Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Why High School Rankings are Meaningless: article

AMEN.


This. YES.

I'm particularly smitten by this particular observation:


This is absolutely true-- and it is a serious problem for pretty much every parent who reads/posts on a board like this one. When AP = "differentiation" for gifted students, sucking mediocre students INTO those courses dilutes that differentiation and risks making it meaningless drivel or little more than test coaching.

My DD's AP Physics B experience is a prime example of what happens when a course refuses to 'dumb down' for those kids who don't actually belong in the AP course. The year started with over 20 students in that course. My DD is one of only 6 students finishing the year, and one of only two of them earning A's in the process.

Most non-gifted high school students have no business in these courses-- if, that is, they are as they are intended/purported to be. The pace and the expectations are simply beyond them.

To say that is to open a Pandora's box. If it is true, and if AP courses represent college level work, then "most non-gifted high school students have no business" trying to get a bachelor's degree, either, except that many employers use the BA effectively as a high school diploma.

What HK said and then some.

Personally the stuff about packing classes full of 'students' not even remotely qualified to be there appears to equally apply to college these days.

I do see this as a difference between high school now and high school as it was. I went to a privileged public high school, and AP Physics and AP Calc were available to me. I did not take them, because I knew I would find them very hard (and I wasn't interested). Not many students did--these were known to be very difficult, hard-core classes for serious math/science nerds. I also was not encouraged or pressured to take them, because everyone knew my skills lay elsewhere. In fact, I took only two AP classes (English and History). I still got into very selective colleges. IIRC, I didn't even take the AP History exam. (I took the English one because it allowed me to place out of freshman English.)

Today, I assume that I would have HAD to take a whole slew of AP classes in everything, and that they would have been dumbed down to suit me and other less capable students.

There is a HUGE difference between an 11th grader and a college freshman that has nothing to do with age or maturity.

The largest single difference is the expectation of course loads.

My daughter has eight classes this semester. Yes, 8.

She was truly freaked out last December by the concept that in just 18 months "all of my classes will be like Physics and Lit." Well, yes-- but the reality is that they won't all 'count' the same way that the goofy credit system in high school places these things. (Every semester of every class is a "half Carnegie unit" which is just stupid.)

Okay-- so looking at her course load in terms of a quarter-system college schedule:

Physics w/ Lab-- 4 credit hours
English Literature-- 3-4 credit hours
Social Science course-- 3 credit hours
US History-- 3 credit hours
Foreign language-- 3-4 credit hours
fluffy elective 1-- 1-3 hours
Non-fluffy elective 2-- 2-3 hours

Anyone else seeing what I'm saying here?

NO advisor would sign off on this kind of schedule for a freshman student, and precious few even for a senior student who needed the courses to graduate. In fact, it's nearly double a full course load for a college student.

The top four, there, are all AP/Honors. When I pointed out to DD that just those four would be considered a "full" course load for a college student, she looked at me like I had three heads. "Really? I thought that college was supposed to be HARD," she said. LOL.

The thing is, most high school students cannot cope (and really, should not be able to) with a full course load as high schools define it (6 courses or more).... AND the addition of AP coursework. In any college setting, 6 'regular' classes (that is, not including something like a 1-2hr lab section or seminar class meeting once weekly) is an overload.

The load balancing needed to manage AP in high school is a matter of time management and working LONGER (not necessarily "harder") whereas the balancing needed by college students is often something quite different in terms of the task complexity required in the work itself.

Of course AP doesn't do much to prepare the average high schooler. Instead, those classes may simply encourage such students to imagine that working longer hours = better grades, and it doesn't. At least not in college it doesn't.


It's also worth noting that most college faculty would have argued the point about AP being truly equal to college level work even as long as 20 years ago. They'd have been right, incidentally, and it certainly hasn't gotten better in the interim. We're very careful about which AP courses our DD chooses, and much depends on the teachers in charge of them. She's not taking them because they are college "level" but because they are at least college work-load and intensity, and because while her classmates are in survival mode, she learns rapidly enough to actually tolerate the pace very well and be authentically learning the material that most of her classmates are struggling to remember well enough to pass assessments. I realize that sounds elitist/dismissive, and I'm not really suggesting that. This 'mile-wide-and-inch-deep' problem is well-documented re: AP and Val and I have dicussed it at length. AP is a good fit in some ways for HG+ kids, and bad in others, but at least it allows her to frame deeper autodidactic learning. Frankly, with good instruction, AP calculus would be on the table for her, since her largest problem with math has always been the pacing of instruction.

Can we agree that she is not-not-not "most" kids, however?

