Reforms to Ease Students’ Stress Divide a New Jersey School District

Parents Forum
721

Keeping in mind that there was ONE HS such as yours and hundreds of other schools to choose from.
Although in my opinion having so much work that you need to stay up till 2 am to complete it even if you are in the top 1% of your city is completely insane, and this even if the kids “chose” it - and being told “you can go back to your neighborhood school” is only possible for kids whose neighborhood school isn’t dysfunctional or mainly remedial. Teenagers need 9 hours of sleep to grow, and while that need not be inflexible (ie., finals, one big scary test), going to bed too late and/or getting up too early regularly is dangerous for teenagers’ health.

I’m all for students being challenged, not for school or sports or parenting being a health hazard. I don’t know, isn’t that common sense?

I used the parrallel with the kid praised for playing with a broken hand. CardinalFang used a simile with aggressive athletic programs dangerous for kids.
Different districts have different problems; one can suffer as much from lack of expectations as from unrealistic expectations… but many adults are very intent on denying there’s a problem in the first place.

722

Actually, there were 3 including the one I attended in NYC and 4 if one included Hunter College HS(only accepts applicants for entry to 7th grade) at the time I attended. I believe there’s now 9 including HCHS as 5 more have been included since I graduated.

Am not including LaGuardia HS as its selection process is by audition and review of student academic records rather than by sitting a standardized entrance exam.

A large part of that is not necessarily the workload alone per se, but the fact most HS teachers at the time I attended were inclined to set the pacing/workload for the top 20% of the class and the bottom 80% were expected to try keeping up or fall by the wayside unless they individually take the initiative to be proactive in seeking out tutoring from teachers, peer tutors, and classmates.

I say this as one of those closer to the bottom end of that bottom 80%.

723

I finally read the original article and actually agree with the Asian families (to use the shorthand here), it is unreasonalbe to eliminate a 4th grade enhanced math class because some kids are being prepped or because it’s existance is stressful to the less gifted students who feel bad … whatever. 4th grade is a great age to enhance math instruction, the kids who really get math do not need to wait until 8th grade to start Algebra 1.

And … I think AP classes should be offered … and if you get in, you do the work. The grapevine will let you know which classes are grinder killer experiences, and maybe recruitable varsity star athletes should opt out (or reduce their sports activities and concentrate on school, not icing their leg at 7pm).

There are many students who can do this easily, enough to fill a 20 person class, at minimum, and you only need a few GT specialists in elementary school and then some qualified teachers for the AP classes plus some training.

There are likely also some or in some crazy districts many students, who will try to do this top tier program, by tutoring or by staying up until 2am … and some will succeed and some will have to step down (and some may still get into a top school or god forbid, Rutgers). Some may struggle and need tutoring, but then “get it” and end up being very successful in HS and college and beyond.

Learning to tackle really difficult material and how to self study and use resources … it’s a path to success in college and in the work place too.

Schools are providing an enriched high school experience, including lots of AP classes that are, yes, enriched for the top 20% because … a) they may think they have a responsibility to have a good program for their top students, b) they care about state and national rankings, and c) to be blunt, high ranked schools raise assessments and thus tax revenue, highly ranked school districts command top dollar in the McMansion category and even in the starter homes and even apartments that are districted there. The top students that go to MIT are advertising and test score raisers.

I actually found a ranking of NJ schools and see that WWP is below a lot of Morris County schools which may or may not be as crazy competitive (and yes, you can have 12 AP class graduates without having a competitive hopped-up on steroids 2 hours a night of HW program).

I think @cobrat is really on to something, the teachers are teaching to the top 20% of a top class …if you are in the bottom of that top class, your experience will certainly be more stressful and possibly even completely uneducational and pointless, depending on how far below your top peers you sit. Or you can drop down to an honors level class and be a star … I assume there are honors classes … I have to think GFG is really exaggerating how bad the other choices are.

