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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

#71

Post by mahyarm »

jasonjei wrote: post #18
srtjstjsj wrote: post #6

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/02/1... > Nearly 2.5 million students took a total of almost 4.5 million AP tests overall last year. Of the test-takers, just 322 obtained every point possible on an AP test, and perfect scores were logged on 21 of the 36 AP exams. Here’s the breakdown of those perfect scores: 67 in Computer Science A 55 in Spanish Language and Culture 54 in Microeconomics 36 in…

I took AP Latin: Vergil in high school. That was one of the hardest classes I've ever had to take because the grammar is so complex (I'm also not surprised Japanese has few perfect scores). I know I didn't get a passing score. I'm surprised however that Chinese has no perfect scores. I remember some students that had moved from Taiwan or China would take AP Chinese to get free college credits. The grammar of Chinese…

I wouldn't be surprised that a native speaker would do something one way, and a test would insist the 'correct' way is actually pretty awkward and wouldn't be used.

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

#72

Post by vermontdevil »

CarolineW wrote: post #35
vermontdevil wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See Stand and Deliver. I'm sure similar technique - teacher focused on the students and found ways to motivate them.

Referenced in the linked article.

I know. I'm replying to the OP's question: "how".

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

#73

Post by dang »

dsajames wrote: post #56

Really? Just just woke up day and had a desire to bully trans people? What, they were bored? It's self righteous people like you who widen the divide. This issue wasn't even talked about a year ago and suddenly they're bullying? Maybe if more people were pragmatic to new laws affect everyone else instead of reflexively only considering a miniscule few you would see that there isn't any more bullying going on there th…

> self righteous people like you

Personal attacks and name-calling aren't allowed on HN. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11697585 and marked it off-topic.

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

#74

Post by kristopolous »

SolderMonkey wrote: post #61
kristopolous wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Same subject too!!

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

#75

Post by Trill-I-Am »

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.)

What was the socioeconomic make-up of your community?

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

#76

Post by HeavenFox »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #6

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/02/1... > Nearly 2.5 million students took a total of almost 4.5 million AP tests overall last year. Of the test-takers, just 322 obtained every point possible on an AP test, and perfect scores were logged on 21 of the 36 AP exams. Here’s the breakdown of those perfect scores: 67 in Computer Science A 55 in Spanish Language and Culture 54 in Microeconomics 36 in…

I think that is a feature of AP Exams, not a bug.

How would design a uniform final exam for all, say, Calculus I courses? Sure, you can only test the intersection of all, but that encourages the teachers to only teach that subset. Instead, AP exams test the union of all, and normalize the score so that you only need, I think, a raw score of 60/100 to get a 5 on calculus. That way, teachers are encouraged to experiment with their curriculum, and students are not overwhelmed by the need to know everything there is to know. It's really a win-win solution.

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

#77

Post by HeavenFox »

jasonjei wrote: post #18
srtjstjsj wrote: post #6

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/02/1... > Nearly 2.5 million students took a total of almost 4.5 million AP tests overall last year. Of the test-takers, just 322 obtained every point possible on an AP test, and perfect scores were logged on 21 of the 36 AP exams. Here’s the breakdown of those perfect scores: 67 in Computer Science A 55 in Spanish Language and Culture 54 in Microeconomics 36 in…

I took AP Latin: Vergil in high school. That was one of the hardest classes I've ever had to take because the grammar is so complex (I'm also not surprised Japanese has few perfect scores). I know I didn't get a passing score. I'm surprised however that Chinese has no perfect scores. I remember some students that had moved from Taiwan or China would take AP Chinese to get free college credits. The grammar of Chinese…

I am a native Chinese speaker (lived in China till college), and I once tried the AP Chinese problems for fun with a friend of mine (also a native speaker). We both find it surprisingly difficult, because it really is geared towards second language learners. One speaking question was like, describe your favorite Chinese film and explain its cultural significance. Okay, I watch films with friends all the time, but it never occurred to me to ponder their "cultural significance", and I have only like 60 seconds to prepare.

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

#78

Post by thaumasiotes »

HeavenFox wrote: post #77
jasonjei wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took AP Latin: Vergil in high school. That was one of the hardest classes I've ever had to take because the grammar is so complex (I'm also not surprised Japanese has few perfect scores). I know I didn't get a passing score. I'm surprised however that Chinese has no perfect scores. I remember some students that had moved from Taiwan or China would take AP Chinese to get free college credits. The grammar of Chinese…

I am a native Chinese speaker (lived in China till college), and I once tried the AP Chinese problems for fun with a friend of mine (also a native speaker). We both find it surprisingly difficult, because it really is geared towards second language learners. One speaking question was like, describe your favorite Chinese film and explain its cultural significance. Okay, I watch films with friends all the time, but it…

Some films have a little more overt cultural significance than others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Live_%281994_film%29

> The film was banned in mainland China by the Chinese State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television due to its critical portrayal of various policies and campaigns of the Communist government. In addition, Zhang [Yimou] was banned from filmmaking for two years.

I agree that it's a ridiculous question, but don't attribute that to the test being "geared towards second language learners". It's geared towards the priorities of US language teachers, which are heavily slanted towards "cultural appreciation" rather than actually getting students to know the language they're appreciating so much.

Judging by your comment, you are also a native speaker of English. Is that true? It's pretty unusual for someone who only left China as an adult.

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

#79

Post by thaumasiotes »

jobu wrote: post #8
wkdown wrote: post #2

The "how" is quite lacking.

Seems pretty clear to me: Yom says he keeps getting asked if there's some secret recipe for getting students to perform at their highest potential. "This may sound corny, but you really have to love them," Yom says. "You build this trust, and at that point, whatever you ask them to do, they'll go the extra mile. The recipe is love." Basically it comes down to soft skills. If people think you care about them they will…

You can get people to do work based on the strength of a personal relationship, sure. I once gave an unexpectedly long assignment to a class of about 30 students, and ended up getting six completed assignments. One was from a student who was just absolutely determined to be "a good student". The other five were clearly done on the basis of my relationship with those five students rather than because they thought it was a reasonable use of their time.

I don't think that approach can scale, though. You can't maintain that kind of relationship with 50 people; you need them to enforce the norm ("do the work!") on each other.

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