I see her classmates (mostly bright-to-MG) and they are ragged in the face of the demands in those same classes.

Huh?

Colleges count harder, more time-consuming coursework in a weighted manner that most high schools do not. That load of courses (well, 7 last term and 8 this) adds up to just 7.0 semester "credits" on the year. In a quarter-based college setting, that same load would generate as much as 70 quarter hours over that same period of time (assuming that the student could do it, which most couldn't), and often undergraduates need only 130 such quarter hours (properly distributed of course) to complete a degree. Of course, maybe it's just me that has a problem with "career exploration" being given equal billing and crediting with AP physics. LOL.

Therefore, the time pressure invoked by a full high school schedule that includes 2-3 AP courses is not comparable to college to begin with. Good thing, actually, but that isn't the real point. The real point is that to accommodate that reality, AP courses aren't collegiate in content/level.

They do a lot of hand-waving about this, but ultimately, the way that high school get around it is to do more work in those classes (thus keeping a clear conscience re: 'rigor') but in a way that is still feasible for the most intrepid students of more modest ability. That is, those students willing to go without sleep to get through the sheer workload of it all will be rewarded (generally speaking) with passing grades in those courses.

But this is why colleges have a certain disdain for AP as a marker of high quality. Fortitude, certainly. Great proxy for THAT.

I think that another part of the burden on some high school students is the arms race to get into IVY LEAGUE SCHOOLS!!!! (My understanding is that not all high school students get worked so hard)

Certainly, the private high schools that are on the college-prep track around here are all focusing on that idea. Our students get into IVY LEAGUE SCHOOLS!! is always touted over and over again at prospective student open houses (often by parents who resemble the wide-mouthed frog). It wouldn't surprise me if this is also the case at the high-achieving public high schools like Brooklyn Tech, etc.

Personally, I think it's insane and abusive, but that's just me.

Hk- I follow what you're saying.

I personally didn't take AP classes, because I was interested only in science AP classes; and I would still need to take these in college. (I did test out of Freshman math and English though.)

One thought (which I won't claim to be an expert on) is the educational system in England. I studied abroad during "silly electives" in intro type classes. The kids in class with me were freshman already knowing quite a lot in their area of expertise. This was due to the last 2 years of high school focusing on 4 subjects. It was quite eye opening to me. Even though those classes were my electives and their core classes; I couldn't believe how far ahead they were and how much I needed to teach myself to be in par with the class (able to participate). It also hurt my GPA.

I do think that AP classes would be able to be more meaningful and not watered down if less classes were required in high school, so the students could focus on the class with sufficient attention. Also, the goal (which I don't see changing anytime) of a school is not how many AP classes or students in AP classes it has. It should be selective and really the kids who deserve to be in it and can understand and do the work in a reasonable time get to be offered the class.

I guess I am slowly realizing all the things the school(s) tell me they have in place for gt kids may not really work as explained.

I recently explained to a family member (who grew up in another country) that Stanford was not an Ivy League school, and that the Ivy League was "an athletic conference composed of sports teams from eight private institutions of higher education in the Northeastern United States", quoting the Wikipedia. Her plausible logic was

(1) Stanford is famous
(2) the Ivies are famous
(3) Stanford is an Ivy

Bostonian, I think that for those not from the NE or from Academia, "Ivy" is often used loosely as a synonym for "Elite/Most Applicants Turned Away/Highest Level of Prestige."

So while the term may technically mean just those 8 schools, to most people, it means something more like some loose collection (defined idiosyncratically, if you talk to people about it) collection of institutions that they have very high respect for as institutions (be it warranted or not).

Duke isn't an Ivy League, either.

However, I was more than willing to go there for law school rather than Cornell.

Ithica is cold.

Conversely, it was my impression in high school that I was getting less homework in AP than my compadres in the non-AP equivalents... to which they would respond, "At least I don't have to write nearly so many essays!" This was a trade in which we both considered ourselves winners.

My perceptions are slightly skewed, mind you, by the fact that for my most labor-intensive classes (namely, math), I solved the problem of excessive homework by not doing it. Also affecting my perceptions was the fact that I could crank out an essay of acceptable quality, on any topic, in one hour. So take that for what it's worth.

Neither Duke nor Stanford are Ivy League schools no matter how much you want to twist the definition.

Granted, you may have to be from the Northeast to understand this.

There are also essentially two levels within the Ivy League.

Real Ivies and Safety Ivies.

I thought those were "Baby Ivies." Or "Second Class" depending on one's perspective within the Ivory Tower itself.



In all seriousness, I wasn't defending the "It-means-whatever-I-want-it-to-mean" crowd. Revisionism like that kind of bugs me in general terms, fwiw.

