<p>nightchef:</p>
<p>Okay, you and I are in more agreement than we think. How you and I are defining ‘gate-keeping’ is a little different. I wouldn’t characterize what your university does as ‘gate-keeping’ in my opinion. A student still has a chance to air their ‘case’ for wanting to take a particular course. Sounds fair and reasonable, not arbitrary.</p>
<p>The working definition of ‘gate-keeping’ that I’m familiar with is a practice much more arbitrary. (i.e. if you are 1 point off on some standardized test you can’t get in, end of story). I don’t favor complete self-selection, but I agree that students and their parents should be part of the process. </p>
<p>Once more, back to the U of Tex study. Pardon me, but I’m failing to see your point about why it matters HOW the few hundred thousand students who were studied got into AP courses or didn’t. Students who were both in AP and not in AP were studied, so I don’t see how the ‘gate-keeping’ factor could’ve or should’ve been studied in this instance. </p>
<p>What bearing would it have had on the results, since students who were both enrolled and not enrolled were studied? What would it ‘prove’ or ‘disprove’ and how would they even go about studying that in the first place? Sounds like a red herring, to me.</p>
<p>Attempts were made to compare “like” students demographically whether they were in AP or not. Moreover, since all of the students who were enrolled in the Texas State University System who had attended public high schools in Texas were studied, we can presume that students from ‘gate-keeping’ high schools and ‘open’ high schools were included, regardless. As we all know, schools have local control so whenever you study a large group of public high schools you would find a wide degree of variance in their policies pertaining to AP or otherwise. The fact that they didn’t ‘categorize’ students based on their high schools policies is/was irrelevant and I fail to see what insight it would/would’ve provided.</p>