Personally I think a varsity athlete with recruitment potential and thus a huge time commitment may not be a great candidate for the top tier class in a competitive high school … I have seen several districts where these two things just don’t intersect. If the varsity athletes are say white and the star academics are Asian, well that seems like it;s racial or something … .but it is just a matter of priorities and how you fill the 16 hours of available time a day

I just don’t think it is particularly effective to sleep only 4 hours per day, every day, so people that attempt this are crazy and the parent are risking some serious physical but more likely mental health effects on their kids. Turn off the light and admit that your kid is not in the top 0.001% of US students … it’s OK, really.

Irvington NJ is ranked #331 in NJ - I don’t think too many students are in the top 1% and taking too many AP classes, more likely they are underserved by their school and have little to no advanced classes.

Palo Alto culture involves working 80 hours a week in hopes of stock options or other large financial gain. Not conducive to good family life, and mom alone may not be able to keep kids happy and healthy, especially if she feels pressure to be supermom with 3 kids in Ivy Leagues.

@TheGFG Your principal is being lazy. Every school has room for improvement and just saying that it’s the same everywhere is a huge copout. For example, they should offer some honors level classes for those who do not want to tackle AP. Homework complaints should be taken seriously and the offending teachers should be trained in more appropriate GT strategies like independent study projects that allow some students to take on really difficult work while others don’t (although it really does sound like your daughter just wasn’t in that top class … don’t they offer two sessions … maybe that is the issue … they need an other session and then divide up the overachievers). Now not everyone can get an A.

Similarly, they should have more than 20 spots on a varsity level team in a school with 400 students per grade. Not everyone will go to counties and states … but probably need more than just the superstars there too (and who knows how much time and money went into their “natural” athletic abilities).

Our school also makes sports and meaningful ECs sorts of incompatible …

I like the Kafka homework … especially for students with no language experience. The Google Translate is literally translating word-by-word which reveals a lot of German structure differences and issues with word mapping. Translation of literary works is huge issue and topic for academians. this is a college level english course, it is OK to introduce advanced topics.

are you sure your daughter is actually doing only what is asked and is an efficient studier ?

And if there are 50 NMSF … well the more the merrier … lots of Ivy League acceptances … these kids will fit in well into the culture and rigor of an Ivy League education or be superstars at a state school with easy access to top graduate school or professional programs.

The next tier down will still be well-prepared for college and may actually have bought into a reasonable work ethic before they set foot on campus and drink away their freshman year with Cs and Ds.

Woe is me …

724

@mom2and - I am not committing to thinking it’s definitely good to exclude the kid from doing the lab after a failed pre-lab, but I’m not convinced it’s all wrong.

I don’t think we know from the story if it is a test of lab technique or something else. A recent pre-lab that was given to my child, had a question asking how kids were supposed to handle hot ceramic containers for the procedure, giving diagrams with holders/etc. I could see a problem with allowing the lab to proceed for anyone who missed that question. The same parents who would sue for their kid being “excluded” might well sue if their kid were burned.

No matter how many times the teacher goes over an instruction or puts a handout online or assigns a reading on a technique, you don’t really know if the student has internalized it until they do the pre-lab assessment. With 20 or even more kids doing the kind of extensive labs that happen in AP, I think there has to be a presumption that they will be doing what they’re supposed to.

ETA: I was thinking about the football analogy - it’s true that we often hear about schools (in Texas?) where football has a very influential role in the schools, and where coaches demand lots of serious, sometimes to the point of absurd, commitments. My own thought is, my kids don’t have any talent in football, and if they did, I would still think it’s my own family’s job to refrain from participating. It’s not really my business to legislate other families, however.

725

That was Irvington, CA, pickone1 not Irvington NJ. Someone posted an article about student stress in that town, hence the reason I mentioned it. Also, like you, I don’t agree with some of the changes people are requesting for WWP either, and said so on the first few pages of the thread. The stress I see in my district (which is not WWP) does not come from the tracking in and of itself, or AP classes in and of themselves. The problems are much more complicated than that.

One thing I’ve said I do support is limiting the acceleration that the school will accommodate. Parents should be free to provide whatever enrichment they deem appropriate for their children, but as a public school there should be a limit to how far the course sequence goes to accommodate student advancement. Just because more and more children now want to do Calc BC in middle school, should not mean that the high school has to offer four levels of college math for them. Because once that is offered as an option, it becomes the standard and expected track for top kids to be on, and that is how the escalation starts.

