Advanced Placement – Because We Don't Trust Teachers
cestlaz.github.io
Advanced Placement – Because We Don't Trust Teachers
1–10 of 21 posts
Re: Advanced Placement – Because We Don't Trust Teachers
#2Here in the UK, all high school exams are set by exam boards, which are independent of the schools (the schools get a choice and can offer exams from a mixture of exam boards - so if one exam board is messing up too badly schools can just choose another).
That seems like common sense to me - it makes sure anyone looking at someone's grades knows an A from a poor inner city school is the same as an A from the most prestigious private school. How else would you stop standards getting out of alignment at different schools and across the country?
Re: Advanced Placement – Because We Don't Trust Teachers
#3I wish more of my children's education required two well-qualified parties to agree before being implemented.
That doesn't mean I trust either party more than the other; it means I want two people to sign off on major decisions, without me having to judge which is more credible.
Re: Advanced Placement – Because We Don't Trust Teachers
#4Here in the UK, all high school exams are set by exam boards, which are independent of the schools (the schools get a choice and can offer exams from a mixture of exam boards - so if one exam board is messing up too badly schools can just choose another). That seems like common sense to me - it makes sure anyone looking at someone's grades knows an A from a poor inner city school is the same as an A from the most pre…
If you look at the states'-rights arguments for why schools should be controlled and funded at the hyper-local rather than federal level, it seems many people in the US believe standards should be out of alignment across the country. People with political power honestly believe that kids in Kentucky ought to be educated differently than kids in Wisconsin.
Re: Advanced Placement – Because We Don't Trust Teachers
#5Here in the UK, all high school exams are set by exam boards, which are independent of the schools (the schools get a choice and can offer exams from a mixture of exam boards - so if one exam board is messing up too badly schools can just choose another). That seems like common sense to me - it makes sure anyone looking at someone's grades knows an A from a poor inner city school is the same as an A from the most pre…
If you look at the states'-rights arguments for why schools should be controlled and funded at the hyper-local rather than federal level, it seems many people in the US believe standards should be out of alignment across the country. People with political power honestly believe that kids in Kentucky ought to be educated differently than kids in Wisconsin.
I do believe that kids in Kentucky should be educated differently than kids in Wisconsin. If there was some One True Way to teach children I would see the advantage of setting standards at the federal level, but education research is a total mess. We don't yet have the One True Way to teach, and until then, I think there is a great deal to be said for experimentation.
Re: Advanced Placement – Because We Don't Trust Teachers
#6All well and good if your kids are from a school known to the admissions department at the colleges they are applying to, otherwise the AP courses, with all their flaws, are a reasonable compromise that gets them college credit.
My kids took a different route when faced with a truly incompetent high school calculus teacher. My wife convinced the high school to allow them to take courses at the local community college for both high school and college credit. The courses were approved by the University of California so there was no issue about transfer of credits.
Re: Advanced Placement – Because We Don't Trust Teachers
#7Here in the UK, all high school exams are set by exam boards, which are independent of the schools (the schools get a choice and can offer exams from a mixture of exam boards - so if one exam board is messing up too badly schools can just choose another). That seems like common sense to me - it makes sure anyone looking at someone's grades knows an A from a poor inner city school is the same as an A from the most pre…
In British Columbia, we used to have grade 12 "provincial exams" which were centrally set and graded; these were worth 40% of a student's final grade, vs. 60% for the school portion of their mark. Even though the majority of a student's final grade was set by the school, having uniformly graded exams made it very obvious when a school awarded consistently generous marks. (And it was useful for other analyses too: One interesting pattern was that female students taught by female teachers consistently out-performed on schoolwork compared to examinations, while female students with male teachers and male students with female teachers showed no such pattern.)
About a decade ago, the provincial government decided to scrap most of the exams, and now it's much harder to assess incoming students' grades; I've heard rumours of increasing gaps between schools' grading practices from several sources, along with "black books" with per-school "adjustment factors" -- but I doubt anyone would admit to these publicly. When it comes to awarding scholarships (I am my alma mater's alumni representative on that committee), I now rely very little on grades but instead look primarily for more qualitative facets: Has the student done anything exceptional (took 6 AP courses in grade 9; won an olympic medal; travels the world performing with major symphony orchestras; qualified flight instructor who runs a flying school; has a research paper published in a major journal), and whether they can articulate a vision for why they want to attend university ("I've always been interested in learning" is better than nothing; "it's what people do after finishing high school" is pathetic; a story about the profound impact of a relative dying of cancer and how it shaped everything they've done since, good).
I'd love to see standardized testing return, but there's a prisoner's dilemma: If one institution requires students to write extra exams, the number of applications they receive will drop sharply. And getting all the universities to cooperate when they're very much competing for the top students... well, that's not likely to happen any time soon.
Re: Advanced Placement – Because We Don't Trust Teachers
#8All well and good if your kids are from a school known to the admissions department at the colleges they are applying to, otherwise the AP courses, with all their flaws, are a reasonable compromise that gets them college credit. My kids took a different route when faced with a truly incompetent high school calculus teacher. My wife convinced the high school to allow them to take courses at the local community college…
a school known to the admissions department
It's worth noting that this can be an issue for graduate admissions too: When I was studying in Oxford, emails would come around the department on a regular basis asking "does anyone know anything about the University of FooBar? One of their students is applying". (Of course, Oxford is unusual in the extent to which it draws graduate students from around the world.)
Re: Advanced Placement – Because We Don't Trust Teachers
#9I wish more of my children's education required two well-qualified parties to agree before being implemented. That doesn't mean I trust either party more than the other; it means I want two people to sign off on major decisions, without me having to judge which is more credible.
What aspects of your child's education would you feel should fall under this "two party" rule? Where does that professional trust break down?
Re: Advanced Placement – Because We Don't Trust Teachers
#10All well and good if your kids are from a school known to the admissions department at the colleges they are applying to, otherwise the AP courses, with all their flaws, are a reasonable compromise that gets them college credit. My kids took a different route when faced with a truly incompetent high school calculus teacher. My wife convinced the high school to allow them to take courses at the local community college…
Colleges don't see AP scores until after a student is admitted so admissions only sees the fact that the kid is in the class. Also, from what I can tell, admissions offices do have a pretty good feel for the schools they read for.
Once a kid is accepted, schools already give placement tests so that takes care of that issue.
On the credit front, I think partnering with a college would yield better results (like what you did).
I also wonder how much the credits mean - if a kid can knock off a full semester, it's obviously a big saving but given the way colleges charge undergrads - a fixed amount for a varying number of credits, at the end of the day, I wonder if it makes much of a difference for a kid that gets a small handful of credits.