Just offering a plausible explanation of the phenomenon.

It's an excellent explanation of the phenomenon, which makes it an excellent indicator of general relevance.

If you are talking to someone and they think that Stanford is an "Ivy League" school, you can be certain that you are talking to one of the lumpenproletariat and adjust your expectations accordingly.

Ditto. Pretty much exactly. My main claim to fame in college was the ability to walk into an exam cold and fill a bluebook in an hour with well-structured writing. LOL.

Take my word for it-- in modern high school reality, there are two important differences in addition to the fact that these things are fundamentally reversed now (that is, the AP classes have a lot MORE work associated with them than the standard versions do).

1. Quality ain't what it used to be. Not by a long shot. So those not-so-rigorous classes with less writing also don't ask students to produce much in the way of excellence, either... and even less so now.

2. More is just more, not better. It's not that the quality expectations are SO much better in AP, actually. Appallingly.

AP students are taught--specifically-- to tackle the kinds of multiple choice items which will appear on AP exams. Yes. They spend class time on this now. As opposed to cranking out acceptable quality essays.



I.will.be.so.glad.to.be.done.with.this.garbage. This is such a perversion of what I consider education to be that it is disgusting to me as a human being.

Oh yes. That AP History class my DS dropped after 2 weeks was full of practice for the AP exam. The most egregious examples were the amazing forty-minute lightning essays. The kids would get a topic and were told to write about it for 40 minutes. No sources or footnotes allowed. Just keep writing!!

The instructor left my son and I on his mailing list for the whole year. I just looked through his messages and saw that the class covered World War II and the Cold War in a single week. The assignment for those topics was the same as it always was every week: read the chapters and take the multiple choice tests. Passing the tests required memorizing the kinds of picayune details that are fodder for MC test questions. Talk about needing fortitude to get through it! Blech.

Looking back on my own AP classes in the 80s, the stuff we did in Calculus was a reasonable approximation of college-level material. And Mr. W. never gave a multiple choice test. English was not even close to the college writing courses I took the next year. European history was somewhere in between --- but it was much better than the model in the AP US History class my son dropped. Again, no multiple choice tests and there was an expectation to cite our sources in papers.

In thinking about how these classes work now, calling them "college level" is really something of a sad joke. They aren't. They're...kind of more of a business model for the testing and test prep industries.

No, the person with the mistaken view is pretty smart.

Yes, exactly as Val notes. My DD's AP Literature course is appalling in terms of the multiple choice "quizzes" offered.

I think I posted one of the peculiar little "gems" from that course last autumn in the Bad Homework thread. The Lord Byron/Mary Shelley muse question? THAT question? Yeah-- 20% of the grade on that particular "assessment" was on the basis of that one question. Which my DD got wrong-- not because she didn't know, but because she was thinking too much. She could have written a cogent paragraph-- or more-- answering that question, but couldn't "choose" a single correct answer because there wasn't one given.

That is fairly typical from what we've seen in this class. Her quiz grades are about 20% lower than all her written work. In spite of our sense that her writing skills are "average" that is clearly not the case relative to her academic peers, though if HER writing is "exemplary" (as it seems to be by today's HS standards) then I shudder to imagine was "passable" has become.

A University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill freshman says that his college classes are easier than his AP classes in high school:

http://www.popecenter.org/commentaries/article.html?id=2851
Challenge Me: A student at UNC-Chapel Hill is surprised to find that his freshman courses were less rigorous than many high school classes.
By Alex Thomas
May 26, 2013

That would not surprise me one bit, coming from a HG/HG+ student.

We fully anticipate that DD will find many of her college courses easier than some of her high school work.


It's about the VOLUME.

With the hubris of the young, however, this individual has conflated those two things in a grossly distorted fashion.

And really, 101? Someone who took AP coursework in an area in high school should not BE taking 100-level courses. Those are usually BELOW the level assumed for an AP offering.

Duh. Bad advising and course selection, I'd think.


It'd be interesting to see what his opinion is after more than a semester peppered with intro courses, actually.

Once again, huh?

What's being distorted here?

Dang. I know I didn't take a single multiple choice test in AP English. History, maybe. English? Are you kidding me?

I'm pleased to say that none of my college classes were easier than anything I took in high school (and my high school is supposedly extremely good). I was a star French student in high school and tested into a rather high-level French class as a college freshman. The professor was from the Ivory Coast and spoke in rapid-fire, very high-level French from day 1. We started off by reading The Plague (in French, obviously) and writing a literary essay on it (again, in French). I got a B-; the paper was seething in red ink. Welcome to college. It was sort of refreshing.

