http://www.wwpinfo.com/index.php/component/us1more/?Itemid=6&key=12-18-15townhall
Town Hall Shows a District Divided
Edit above to say in last sentence- Just wanted to pain a picture for those that think the kids will suffer from a weak education with the changes- the education will not be weakend. It just won’t happen.
The Times piece that OP referenced mentioned cheating in passing. How much is that a factor, do you think? There have always been cheaters, of course, but a rat-race mentality may make people cheat more.
I think there is an element of dishonesty in making pretend that the playing field is even, when it is not.
that serves to prime at least some students for other forms of cheating.
Even when I was in college back in the dark ages, some students would brag about how they never studied and found certain classes easy because of “natural ability”, when in truth they studied quite a bit more than average or were familiar with most of the material before entering the class.
The school does not need to limit homework and mid terms/finals to make a big impact on the rat race:
"The situation in this school district is such that kids take 9th grade history over the summer before 9th grade so that they can get 10th grade history in in 9th grade and thus squeeze in more AP classes during high school. "
The school should NOT allow this. Kids should be forced to take 9th grade history or 9th grade honors history and should not be allowed to take as many APs. Doing that would greatly decrease the pressure to do summer work or other prework.
@naviance You are right, the education will not be weakened as the most determined will find ways to supplement. The internet has made it easy to supplement most courses and that will not diminish.
While I am sure there are kids who cannot handle the pressure (and the parents should monitor this closely), presumably there are more that thrive? Ultimately, from a country perspective we need those high achievers, otherwise we reduce our requirements/expectations but other countries do not. In a matter of time we would fall behind technologically.
I’m curious, for those who live in districts like the one cited in the OP, how are the outcomes, in terms of admission to elite and competitive colleges and universities, impacted by this split? If the divide really is along racial lines (or immigrant vs. established families), I can see where elite schools and programs might put limits on how many of one type of student they’d admit, leading to accusations of racial quotas and “easier” and “unfair” paths to admission for others.
Achievement is very important, up to a point, but early achievement, if fueled by relentless early training, may also suggest an early peak or a lack of more creative, self-driven accomplishment. Hard work should be rewarded, but not to the detriment of a healthy self-image or a lack of general empathy. Once blatant cheating or talk of suicide enters the conversation, it’s probably too late, at least for the present generation.
One can only hope that both “sides” learn from each other about how best to proceed in the future with the next generation, assuming all these immigrant families intend to put down permanent roots in the US.
What happens is that many kids just realize that they are not smart. When they get to college or out in the world it takes them a long time to appreciate their own gifts- that they have value after all.
Our school doesn’t allow acceleration in history or English. It doesn’t offer honors classes over the summer, just a few regular or remedial ones aimed at helping struggling students to graduate, so a kid who took geometry over the summer would have a lower GPA. Kids are of course able to enroll in other courses, online or summer residential school–there is no local option–but they won’t get credit for it, just placement if they can sweet talk the administration into that, so there is no GPA boost from doing outside schooling. In fact, somewhat the opposite. My daughter took a GPA hit because she finished the high school math sequence early and opted to continue her education at a college. In order to do this she had to schedule two study halls, and those would have been two AP classes if she hadn’t done the college thing. Her peers behind her in math were staying at the high school all day taking those “lite” APs like AP psych or AP economics and so got higher GPAs.
Problem solved.
I think many continue to do very well, especially if they continue to be risk averse.
People don’t realize the kids in Asia don’t take 16-20 AP exams and half dozen SAT tests. They have races for college entrance exams but their curricular are just regular high school ones. Only the College Board and the US school districts provide the opportunity for the Asian migrants to participate in the rat-race competitions.
The non-Asian kids often opt out of the whole rat race, despite being quite smart and academically strong enough to have been in the same top courses in a different district. Naviance’s post 19 describes another aspect of the system well. Either the regularly schooled students don’t ever make it into the advanced classes because they don’t score well enough on the placement tests (no perfect papers like those who have already learned the material in advance), or else they make it in through natural ability but then can’t keep up. Remember, the teachers and curricula both respond to the fact that many kids have learned a lot of the material before arriving in the class. Thus, they often skip lots of background material and the earlier chapters, causing those learning it for the first time to struggle mightily through no fault of their own.
