Here is an example of how a smart kids can get left behind when the others are taking classes outside of school. In second grade, my child was sent to a different second grade for slower math. I was surprised because, frankly, she seemed to really understand math concepts. After a few weeks, at the conference, I asked the teacher how she was doing in math. Her teacher said she stopped sending her students to the slower class because only 2 of her students were being sent to the slow class and my daughter understood every math concept as soon as it was introduced. According to the teacher, the trouble had been that everyone else in her class had already been exposed to all of the second grade/third grade math topics so they were advanced! My husband and I are educated and we taught our kids some basic reading and math before kindergarten but here we were, with our kid behind in math. Thank goodness this astute teacher realized our child’s potential and brought her back to the appropriate level of math class. Our daughter is very good at math and still has a very easy time understanding advanced math concepts once they are introduced. If access to learning had been limited to only the few who already knew the material she would have suffered.
@ naviance It seems an answer is to have kids in classes based on ability not age. If there is a kid that can do algebra in elementary school then let him take it with the older kids. What difference should it matter if they studied ahead? Many kids in athletics are very good, in fact, far ahead of kids in their age group because they spent a lot of time outside practicing the sport they like to play. Most people think that is ok for them to “play up” since it would not be fair to the other kids or challenging to the one who spent his summer shooting hoops or should we say it is not allowed to practice outside over the summer?
But what happens down the road if we allow advancement with no limits? Are taxpayers now going to be responsible for paying for these extensively tutored children to attend college while in high school then? Because that was what was happening in our town. When the kids maxed out of the high school’s offerings in math, science, and sometimes foreign language, our district was paying top dollar for students to take classes at the over $60,000/year college nearby. Now, instead, we are paying high salaries to PhD’s to teach math that is 4 levels above AP Calc BC. Where will it end?
@ TheGFG Good point and I do not think local districts should pay, nor could many afford to pay, that type of college tuition. I think the schools could support the kids better and let them do it on their own and hopefully there could be scholarships available for those that cannot afford it.
I am not sure how much the PhD salaries are but it does seem like a nice solution to offer the more challenging classes at the school to the ones that are able to take the course.
From a US perspective, it seems like a great problem to have, assuming of course these kids are interested in the courses and want to take them.
Why not expand AP classes in districts like these? Seems there are more students capable for doing the work than space available.
I think there are many legitimate concerns floating around, but here’s one I am conflicted about: students who would have otherwise been perceived as top students [by college admissions] will no longer be so perceived given the increasingly high number of students whose free time is used to advance them academically. As it stands, there is a limited number of spots in desirable majors/colleges/industries than people capable of filling them. Is it fair to use the stratification markers currently in place to weed out people otherwise capable?
I agree with those who said that they are not looking for a challenge - they are looking for an edge.
^ Yes, that is a nice summary of what I see as the main problem. My youngest, who is not nearly as bright as her siblings, is nonetheless strong in history, Again, I had to fight in order to get her into the pre-req for APUSH. She got an A in both that course and then in APUSH the next year, and scored a 770 on the SAT II in US History with no extra prep. Yet, she had been deemed not a good enough student by our school to qualify for the advanced classes. We now have discrimination against non-Asians. By virtue of not belonging to that high-achieving group, teachers assume the student will not be capable or diligent enough to succeed in AP.
Edited to add: there is a lot of incentive for teachers to love this system. The kids come in to the class already having learned a lot of the material and motivated by the cultural pressue, so they are more likely to do well regardless of teaching quality. Now that teacher compensation is tied to student performance, why wouldn’t a teacher want all pre-taught Asians in his class?
“When the kids maxed out of the high school’s offerings in math, science, and sometimes foreign language, our district was paying top dollar for students to take classes at the over $60,000/year college nearby.” That’s insane. Why would a public high school system pay for a private college education for some students at taxpayer expense?
If I were the elementary school principal seeing kids who are so weak they can barely play mini-golf, I would put in place physical education testing and require all students who score in the bottom 25 percentile or so to take remedial fitness until such time as they improve their fitness. The other students would receive extra math and reading instruction.
This might work in well-to-do districts, but I don’t think it’s feasible in middle or low income districts. Teachers’ contracts and state laws pose challenges. Our teachers’ contract limits the number of classes they’re required to teach in a row, the number of students they have to teach per year, and the number of sections they have to teach of each course. We’re already losing electives because the teachers are stretched too thin. We can’t add more sections without violating contracts and we can’t hire more teachers because NYS has a tax cap limit and districts are loathe to go above it, so adding sections or additional AP courses to accommodate younger students isn’t possible. Bumping upperclassmen for younger students isn’t feasible either.
Who would get priority for the ability based class? The junior who needs it to graduate or the higher scoring 7th grader whose parents can afford summer enrichment classes? Could the 7th grader bump a 9th grader from a required math class? Suppose the 9th grader is bumped for the 7th grader because guidance is sure they can fit the 9th grader in as a sophomore, but then due to scheduling and budgeting problems the math course the sophomore needs conflicts with the language s/he needs to graduate? The current method our district uses takes seniority into account. To do anything else would create a scheduling nightmare.
My kid’s college accepts zero AP credits. D took some AP courses anyway, as that was one way to be challenged in her school (dual enrollment and independent study were other ways and she did some of that too), but she didn’t bother with AP tests senior year, once she knew that where she was going wasn’t going to accept them for credit.
She did take college courses in two summers but not for credit, just for fun and to explore subjects that interested her but weren’t available to her at high school.
To be honest, I believe her summer time was much better spent learning about epidemiology or marine bio or whatever interested her than it would have been advancing in math or adding more AP sciences. In fact I am positive it was.
