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

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

#61

There was a movie about this in the 80s

Stand and Deliver? Different person, different school.

different person, different school, different time, but similar situation: dedicated individuals inspire students to believe circumstances better than where they grow up, and strive for them

oh, and similar communities. I could have gone to Garfield, the high school from Stand and Deliver, but opted for Lincoln, when I grew up in this area

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

#62
In the 1987, I took the afternoons of my senior year and went to the local community college since we got 3 credits a semester free and paid only $15/credit after that. Students are still doing that here (now its considered dual HS / College credit). AP classes just don't make sense in that context, and I would imagine if a student in a podunk high school on the reservation in the 80's could do that, it must be more common at decent high schools.

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

#63
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…

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…

Running a little off-topic, there is evidence that a Cambridge maths exam series 150 years ago had a pass mark of about one and a half percent, and the top scorer achieved about 45 percent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_Tripos

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

#64
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…

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.

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

#65
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…

A 3 or higher is considered a pass

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

#66
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which would explain why new 'systems' like common whatever, pushed from the top down, aren't the best way to improve schools. Which is like forcing programmers into a forced Agile system....it's better to focus on improving the skills of the programmers. The guy in Stand and Deliver was similar.

Common Core, in theory, isn't a problem - unifying standards across schools has a lot of benefits (easier to design reusable curriculums, perform scientific inquiries, develop software). The problem is when it gets conflated with high-stakes testing, which is a terrible thing.

High-stakes testing need not be terrible. You just have to be careful:

1. High-stakes testing requires exam security. One must assume that the teachers and administrators, if rated on student performance, will assist cheating.

2. High-stakes testing should be spread out across the year, with the result being a running average that discards the low values. (sickness and other bad luck should not be punished) Instead of a week or two of solid testing, do an hour every other week.

3. Tests should not come from companies that sell textbooks. This is a conflict of interest. It's not good to have an incentive to use non-standard terminology to give an advantage to schools which purchase the matching book.

4. If you can't test something, and you don't mandate hours for it, it will be removed from the schedule. Ideally you'd test for everything, but testing some subjects (band, shop) is difficult. The hours must be mandated to protect the untestable subjects.

5. You get what you test for. (see #4 above) High-quality tests are a must. It shouldn't be practical to cram for a test.

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

#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.)

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

#68

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.)

Stuy?

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

#69

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.)

Yes this is very unusual. Considering the socioeconomic background of the area.

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

#70

I am not sure if such clean-looking, new-looking classes are standard in the US, but it gives me a tad of skepticism... Is this school in an affluent neighborhood?

It's not the standard.

LAUSD just went through a massive building/remodeling of facilities last few years. Not all schools got it but ones that were remodeled look nice. But that is after decades worth of students who went through LAUSD sitting in ghetto classrooms. After about a decade the same classes will start looking dingy and few more decades will pass before another wave of remodeling.

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