We don’t have placement tests to get into AP classes. Aside from the occasional scheduling conflict, I’ve not heard of a student in our school who was not able to take an AP class they wanted. Teachers do give recommendations, but families are able to over-ride them.
If the kids who don’t do cram school aren’t getting into the AP classes because of qualifying tests, then do away with the placement tests and offer enough sections of AP to accommodate all interested students. Surely such a high achieving school can offer a few more sections of AP so that kids who haven’t already learned the material can enroll. Also, as I said earlier, the AP classes should be taught as they are meant to be taught. No skipping material for kids who read the book over the summer.
Just curious, @TheGFG, what kind of AP scores does all this result in? What’s the purpose of teaching so far above and beyond the AP content in a course labeled “AP”? Why not make a different course if that is what they are doing?
Hey GFG we must be neighbors!
2013 - 92 % of students had grades 3 or higher. 929 Students wrote 2073 exams
47% - 5 30%- 4 15%- 3
2012 - 92% of the students had grades of 3 or higher. 921 students wrote 2026 exams.
49% - 5 27% - 4 16% - 3
2011 - 89% of the students had grades of 3 or higher. 930 students wrote 1987 exams.
44% - 5 28% - 4 17% - 3

Our public school district is awash in private tutoring, cram classes, extensive parental support and advocacy, and private therapists, and this seems to affect all (or nearly all) students from the most disabled through to the highly gifted.
Parents of students with iep’s, including 2E students, often find that they will additionally need to go through private evaluations and keep a special education attorney on retainer to ensure that the district follows the law, unless they decide to opt out and home school.
The Catholic school my boys graduated from handles this very well. In order to take AP classes you must apply and depending on the class you need a 93% average in the prior class to get in. They let you appeal but often it is unsuccessful. The school does not speak to parents about it. As this became more contentious over the years, the school doubled the community service requirement to refocus the kids and made it more difficult to get your plan approved. Several new sports were added as well to get the kids thinking about something else.
Merit awards totalled over $30 million last year for a class of about 225. The policy encourages the kids to study hard, play hard and be active in the community even if in the end you take only 1 or 2 AP classes.
In a town near us, there is a similar parental divide, but in this town it is foreign-born Chinese-American parents versus native-born Chinese-American parents. Our area is awash with cram schools and college admission counseling storefronts.
Students at our high school have the option of taking honors or AP classes if they meet a grading cut-off and have the recommendation of their teacher in a prior class. Usually a student must have an average of B or B+ to qualify for the next level of honors or AP, or an A if the class is at the college prep level. So, at least a student is not shut out of the AP option at an early stage. Our AP test scores are very high - most students can expect a 4 or 5 regardless of their grade in the class.
Once the high school did away with class rankings, this eased up somewhat on the pressure to take AP classes in every subject but it is my understanding that more students are taking the accelerated math classes, often with the help of private tutors and especially if they are interested in pre-med, engineering, or other STEM fields.
The issue of students who are beginners competing with others who have seen most of the material before does not seem to end in high school, and I have to think that part of the push for more accelerated math and for STEM AP’s has at least something to do with the way weeder STEM classes are set up and taught at many colleges, with curricula adjusted to assume a greater level of preparation and (sometimes) a lack of adequate quality control among TA’s and tutors.
Some years ago we had this discussion with a Penn State professor who advised a group of us that students who did not have an extensive high school AP/IB/similar background but who nonetheless wanted to pursue a STEM major might be better off starting at a regional campus rather than main campus even with an adequate SAT-M score, because the regional campus classes were geared towards beginners, but were still designed to prepare students to take upper-level classes at the UP campus.
From gunnerz link in #20, I found this interesting:
In my opinion, it would be more appropriate, and more fair, to open access to upper level mathematics to at least the top 30%. Part of this whole rat race phenomenon is NOT about serving the “top” students appropriately–it’s about colluding with parental game playing. Forcing students out of the top academic track in fourth grade should not happen.