726

As for the lab situation, the pre-quiz has nothing to do with safety. Regardless, the quiz could be administered the day before the lab is to be done to allow those who are deficient to learn the material and still participate the next day. Even if the children failed to do their part, this sort of shaming is the equivalent of being made to sit facing the corner or wearing a dunce cap. We as a society no longer practice such methods of discipline for academic failings, or so I had thought.

727

Can you elaborate on the shaming aspect please? Just sitting to the side and working on homework with your friend sounds not very shaming to me.

728

You really are too much, fretfulmother. It scares me that you are teacher and yet have to ask that. Your desire to defend the educational establishment has blinded you.

729

I’m sorry, we will agree to disagree on that point.

730

The goal should be learning and collaboration. I agree the quiz if even necessary at all could be given the day before
It sounds to me that the quiz is very counter productive. We should look for paths to succeed not for paths to failure and shaming of students

731

Excluding students from their class (both as a social group and as a learning opportunity), for any reason, is hurtful and is used as a coercitive measure; to remain iddle, in public, obvious to all, for 90 minutes when all students know it’s for failing a quiz, in a culture that identifies academic performance as key to respect, is equivalent to public shaming. I am willing to bet kids burst into tears or feel hopeless. (I know that, for sure, I’d have cried and cried and cried if such a thing had been in effect when I was a HS student. I was a sensitive child. Being made to stand up in front of peers and exposed as a failure, then excluded from the group, would have been traumatic. I can’t even begin to imagine.)
There’s no reason why the students couldn’t retake the quiz then start the lab, for instance. Sure, they wouldn’t complete it all, but they wouldn’t be pointed out and treated differently, they wouldn’t learn nothing nor be made to come back.
In addition, please remember that the whole point, supposedly, isn’t the students’ safety. Officially, it’s to insure no product is wasted by students making mistakes during the experiments. The standard is: a perfectly executed experiment, each time. No error, ever. Doesnt that strike you as counter to scientific learning?

732

If a school district made my dyslexic daughter sit out a lab because of the results of a quiz, they would have a serious issue. Adults are naive if they believe kids don’t interpret being sidelined as meaning the student is too stupid to do the lab. Have the parents in that district filed a complaint with the school board? Even if my kiddo wasn’t the one being singled out, I’d be addressing the board about the policy. In NYS, missing labs could become a serious issue because the state requires a certain number to qualify to take the (required) state Regents exams. Surely NJ values science education as well. Wasting 90 minutes of lab time that could have been used teaching children, which is your job, is criminal.

733

If the goal is truly readiness and safety, why not let the kids start taking the quiz a few days before the lab and let them keep taking it and retaking it until they earn a satisfactory score? Even if it’s to maximize the lab and minimize waste, what’s the downside in allowing them to take the quiz online and retake it until they achieve a passing score?

I know of highly capable young people who would be paralyzed with anxiety at the thought of such a high stakes exercise.

734

Even if the pre-lab is a test of technique (which seems hard to test via computer), the answer should not be to exclude a kid from doing the lab, but to offer additional instruction. There is no excuse, short of a kid doing something dangerous or inappropriate in the laboratory, for excluding a student from a classroom activity.

Clearly not being allowed to do the lab, shows that the kid failed the pre-quiz. If there are only one or two excluded, that would certainly be a cause for embarrassment, especially to a top stduent.

As to the original article, my understanding was that the issue with the 4th grade math class was not that some kids did not need acceleration, but that the correct kids were not necessarily getting into the class. That is, the use of outside classes and tutoring outside of school was pushing the admit score up to a point where only those being tutored, not those that were naturally gifted at math but are not required to do extra math every day, were getting in. There are appropriate tests to use to identify giftedness, which are harder to game. Those are what should be used to ID kids for gifted or accelerated programs, not knowledge tests which can be taught.

