Advanced Placement – Because We Don't Trust Teachers

http://cestlaz.github.io/posts/ap-we-dont-trust-teachers/#.Vy3PekoaAjE.hackernews

by zamansky • 10 years ago

18 20 10 years ago

cestlaz.github.io

michaelt• 10 years ago

Here 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?

superuser22• 10 years ago

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.

antognini• 10 years ago

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.

geofft• 10 years ago

Should kids in Kentucky be educated differently from kids in Yorkshire?

gozur882• 10 years ago

That seems pretty reasonable to me, though I don't think you're stating the position very clearly. It's more that people in Kentucky want control over the schools in Kentucky (which, you know, they're paying for) and don't really care what people in Wisconsin want to do with schools in Wisconsin. And vice versa.

cperciva3• 10 years ago

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.

jbangert• 10 years ago

this style of evaluating people (what interesting things have you done) is quite problematic at that age, and forces students to do things for show from early one. I know there are a lot of people who do really exciting things even at a young age (e.g. Running a flight school or competing in the olympics), but if that becomes the sole way of grading/comparing students/getting scholarships, we create pressure to do impressive-sounding things, which leads to the weird US college application system (days filled with extracurriculars, taking classes early, the essay-writing industry, etc.). IMHO, it is much preferable if the 'front door' into elite schools and scholarships exists based on grades and the like( of course, there should be flexibility for admitting extraordinarily accomplished people -- there just shouldn't be any shame in getting in just by hard work/studying/general smarts, so you can be honest about your successes).

danshapiro• 10 years ago

I 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.

germinalphrase• 10 years ago

What aspects of your child's education would you feel should fall under this "two party" rule? Where does that professional trust break down?

russell• 10 years ago

All 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.

cperciva3• 10 years ago

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.)

zamansky3• 10 years ago

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.

argonaut• 10 years ago

1) AP exams can be taken independent of whether you've taken the class. A high school freshman can take any AP exam.

2) It's common in competitive high schools for students to start taking AP classes in junior year (or even sophomore year), so top colleges definitely do see AP scores for most of the top 30% of students applying.

For me, AP credit was huge. It let me skip calculus in college and a bunch of other very time-consuming classes (foreign language, etc.). Instead, it cleared up my schedule so by the end of college I was able to take multiple graduate CS classes.

tinalumfoil• 10 years ago

I can only speak as someone who has gone through (the pain that was) High School, including many AP courses but I have to strongly disagree with this article.

I usually use phrases like "society doesn't trust" but let's personalize it this time – for parents, think about whether or not you trust your kids teachers? Do you a large private, unaccountable organization more?

In my experience College Board is infinitely more accountable than any of the teachers. The AP tests are graded anonymously, with graders blinded to student and school. I've literally had teachers give me different credit for nearly the same work as another student because they "just didn't get the feeling I understood the material" or some thinly veiled attempt at saying the didn't like me. Looking back I wouldn't trust some of my teachers to wash my car let alone determine my future.

You trust your child's teacher with your child's well being every day but you don't trust him to say whether or not your kid knows calculus?

If your kid can't take care of his own well-being by High School you've failed as a parent. If you think it's your job to take care of your student's well-being, you've failed as a teacher. You're supposed to teach them, not change their diapers.

Then you teach the class and in May, one to two months before the end of the semester the kids take the AP exam - you don't see results until the summer.

This is the only point I can partially agree with. Having your entire score come down to one test adds a lot of variables, but in the age of testing this isn't just limited to APs. Thankfully there's enough data you send to college that a single bad data point doesn't hurt too much. And if you really understand the material, retaking a course isn't that bad.

zamansky3• 10 years ago

What you're describing isn't accountability. It's unbiased grading. Grading can be done blind without the college board.

Who does the college board answer to?

fanzhang• 10 years ago

It's worth noting that the author here seems to be a teacher.

One design feature of AP classes is to indeed remove some discretion from teachers. This is a drawback when you have amazing teachers, and a godsend if you have bad or just plain lazy teachers. This is the same pattern as checks-and-balances vs dictators.

Since APs are a control mechanism for teachers then, I would take the article's opinion of APs with a grain of salt. A much more neutral party would be that of a student: a bad test causes pain similar to a bad teacher.

The good news about the student point of view is that most people here can draw from personal experience -- real data.

He cites an AP Calc teacher who was really stellar but got punished by not covering enough material by the time of the AP test.

In your experience, what fraction reflects that AP Calc example above (where discretion is used well at the detriment of the test), and what fraction reflect teachers using discretion badly (and getting caught by the test)? For me the ratio is like 1:3 if not 1:5.

I am open to the idea that there may be good ways to give teachers more discretion in positive ways, but I think it really needs to be acknowledged that APs exist in the first place to solve a problem, a problem that can't just be waved away without convincing data that show an alternative system performs better.

zamansky3• 10 years ago

I'm the guy that wrote the article and yep - I'm a teacher. Really good points here. I already know the answers with respect to my school and schools of friends and colleagues but that is a small sample and not necessarily representative. It's part of what colors my opinion and yes - I agree, one should take everything with a grain of salt.

I know for teachers of APCS (my subject), they used to have a large case study to cover. Teacher's for which the case study fit naturally into their teaching approach, it worked pretty well. For people like myself and many friends and colleagues, it was a large 100 page document with all sorts of ins and outs that took time from teaching, you know, CS.

To your point, a weaker or less knowledgeable CS teacher would probably end up using the case study as a support which could be a good thing.

I guess this also brings a question of depth to mind - in AP Calc, should kids be proving and deriving or memorizing. I'm in the prove and derive camp but a lot of people think otherwise.

Anyway - thanks for your comment here - would you mind cut and pasting it over on the blog - I think it's a really good point and would love to save it for posterity and future readers.

Advanced Placement – Because We Don't Trust Teachers

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