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A Lincoln High teacher gets all his students to pass the AP Calculus exam

latimes.com

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Re: A Lincoln High teacher gets all his students to pass the AP Calculus exam

#91

Post by dbcurtis »

Rylinks wrote: post #64
userbinator wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I have no idea what it means to have everybody 'pass'. That reminds me of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grading_systems_by_country It's interesting to see where the 'pass' bar is in different countries. I've always found the 50% mark, which seems quite popular, to be rather unusual since it implies that someone who 'passed' essentially was correct on only half the material tested (which is then a fraction of…

I have had many tests where the material tested is not a strict subset of the material taught, and some problems require creative generalization or insight during the test.

Life 101?

Re: A Lincoln High teacher gets all his students to pass the AP Calculus exam

#93

Post by solipsism »

all5AP wrote: post #82
quantumsequoia wrote: post #67

Is this that unusual? I'm sure there are many teachers out there whose entire classes passed. I'm pretty sure in high school, my entire class passed. It was unusual for people to fail APs. (My high school only admitted the top 2% scorers on an admission test, so it was biased towards high exam scorers.)

Yeah, I'll second that. I know at my high school (a private one) the AP Chem class had all 5s for 10+ years.

All 5s on the AP Chem test for 10+ years? Absolutely not possibly. If it happened there would be many news stories about it.

Re: A Lincoln High teacher gets all his students to pass the AP Calculus exam

#94

Post by epmatsw »

solipsism wrote: post #93
all5AP wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'll second that. I know at my high school (a private one) the AP Chem class had all 5s for 10+ years.

All 5s on the AP Chem test for 10+ years? Absolutely not possibly. If it happened there would be many news stories about it.

I think you underestimate some private schools. At least at mine, high level APs would have only 10ish specially approved students with a professor who'd taught the class forever. Our calc BC professor had supposedly only had 3 non-5s in his decade or two of teaching the course. Besides that, if a professor suspected you wouldn't pass, you would just be asked to not take the exam. Don't think I ever heard of someone actually failing one.

Re: A Lincoln High teacher gets all his students to pass the AP Calculus exam

#95

Post by epmatsw »

dbcurtis wrote: post #90
jimhefferon wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I teach Math at a college, and am a former dept chair. We require 4 or 5, as do the folks I talk to at other schools.

I had a conversation with a prof from Harvey Mudd and another prof from somewhere else who was an AP calc grader. The HMC prof said they quit giving credit for 5's because not all recipients of 5's could do the work. The grader commented that he could understand how, as the range of 5's is quite broad. My take-away was that there is insufficient granularity at the high end.

To be fair, a 5 on something like Calc BC means you got more than like 60% credit. It's not surprising that someone on the low end of that would struggle.

Re: A Lincoln High teacher gets all his students to pass the AP Calculus exam

#96

Post by witty_username »

ben_jones wrote: post #41

It's been awhile but the AP exam for me was nothing but rote memorization. You memorize how to solve n types (10? 15? 20?) of problems and then you grind through the test a) identify what type of problem it is b) apply algorithm to solve. Furthermore the AP exam environment, IMO, varied by the school giving it. I could have easily stored formulas in my calculator (for the calculator section), I could have easily coll…

> I could have easily stored formulas in my calculator (for the calculator section)

You are allowed to do that. Proctors won't clear calculator memory.

> I could have easily colluded with classmates, and if my teachers wanted to, they could've easily given me the answers.

Proctors and/or students will likely notice that.

Re: A Lincoln High teacher gets all his students to pass the AP Calculus exam

#97

Post by InclinedPlane »

dbcurtis wrote: post #90
jimhefferon wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I teach Math at a college, and am a former dept chair. We require 4 or 5, as do the folks I talk to at other schools.

I had a conversation with a prof from Harvey Mudd and another prof from somewhere else who was an AP calc grader. The HMC prof said they quit giving credit for 5's because not all recipients of 5's could do the work. The grader commented that he could understand how, as the range of 5's is quite broad. My take-away was that there is insufficient granularity at the high end.

Also, in the last several years it's become more and more common for AP classes to simply "teach to the test". They pump our students who can get 5s on the test but have little practical knowledge of the subject.

Re: A Lincoln High teacher gets all his students to pass the AP Calculus exam

#98

Post by JamesBarney »

dbcurtis wrote: post #90
jimhefferon wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I teach Math at a college, and am a former dept chair. We require 4 or 5, as do the folks I talk to at other schools.

I had a conversation with a prof from Harvey Mudd and another prof from somewhere else who was an AP calc grader. The HMC prof said they quit giving credit for 5's because not all recipients of 5's could do the work. The grader commented that he could understand how, as the range of 5's is quite broad. My take-away was that there is insufficient granularity at the high end.

I also wonder if there is also a difference in focus between your university and the AP exam. For instance my highschool allowed use of TI-89 and focused heavily on concepts and word problems. This was similar to the AP exam, so I was top of my class in Calculus and scored a 5 on the AP exam. However in college I struggled in post BC calculus like diff-EQ because they put a strong emphasis on differentiating and integrating by hand and banned all but the simplest calculator.

Re: A Lincoln High teacher gets all his students to pass the AP Calculus exam

#99

Post by rjbwork »

ejcx wrote: post #4

This article is strange. Unless something has changed recently, AP exams do not have a concept of pass or fail. You get a score and colleges can choose to give you college credit based on the score. I got a 1 on the AP Calculus exam but colleges wanted a 3 or a 4 or a 5 depending on their requirements to give me credit for college calc. So I have no idea what it means to have everybody 'pass'. I have no doubt he's pr…

Not trying to brag, but I also took it a decade ago, (2005 to be exact) and i found it startlingly easy, and got a 5 no problem. So did many of my classmates. It made calculus 2 in college a breeze, since even though the exam had integral stuff on it, colleges would only give me credit for Calc 1.

Re: A Lincoln High teacher gets all his students to pass the AP Calculus exam

#100

Post by CuriousCosmic »

yardie wrote: post #23
pilom wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most colleges give credits for 3 and above on AP exams so many people think of a 3 as "passing".

And even that breaks down by colleges in universities. This was not the case for me. Virginia Tech has 2 calculus courses. One for Math/CS/Eng majors and the one for everyone else. I was in the former and they did not accept my 3.

eyyy VT represent. Ill be attending this fall for Engineering ultimately aiming for Computer Engineering. How was/is it?
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