Edited to add: Some seem to think that kids are either fully capable of every AP class with no effort, or not worthy of those classes. Some kids fall in the middle. Some may effortlessly ace the college prep level so want to try honors or AP and have much more difficulty. That may actually be a great experience for that kid - to learn the level of effort required to do well in a harder class. For some, however, it can also be a rough lesson.

735

Exact. Now, ALL the kids who need acceleration will get it.

736

I don’t buy the idea that so many expensive chemicals were being wasted because of student error that this was creating a budget problem for the school. To me that sounds like a lie being told to push some other agenda. I cannot recall any significant waste of chemicals in high school labs, and I did take AP chem and AP bio. In fact, the only waste I am sure may have happened was use of a few unnecessary ml of acids or bases during titrations.

Our school has significant budget issues beyond what many comparable school systems face due to complicated local politics, and waste in AP lab classes has never been mentioned. It wouldn’t make sense to pay the teacher extra to teach make-up lab sections, and I’m sure expecting an extra weekly lab’s worth of instructional time would violate the contract unless the teachers were well-paid for those extra instructional hours. How could it possibly be economical to do this in NJ?

737

@mathyone - I also wondered about the cost excuse and thus assumed it was also about lab safety (?) - the only course in our school that uses a ton of money in lab supplies is a biotech class that runs expensive “gels”.

@austinmshauri I’d like you to remember that in fact, my school doesn’t do the kind of pre-lab mentioned, before you tell me you think I am “criminal”. Also, since the students in question got every bit of the instructional time (lab after school, plus the supervised homework time during the class in question), they really did not lose any teaching.

For those who believe it is “inappropriate shaming” for kids to sit aside if not prepared for a lab, I would ask you how you would respond, as a parent, if any of the following occurred:

  1. Someone else's kid is not prepared, uses wrong kind of tongs on hot glassware, which shatters, a piece of which injures your kid who was well-prepared at a neighboring lab station.
  2. Someone else's kid is not prepared, puts the wrong reagent in a piece of equipment and causes several hundred dollars worth of damage. The class is assessed as a whole and you are asked to pay part of the damage.
  3. Someone else's kid is not prepared, is partnered randomly with your kid, and because of not knowing what's going on, delays your kid so that the lab is not completed, or completed with errors, and the grade is lower than you think it would have been without that partner.

I suspect that the answers from some of you would be along the line of, “the teacher needs to do something about that” - I would posit to you that the teacher (who did the delay for kids who weren’t ready), WAS doing something about that, i.e. preventing it from happening.

…On another matter, I gave a lot of thought to the question of the scientific method and what it means to make “errors” in the lab, and whether it is reasonable to hold students accountable for not making various kinds of errors. At the high school level, we generally differentiate between labs where excellent technique is required, with the purpose of determining what actually is experimental variation (“error”), and those explorations where students are supposed to have a more open-ended process in mind. They’re not the same kind of learning process or assessment.

An example of the former (technique matters) would be using a stopwatch to time your partner running a set distance. You wouldn’t accept “forgetting to push ‘start’” as an error about exploring science, or maybe you would, but the trial would need to be repeated in order to get data to actually use.

An example of the latter (kids explore) might be doing sample replacement reactions with chemical combinations to determine solubility, and the technique matters, but the amounts and chemicals used could be more freely different among students.

…And finally, I maintain that real live high school students do not feel “shamed” if they get some extra time to catch up on homework in class, and have to do the lab later. The one time something happened to me like this, I had four students who were wearing unsafe footwear and had to come back the next day to do the lab with me. One in particular was so grateful because she assumed she wouldn’t get any credit at all if she couldn’t do the lab right then, and it was also a stroke of luck that she got that period to study for German.

But I also think that even if students don’t feel great for a little while, that’s not necessarily a problem. There is a kind of parenting these days where the goal is to spare your child any negative feelings (e.g. a guilty conscience or losing a game or missing a point on a test) and that does not foster resilience.

As a teacher, my goal is always to help my students find success in their learning, which will look different to every student. As a mother, I want my children to grow up able to manage feeling sad or angry or guilty etc. without totally crumpling. It seems to me that it’s really low-stakes to have a couple days’ or even a week’s delay of some lab work, in the scheme of disappointing things that could happen to a human being. If we deny our kids the chance to experience small setbacks, they will not develop the skills they need to handle larger setbacks in real life.

