Getting back to the actual point of this thread, it seems to me that the measures the school is taking to address this problem aren’t going to be effective and don’t address the real problems.
–Placement tests should test mastery of material learned, not material that hasn’t been taught at the school. It should not be a competitive zero sum game with a randomly imposed cutoff, but a true assessment of whether the student is ready to learn the next material.
–AP teachers should teach the AP curriculum.
–Taxpayer money should not pay for high school students to attend pricey private colleges. Students who reach that level can make their own arrangements if they so desire, whether that entails paying for the classes themselves, online learning, independent study, taking more electives, or graduating early from high school.
–The money that would have been used to pay for college education for the students who were able to afford private tutoring and many summer classes should instead be used to assist more teachers to learn how to teach the AP classes so that all interested and reasonably qualified high school students can take them.
I agree with all of what mathyone suggests. I also point out there are many excellent free or low-cost online college courses available to advanced high school students. The taxpayers do not need to pay pricey private colleges for something available to their students for free. MOOCs are not the solution for students at a lower achievement level, but they are dandy for high achieving students to pursue their advanced academic interests.
@gettingschooled - we didn’t even hear convincingly that the AP Chemistry teacher really skipped any of the material, just that one poster felt her daughter was falling behind. Often, parents of struggling kids look for reasons beyond their own kid or that kid’s mistaken placement, for reasons for academic difficulty. Sometimes, it’s even true. But not always.
ETA: In the AP Chem case, it seems unlikely that an “Organic Chemistry” class would have allowed for any significant skippage.
For a class like AP chem, it’s very clear what the level of difficulty should be. Anyone can look at some old AP questions and get a sense of the content and difficulty level. And therefore it should be clear whether the teacher is teaching appropriate material at an appropriate level or whether they are going way outside the curriculum and expecting way more of the students than AP level.
@mathyone - I think you’re right, and presumably in a district as elite as we’re discussing, there are colleagues, department head, etc. - so there wouldn’t be a high likelihood of the AP teacher deviating from appropriate curriculum. A parent might not be able to make this judgement call (much less a 16yo) but the school administration probably can.
Meanwhile, there is an expectation in any AP class that students will have to do independent learning and that things will move quickly. Most if not all schools have other options for learning a subject, if a higher-powered style doesn’t suit a given student in a given field.
A significant good thing that can happen in high-powered districts is that talented teachers bring more of their backgrounds and teach extensions of the material. For example, if a teacher’s grad school thesis was in Ocean Chemistry, she can use that as an extension and the kids learn more applications. Yes, they’ll be doing “more” than if they “stuck to the curriculum” - but the reason such a school hires such a teacher is to bring in additional expertise and passion. If her colleague down the hall had his thesis in Nuclear Chemistry, than those kids will get a slightly different set of applications.
Thoughtful parents and students appreciate this kind of special extra education and enrichment. Parents who would prefer to have cookie-cutter test-based education, have many, many other schools to pick from, including those where teachers may not have grad school background in Chemistry, at all.
5, 6, and 7 year olds with ulcers!
I’m sorry if my 5,6,7 year old is getting ulcers (really? what about the 4th graders taking calculus?), I’d be looking for alternatives, including moving to a less intense school environment. This isn’t the life I want for my children.
The AP Chem at WWP must be significantly more difficult than the AP standard. At our HS, a number of students, DS17 included, take AP Chem as their first chemistry class, often as sophomores. DS took it then and got an A and a 5, which I don’t think was uncommon. DS asked the chemistry teacher prior to the summer if there was anything he should do over the summer to prep for AP Chem. The teacher gave him an old edition of the Zumdahl text and suggested that he could read Chapters 1-5 without doing any problems, and that should cover most of what the “college prep” class covers. I suppose it was taught only to the standard, and DS might have appreciated more. They did have some speakers come in from local companies and one of the Nobel Prize winners from the local UC.
