</p>
<p>Y’all had a K-8 school with Independent Study rules in the handbook? Or do you mean high school?</p>
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<p>calmom: do you happen to know if your district participated in the Calif. GATE program? (Not all districts in the state do/did.) If they did participate, however, and then your principal likely knew that such participation required him/her to accommodate your son and any other high achieving students.</p>
<p>There were specific provisions for independent study for both the K-8 and my kids’ 2 different high schools. I don’t recall if they were school-specific or district-promulgated. It would be important to specify because it tied in with excused absences and the way school funding worked. </p>
<p>Typically in elementary school if the family was traveling somewhere during the school year and wanted to take the kid along, you would create an “independent study” program for the week. That would generally entail getting homework assignments in advance and doing some sort of educational project (paper, report, journal, etc.) related to the travel destination. I think if there was any planned travel more than 3 days the school or district strongly encouraged the independent study approach. </p>
<p>I actually don’t know what the provisions were in high school – I’m assuming that there were written provisions, but my daughter is the one who did independent study and she made all arrangements on her own. In her case she was arranging independent study to complete some courses while she was abroad for a semester in 11th grade.</p>
<p>I remember her fantastic experience in high school. I had just never heard of independent study prior to high school .</p>
<p>well… as noted it is all tied in with school funding. You can’t just yank a 9 year old out of school for 2 weeks because the family has a wonderful opportunity to tour China – the school loses ADA funds so they get ticked off. But spending 2 weeks in China is more educational than the standard fare in California classrooms, so of course you want to bring the kid along if you can. So you write up the “independent study” plan, the kid does all their homework on the plane and also creates a poster-board report on China with a snapshot of the family standing on the Great Wall… and everyone is happy. School got their funds, kid got their trip, etc. </p>
<p>(No one in my family went to China until my daughter went the summer after she graduated – no credit for that one – but in the K-8 years there were a couple of trips to D.C. in connection with their dad’s law practice and Supreme Court briefing schedule. Not too difficult to think up educational activities for kids in D.C., and it is really cool to get to sit in the reserved section of the SCOTUS gallery for oral arguments)</p>