He has concluded, based on ONE semester at ONE college, in a series of admittedly introductory (and non-majors level, if I'm right) courses which SHOULD be at-- and in one case, below--the level of those very same AP courses, that AP coursework is "harder than college." Yes, I'd say that is probably hubris in someone who hasn't yet taken anything upper-division. Heheh.

Why wouldn't a class that you nominally recently completed seem "easy" compared to the first time?? Particularly at the 100 level? Good heavens, if it didn't, then the author probably isn't college-ready.

As for the reduction in volume, that's what I'm talking about. He may find the volume lighter in college. I don't doubt it. But no WAY do I accept that what was sufficient for A's in those AP high school courses in terms of quality would be acceptable for them in a collegiate setting.

Now, the effort required to produce cogent essays is probably far less-- because as noted, it's his second time through the material.

As for the comparison of introductory German and AP US History (which is notorious for its workload, incidentally), that's a spurious comparison to start with. Very different learning tasks involved there.

I sincerely wish that I were.

I always appreciated a good multiple choice exam in law school.

My two cents:

HK, you're absolutely right that there's no reason to be taking 100 level courses for content you tested out of in advanced HS courses. I bet he's in for a different experience, when he starts taking upper level courses in his major!

I have to quibble with your assertion that the volume of an advanced high school student is greater than college. Bear in mind that generally, the high school student gets a whole academic year to cover the material in a one semester course at a university.

An example from my own life, I took AP Calculus and passed the AP test as a senior in high school (I had an honors/AP-heavy course load that senior year). It allowed me to test out of a college math course, but I still needed math credits for my major (Geology). The pace of my Math 111 and Math 112 courses was much faster than anything I had experienced in high school. The same goes for other "college level" courses I took in high school; we covered similar material with similar assignments and evaluations, but we took twice as long to do it.

In my experience, most of the courses I had for my major in college were much harder than anything I had in high school, but many of my GE courses were on par with or easier than my "college level" high school courses.

I found this interesting :

http://tusb.stanford.edu/2011/07/when-did-stanford-join-the-ivy-league.html

I also think Stanford has a lot of prestige associated with it. It is also pretty hard to get into Stanford -- you need excellent scores, AP courses, top 1% of your high school etc etc.


I agree with this. In HS, it is more about accomplishing the volume of work. Quality matters, but it matters so much more in college

In my experience...university liberal studies classes freshman year...2-3 exams, one or two papers depending on class. How you learned the material for the exams up to you. LOW volume...read, study how you see fit on your own time table.

High school AP class (in 1983)...many smaller assignments (in addition to reading and retaining the material out of the text book, we had assignments out of Annals of American History books to read and summarize and compare writings from there) and many tests but it took all year for me to learn how to write high quality essays on exams. But she did not require tons of outlining and note cards and assignments that I hear kids have to do today (high volume)...we were supposed to read and learn the material using whatever method we found helpful.

My math classes in high school and my math classes in college were very similar because someone clued me in to the fact that the evening class was more like a high school math class in that it had less than 30 students in it. The other sections of the class had giant lecture twice a week by the professor and then small group sessions run by a grad student and I know I wouldn't have liked that.

Only difference, college...he didn't collect homework but you were still expected to do it, high school they did. So same volume but no penalty for not doing homework. College grad student teaching me had an accent and was an extremely fast talker and I had to pay REALLY close attention because many of his words sounded very similar. Kept me on my toes.

Just started reading College (Un)Bound by Jeffrey Selingo, who is the editor at large at Chronicle of Higher Education.

He makes the point that there is a credentials race. The rankings are deceptive and a game to rack up money. Ch-ching.

Far worse, Selingo says that the lack of rigor at colleges and universities today affects everyone and that no one mentions what students actually learn. Gulp. Pretty damning. I knew it was bad since I used to teach as an adjunct at a community college and state college before I had ds7, but still I thought the swanky selective, prestigious schools had a different caliber of students than I did. Well, not necessarily, I'm sad to say. This is a bleak picture to be sure.

I haven't finished the book yet or even half of it, but I would recommend reading it to parents here. He book has three sections to it, including a section on the future. Selingo has spent more than 15 years at the Chronicle of Higher Education so I would say he's quite reputable and knows what he's talking about with higher education.

For those of us who went to school in the early 80s (or earlier), you might be in for an eye opener on the state of higher education today (or not).

Good advice, cdfox. Selingo makes some very good points.

Here's a nice National Law Journal about law school from a law professor, which is basically the college problem on steroids.