In fact, the same “no prior class” is a common path at this HS for both AP Physics 1 (previously B) and AP Biology. So, DS’s science path was AP Physics B in 9th, AP Chemistry in 10th, and AP Biology this year in 11th. (And a summer geology class at the local UC because it sounded interesting.)
There are no honors science classes at this HS, just college prep and AP. College prep is geared to be the minimum class that the UC system will grant A-G credit for, so pretty low, and that’s why the bright kids want to skip it as a preparatory class. Previously, the school had regular and honors classes in science, but the regular classes didn’t qualify for A-G credit, so kids who took those couldn’t even get into a CSU.
DS says there was very little organic chemistry involved in AP Chem, and the class was taught so that kids who got an A in the class would not have difficulty getting a 5, but kids who got a B might get a 4 or a 5. There was no extra credit or curve in the class.
Regarding early calculus, the AP data says that last year only 64 students took AP Calc BC before freshman year and 103 took AP Calc AB. Even for 9th grade, there were only 423 and 617 students who took AP Calc BC and AB, respectively. 10th grade gets closer to what you might call “a lot” of kids taking calculus, with 3838 and 6667 kids, respectively.
We know a kid who took and aced Calc 1 at the local community college the summer before 9th grade. He was not at all pushed by his parents, just very math focused (half Japanese but of the generation that had grandparents interned). The girl we know who took AP Calc BC in 9th grade has parents who where recent Eastern European immigrants, and is probably somewhat pushed, but is quite bright on her own.
Here is the current math track for WWP:
http://www.west-windsor-plainsboro.k12.nj.us/common/pages/DisplayFile.aspx?itemId=13370713
The bottom one is the accelerated track. There is no indication that a majority of kids are taking calculus in middle school or elementary. If the majority or even a significant subset of kids were in Calculus before 11th grade, it would be on the chart.
What the chart does illustrate is that you get in a math track roughly around the 4th or 5th grade - way before most parents are thinking about Calculus.
I see no problem with giving a little push to a very bright kid who is obviously unchallenged in the regular honors track but maybe is a little scared of being different or being in a class with kids even a year or two older (this is a big deal for many kids), or who simply likes to hang out with friends in the class even though they aren’t learning much. Most schools are not very good at educating gifted kids–content to see them getting perfect grades, and not at all concerned about whether they actually learned anything. For a gifted kid to get an appropriate education, a certain amount of pushing is usually required.
But pushing a kid through years of outside schooling under enormous pressure and curtailing their leisure and outside activities is unhealthy for the kid and more about the parent egos than the kid’s best interest. Too many people are lumping these situations together.
I haven’t been able to find a WWP course catalog online, but we would probably need to see that to evaluate how many students, if any, are advancing significantly in math and thus are being accommodated with classes beyond the senior year multivariable calc, which I know WWP offers. I say that because our district publishes a math track chart almost identical similar to theirs that does not show the super advanced track, yet it exists. The high school offers a number of levels beyond AP Calc BC, including multivariable calc and two levels of analysis. By state law the school can not run a course with an enrollment under 20 (I think that’s the total), so we have to have at least that many students on that track. Then of course there are a good number who pursue higher levels of math and science in other ways, such as at a university.
The issue is not that students use various methods to advance themselves, but rather how the public school responds to that situation. WWP says their accelerated and gifted math program is under revision.
http://www.west-windsor-plainsboro.k12.nj.us/common/pages/DisplayFile.aspx?itemId=18676109
Here is the course catalog. It does not go beyond multi variate calculus. I don’t doubt there are some kids who are more advanced than the chart implies. I just don’t think it is a very large number and I don’t think there are a lot of elementary and middle schoolers taking calculus.
On page 36 is the requirement for taking classes at Princeton-
“Princeton University provides WWPHS students with the opportunity to take their courses as a courtesy. The intent is to offer courses to a limited number of exceptional students who meet their criteria and follow the application procedures.
