[Rooker] sometimes finds students with 1200 on their SATs taking four or five AP courses while New Canaan seniors with 1400s take none.Rooker advises students on college admissions. She said she has asked 85 college admissions officers in the past two years what was the first thing they look for in applicants' transcripts. She said each told her it was "the level of difficulty of the courses taken by a student. It is an automatic assumption that if an able student does not take AP courses when his or her high school offers them, then he or she has chosen not to challenge him or herself."
On that scale, she said, "some New Canaan students appear to be slouches. Why? Because even though NCHS offers AP courses, not many NCHS students take them. Such students appear simply to have chosen not to challenge themselves."
"Yet, I have worked with many students from NCHS who have wanted to take AP courses. They are told, though, that this is not a suitable placement for them. They hear things like: their past performance is not good enough, or they haven't been in honors level classes for the previous grade, or there is only one class and it is full."
Rooker said this is especially true of students with scores between 1250 and 1450 on the old SAT scale of 1600. She said she works with students from several other Connecticut high schools, and sometimes finds students with 1200 on their SATs taking four or five AP courses while New Canaan seniors with 1400s take none. "This is not because they are lazy, but because they were prevented from taking AP classes at NCHS by the system of placement." She said some NCHS staffers say the colleges its students apply to know that the school's non-AP courses are very rigorous, but that argument doesn't work if a New Canaan student applies to a college outside New England that doesn't know much about the school.
"My question is this: in a wonderful school like NCHS where there are a plethora of capable students and capable teachers, why are all able students not offered the opportunity to take AP courses?" Rooker said. "If this means changing the selection criteria, then that should be done. If it means adding more sections of some courses, then that should be done. If it means adding more AP courses, then that should be done. Why are many able students left to appeal and petition for placement in an AP courses, hoping to be admitted, only to find out that they aren't? . . . Our students are caught in the trap of not being allowed to take AP courses by their local high school, and then are being judged by college admissions committees for not taking them."
School Rating Scoundrels Club
Tuesday, August 1, 2006; 11:58 AM
Here in Irvington the action is in the Honors track.
Everyone can take AP courses.
Honors courses are tightly tracked. Tightly.
As one district employee told me, "Irvington is the most heavily tracked district I've ever seen."
Honors courses start in 9th grade, AP courses in 11th.
Are non-Honors kids prepared for AP courses?
Don't know.
Never been discussed with me or any other parent who does not currently have a child in the high school.
Jay Mathews on the class struggle
Jay Mathews column on wealthy schools, AP courses, SAT scores
are wealthy schools worse?
value added comes to Westchester
Why in the world would a school discourage a motivated student from attempting a more rigorous course? Taking the courses does not mean you have to take the exam.
ReplyDeleteThere is a disincentive for a school to have students take the exam if the kids are unlikely to pass as that information is reported to the state. Our "Strategic School Profiles" in Connecticut report the number of kids taking the test and the pass rate.
But to my knowledge Conn does not collect or report the number of students that take the course, but opt not to take the exam.
I need Tracy to write something about this.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I can see - which is limited, of course - wealthy schools probably have "perverse incentives" operating on them that result in a practice of limiting student achievement:
* the bad gets normal: highly self-selected parent population, lots of parent reteaching, tutor-hiring, etc., all of which for a variety of reasons leads to an ongoing (and unnoticed) shifting of responsibility for teaching from school to families; as this continues curriculum, pedagogy, and teaching decline - so more teaching is outsourced to more parents, etc.
* pushy parents: HUGE incentive to give parents ZERO evidence that their kids are doing less than they could be doing; HUGE incentive to stonewall & spin; thus, no letter grades in K-5; no norm-referenced tests; no published scope and sequence; and no impulse to raise achievement. When you drop a child from a more advanced class in which he is "struggling" to a less advanced class in which he does not struggle, the parent stops complaining. Life is good.
* lack of "sticks": school is guaranteed of always having high achievement - fantastic achievement in a few; no one is under pressure to raise scores; etc.
* NCLB enters the picture: the middle school principal is making noises about "not meeting AYP" - I have no idea whether we're in danger of not meeting AYP (more buried stats - must dig them up) - but I do know that the vast majority of black kids in the middle school are in "building services" etc. At the Board meeting the middle school principal said he's only concerned about the struggling kids.
As far as I can tell, wealthy schools with highly educated parents have a pretty serious sticks-and-carrots problem.
Damn few carrots for attempting to raise student achievement, but lots of sticks waiting for you if you do.
I could be wrong.