I was glad to hear that my cousin had just graduated from Penn State with $100,000 in loans. She may yet follow in her mother's footsteps and become a prison guard (union, of course).

What is occurring is that prospective students are now recognizing that we reached Peak (Private) Lawyer in 2004. This problem has not yet really become apparent to the average 17 or 18 year old prospective college student:

"With the decline in jobs in private practice, the average starting salaries for all law school graduates has declined from $85,000 (for the class of 2009) to $74,000 (for the class of 2011). The median salary now hovers even lower, at $60,000 per year. To further compound problems, the largest entering class on record — those students entering law school in the fall of 2010 — are graduating this spring and entering a highly saturated legal market. Only 55.7 percent of their immediate predecessors found full-time, long-term jobs as practicing lawyers.

The current situation is politically combustible. Despite average debt loads in excess of $100,000 per year, nine months after graduation approximately one-third of all law school graduates do not have full-time, long-term professional jobs — the minimum desired outcome of virtually every student who enters law school.
Arguably, law schools are the bleeding edge of the growing problems facing all four-year colleges and universities: ­growing tuition and debt loads in combination with flat or declining earning for graduates.

The six-figure debt loads of unemployed or underemployed law students make them the poster children for a system of higher education that is rapidly on its way to becoming unsustainable. Sallie Mae, the government -chartered lender for higher education, is having difficulties selling its bundled student loans to large institutional investors, prompting concerns that the federal government is financing a student loan bubble that is destined to burst."

http://m.law.com/module/alm/app/nlj.do#!/article/980887792

(Debt which can no longer be discharged by pretty much anything but... death. )


Figured I'd add that part, since it's a huge part of the overall picture at this point.

Well, yes, Howler Karma. Couldn't agree with you more. Selingo makes the argument too that the tuition and cost to attend college/university is a huge part of the overall picture. In fact, that comprises 1/3 of the book or more. Of course, the entire system is unsustainable as it currently is.

Selingo argues that colleges and universities are often fudging the financial aid part or engaging in deceptive practices to court students and bring money in. It's really appalling and scandalous.

Selingo also points out the findings from a groundbreaking study in the 2011 book, Academically Adrift, and how the lack of rigor at colleges and universities is essentially destroying higher education. Selingo writes, "this study found that students spent 12 hours a week studying on average....Most didn't take courses that required them to read more than forty pages a week or write more than twenty pages over the course of an entire semester," from in College (Un)Bound, page 26.

Geez, if this is the case, my ds7 spends more time and effort and produces more 'results' from unschooling/homeschooling than college students. At least with ds7 I can assess what he is actually learning and how. I have oversight. I fail to see how parents of college/university students pay such horrendous tuition bills without some kind of quality control.

Because college is about what amounts to paying union dues in this day and age.

The education happens on its own and is really irrelevant at this point in the ongoing decay of higher education.

I'd be very interested in hearing from other people about this idea.

I went to college in the mid-1980s. I attended a Seven Sister college.

Here's a sample of my workload:

• No multiple choice tests, ever.
• English or other humanities classes: anything 200-level or up required at least one 20-page paper as well as shorter papers. There was a lot of reading (hundreds to thousands of pages per semester).
• Even some mid-100 level classes had us reading thousands of pages per semester. The papers were shorter, though.
• Exams were essay based. You typically picked x out of n questions to answer.
• Science classes: all had a lab component.
• You had to write lab reports every week.
• Exams were problem-based (same for math classes), though some questions asked for the general idea about [insert topic].
• The college had an honor code, and from what I could tell, people took it pretty seriously. But maybe I was oblivious.

That's a broad overview that leaves out some areas, but gives the general idea.

For people who finished college before 1990, what kind of college did you attend (small college, CC, big uni, public/private, etc.) and was your experience like?

For people who finished college more recently, what was your academic experience like?

Val, I graduated from a school of a similar type to Seven Sisters in the '90s and that sounds about right, although I do remember multiple choice tests in intro psych and possibly the intro geology class I took (not coincidentally, I'm sure, these were also my biggest classes). Intro psych was too easy--one of just a couple of classes like that. The other that was too easy was intro to computers, which I shouldn't have taken, but took to get out of taking math (we had a quantitative skills requirement). My school had an honor code to the point where there were no proctors at any exam. I never observed a single violation--doesn't mean there weren't any, but I never saw it, and I never, ever heard anyone talk about breaking the code.

I could have spent more time on my work, but I spent a lot. I definitely had hundreds of pages to read a week, and some of it was horrifically dense literary theory and that sort of thing.

I do think the science majors were working harder than I was, though. But I read really fast, and writing papers is easy for me.