The student must have completed all the courses that WWPHS has to offer in the subject they are applying to take at Princeton. Princeton University has made it clear that they will not allow our students to circumvent that rule by taking outside course work. Therefore, PU will not accept a WWPHS student who has accelerated past the last course in the WWPHS curricular sequence by taking outside course work.”
I would presume though that outside course work may not include summer school, though I am not sure.
Edited to add: they have an option ii program that allows students to take subjects in the summer through contracted parties. I’d consider that outside- not sure if they do. Can’t start until the 8th grade and can only take one class in each sequence throughout all of high school. I would have loved for my kids to have had that program available. Would have allowed my older S to get to calc BC since our district requires AB first.
Cool. Congratulations to your daughter. How would you feel if your daughter had aced the test, but was still not placed into the advanced group? In third grade, let’s say? Based on things which were not taught in school? If the first test were to determine her placement through the rest of her school career? Little kids are not necessarily great at taking tests.
At what point should schools track students? And on what criteria? The placement rules listed in #363 seem fine to me. I would agree, if a kid can’t make a B in an honors prerequisite course, then that student shouldn’t be placed into AP. If a student’s earning Ds in AP, that’s not the right level.
My problem arises when students able to do the work are denied spots in appropriate classes in early elementary school. In our local district, the majority of the parents are college graduates. Many have earned advanced degrees. It makes little sense to try to determine who’s the top 2%, 5%, 10% in third grade. Why not offer an appropriately challenging education to all children, rather than trying to track too early?
In elementary school, math lessons tend to be short on instruction and heavy on drill. It is feasible to let the kids work at their own pace, or in a number of flexible small groups. A lot of schools will do this with different reading groups getting different lessons (if any) and reading different books, but it’s not my impression that most elementary schools will do this for math. Once you get into more complex lessons, this doesn’t work so well. I don’t see much need to test and track kids until they have mastered arithmetic and are ready for more complicated material. But in this case, it would be apparent when the kids are ready to move on–they should have had a lot of small mastery tests as they move through arithmetic. No need to worry about percentiles–either they know their math facts and can do the problems or they can’t. I would say when they are ready for pre-algebra they should be tracked. Most schools I am familiar with don’t test kids for math tracking until the beginning of middle school and they do this to determine how fast they will push them through pre-algebra and what grade they anticipate starting algebra.
What I find odd about our curriculum is that after sixth grade, some kids just repeat 6th grade math with minor variations for two more years, while their peers go on to Algebra in 7th or 8th grade. I wouldn’t mind so much if my S or D took algebra a year later if it were determined s/he wasn’t “ready” yet (whatever that means), but I am not convinced that re-doing the same math would move him/her further along toward being “ready.” The tracking system seems to be designed on the premise that an extra year is somehow going to magically turn a unready brain into a ready one. I suppose I can accept the concept of “readiness” as it pertains to 4-6 year old’s learning to read and write, but after a point, why is it we think only some kids can be taught algebra at a certain age? Certainly, the exemplary example of Asian achievement points to the truth that the majority of kids can learn a lot of math before the school seems to think they are “ready.” I don’t think first year algebra is all that hard such that only an elite group can take it in 7th grade.
So I totally agree with periwinkle that the school should try to raise the level for all children beginning right away in K.
@TheGFG - actually Algebra has readiness that is developmentally exactly analogous to reading. There seem to be two developmental steps - a “prealgebra/AlgI” step that happens between ages say, 7-13, and a “trig/AlgII” step that seems to happen between say, 10-16.
Hmm, then Asians in our district must have far higher levels of trig/alg cognitive readiness than other ethnic groups.
Or they are preparing their children to make sure they do well on the “readiness” test, or perform at a high enough level that the results of the readiness test become irrelevant…
Many years ago our district abandoned reading readiness tests because (I was told) they were spewing out too many bogus results. There is still lots of hoopla that surrounds IQ testing for the gifted program.