This entire thread has made me grateful I don’t live in New Jersey.
Our school district had dozens of kids taking 12 AP classes and advanced math classes starting in 4th grade. Never thought it was particularly stressful, but yes, kids did study and spent time at the library, some took Kuman, some had tutors, some were just smart kids willing to work hard.
The outcome of 150 kids going to Rutgers, likely with some AP classes, seems good to me,
My kids went to a government facility day care and were doing 3rd and 4th grade math sheets in kindergarten, so they needed honors math in 1st grade and did very well skipping another year from 4-5th, BC senior year (ready for a difficult engineering math sequence in college). The AP history classes were very well taught and English resulted in two 5s.
For engineers or pre-meds, having exposure to difficult STEM college classes in college will definitely help either advance your studies or keep you GPA high.
If you are neither a “tiger” parent (any background willing to hire tutors, tutor them yourself, or spend all summer in summer school … or have the student who can take a dozen APs without really being stressed out), then skip the rat race and head off to a 51-100 USNWR school of your choice. Unless your kid is academically prepared, the top schools will likely not be all that pleasant for them.
I also think we do need to spend money on educating the top students so they can do the really difficult groundbreaking research work that we need to stay competitive as a country and to solve problems like energy, global warming, hunger, medical issues, etc. These kids (and their parents) are working hard and need the right instruction and stimulation at school to build up their skills and knowledge.
Remedial and special education are equally important, but not more important.
And, if you are really offended by all the extra time the academically oriented kids are spending, start thinking of the time and money commitments required for little league and soccer. And how my snowflake can’t play on any high school teams due to the monopoly of all spots other than running with travel team level competitors.
I’m offended by kids pushed so hard by their parents that they get no sleep and throw themselves in front of trains. A system that ends up with kids so stressed they kill themselves is a bad system, and that’s the system we have in numerous districts where I live. Many kids end up in top schools. Some kids end up dead. That’s not a tradeoff I think we ought to be making.
@“Cardinal Fang” ^^ That is a decision for you to make as a family.
@PickOne1 --really? Be a tiger parent or skip the “rat race” and don’t send your kid to a higher rated school? What makes everyone so sure that top 50 schools only want rat race graduates? My kids only had one science AP each, only took math through Calc AB, and somehow ended up in so-called elite schools.
Somehow the country has produced generations of thinkers, creators, and innovators without an educational arms race. If these were all bored students looking for a challenge, there wouldn’t be the ridiculously high stress and suicidal levels described in the original article.
I also have to wonder if the incredible levels of cheating that are more common now are a product of the levels of constantly increasing expectations.
Exactly. It becomes a community issue when the result of this type of stress effects too many of our kids. It’s a real problem in our community, and the schools/city/parents are trying to find some way to balance achievement with the stress it causes. Racing through the curriculum to one-up people in a competition to be “the best” is missing the point of education. For what it’s worth, the elite privates in our area are lowering the number of APs they are teaching (but not dumbing down the curriculum). It hasn’t seemed to hurt admissions results to “elite” colleges one bit.
No, child abuse is not a family decision we should all respect.
I don’t think taking a lot of APs is incompatible with having a decent quality of life and a relaxed childhood. When my kids were young, the playgrounds we visited were well-attended. Recreational sports teams were very popular. Our high school honor students are taking 10+ APs and yet summer school is not a common choice–I mostly see kids/teens visiting family, going to the beach or other vacation, attending summer camps–mostly the traditional sort, playing on sports teams, working their first jobs, etc., and I haven’t heard of a single teen suicide in the past two decades.
Has anyone seen a thread written by some of the high-performing kids on CC that indicate they are all miserable? My son goes to a gifted middle school with a high % of Asians and from what my wife and I have seen at various events they seem to be very normal and happy. It is only middle school so perhaps it all goes terribly wrong in high school?
Sadly there are kids that are suicidal that are not high-performers, can someone provide any links to a study which indicates the numerous AP 2400 SAT kids have a higher depression rate than others?
http://www.bu.edu/today/2015/model-minority-pressures-take-mental-health-toll/
"Among Asian American high school students, 29 percent have reported feeling “sad or hopeless” for at least two weeks in a row during the past year, enough to interfere with their daily lives, according to a recent national youth survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That figure is slightly higher than that of teens from all racial groups, 28 percent.
With suicidal thoughts, the gap widens. When the CDC asked Asian American students if they had seriously considered suicide during the past year, 19 percent answered yes, compared to 16 percent of all high school students. About 4 percent of Asian American teens reported a suicide attempt within the past year that required medical attention, compared to 2 percent of all students." from http://newamericamedia.org/2013/09/cultural-stigma-hurts-asian-american-teens-with-depression.php
I don’t want to speak for @TheGFG, but I believe it was mentioned in another thread that not enough teachers were prepared to teach AP classes to meet demand. I believe this is a problem in many schools, though oftentimes the solution is to just have teachers teach the classes anyways, even if they are not completely qualified.
@yearstogo, there are many threads on this site written by stressed Asian students complaining about the pressures on them and particularly about uncompromising parents forcing them to pursue and excel in STEM when that is not what they want to do.
Oh come on, if the school can afford to hire PhDs to teach math 4 years beyond calc BC, if they can afford to pay private college tuition for elite students to attend college while still in high school, then they can afford to add sections of BC or other AP classes. Our school does a pretty good job of providing AP seats to interested students, and spending is about $13K per student with enormous transportation costs. I am guessing it’s quite a bit higher at the schools we are talking about.