Someone described a pre-lab with delay if not ready, as “high-stakes” - I’m not seeing that.

738

I think it would be useful if highly competitive colleges required students to list all of the instruction in which they have participated, as well as listing all of their standardized test scores. I think it would also be useful if the highly competitive colleges added a question asking students who are accelerated beyond the normal progression in a subject to explain how their acceleration came about.

My preferred solution to the situation where students take a course in advance over the summer and then repeat it during the school year would be to designate the school-year course as a “Repeat” by an indication on the high-school transcript. This sort of thing is certainly done by a number of universities including mine, in cases where a student has already taken a course elsewhere. It’s probably not done by others but I think it’s a good practice.

I favor acceleration when it is appropriate, but I have a problem with a public school accommodating students whose acceleration has been achieved by formal, paid-for instruction outside of the school, to the detriment of students who have not had such a course.

739

It’s not a safety issue, no matter how much you want to try to introduce that red herring for your own purposes. I spoke with the science supervisor, who confirmed it was an issue related to wasting chemicals, especially for student-designed experiments that are now part of the revised AP Bio curriculum. The students have already had instruction and a test related to lab safety and the proper handling of equipment and chemicals, both in this class and in Chem I. Also, anytime there are dangerous substances involved, the students are required to look up handling procedures and how to address accidents (eye wash, etc.). The experiments in question last week involved light and photosynthesis and were individual labs.

740

@fretfulmother, I wasn’t referring to you. I was referring to whoever it was in that district who dreamt up the policy. I apologize for the confusion.

As for your examples:

  1. Why were the wrong set of tongs available? Our science teacher always did a quick walk through to look over everyone's equipment and chemicals before we started. It probably didn't take 5 minutes and is a basic safety measure that shouldn't be skipped.
  2. Same as #1. If the reagent can't be used with the equipment the students have, I'd conclude that either the reagent or the equipment were inappropriately pulled and a quick check by the teacher would have prevented the situation. Handing teenagers expensive equipment and chemicals that will destroy them is not the most prudent decision a district could make and doing so is asking for trouble.
  3. Welcome to the real world. People are paired with others in college and in the workplace all the time, and not everyone has the same abilities or work ethic. I'd suggest the student do what we did: take charge to complete the lab, explain in the lab report what *should* have been done if an error was made, and compare the actual result to the expected one.

The reason for the forced delay has nothing to do with your examples. It isn’t for safety reasons or so the children can truly learn from the experience, it’s to save materials/money. There are better ways to save a few dollars.

As the parent of a dyslexic, I can tell you that even high school students will absolutely internalize being singled out that way. Not permitting a student to do a lab because they’re wearing improper shoes is different than publicly announcing that a student failed. Are high schools permitted to release students’ grades publicly? If I were in the district, I would find out. I’d research FERPA regulations and every student/disability rights document I could find.

Not “feel(ing) great for awhile” or losing a game isn’t the same as pointing out, week after week after week, the academic challenges students face. Kids like mine may not excel in written quizzes, especially if they’re administered on a computer; they do often excel at hands on activities such as labs. Singling them out and delaying the opportunity to do what they’re good at will undermine their confidence and make it difficult for them to continue to do those things well. And your assumption that all students can successfully study in a public classroom while other things are going on around them, just after the rest of their class has been alerted to what they believe is their base stupidity, is misguided. These students are missing the original lab time, likely aren’t accomplishing anything academically during that 90 minutes, and are taking an additional 90 minutes away from other studying they could have been doing when they make up the lab. This policy has the power to do tremendous harm.

My daughter, and students like her, have disappointments and setbacks all the time. Not wanting to see students publicly embarrassed doesn’t mean parents are protecting their kids from ever failing. They’re protecting them from cruel and thoughtless behavior. Your attitude, and the attitude of teachers like you (who believe you know better than parents what’s right for our children), is why I homeschool. And homeschooling is why my daughter reads above grade level and is on track to become a competitive college applicant and isn’t languishing in some special ed classroom.