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Joined: Mar 2010
Posts: 38
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Joined: Mar 2010
Posts: 38 |
Uh, I'm just skimming the Board's report but it looks like Mr. Richwine (wasn't there a scandal about this guy?) is not being forthright. I don't see where "The College Board offers some speculative reasons about why some students are college-ready and others are not." Actually, I don't see any direct claim that "college-ready students took more AP tests" or that "more college-ready students took the PSAT." Might have missed it. He's correct about "more college-ready students completed a “core curriculum," but of course, that's not the same as Common Core, which we all know is a new thing.
What the report does say is that students who scored higher on AP tests also scored higher on the SAT, and that students who scored higher on the PSAT score higher on the SAT. Duh. And it tries to sell us the value of the PSAT as an early indicator. But I don't see ANY claims that taking the PSAT or taking AP exams makes you get a higher score on the SAT.
Again, I'm just skimming, but from where I stand this look like like poor journalism from the National Review. See page 5 of the report. It sells the PSAT and AP pretty hard as key ways to improve college readiness. Those students who met the SAT College and Career Readiness Benchmark had a number of critically important academic characteristics that must be shared by all students if our nation is to make meaningful gains in educational attainment. Those characteristics happen to include (via the chart above and the text below) taking the PSAT and taking AP/Honors courses. Note that the correlation provided is just the taking of these tests/classes, not doing well in them.
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Joined: Feb 2010
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Those students who met the SAT College and Career Readiness Benchmark had a number of critically important academic characteristics that must be shared by all students if our nation is to make meaningful gains in educational attainment. Those characteristics happen to include (via the chart above and the text below) taking the PSAT and taking AP/Honors courses. Note that the correlation provided is just the taking of these tests/classes, not doing well in them. The College Board's competitor, the ACT, published a report "The Advanced Placement Program Benefits Mainly Well-Prepared Students Who Pass AP Exams": 1. Taking AP Courses Alone Is Not Related to College Success. Simple comparisons of outcomes for AP and non-AP students can be extremely misleading. They might simply show that whatever personal characteristics cause students to choose to enroll in AP courses—such as motivation and family support—also help them succeed in college. After taking these and other types of pre-existing factors into consideration, there was no evidence in NCEA’s research that merely taking AP courses is related to college graduation rates. 2. Taking AP Courses and Passing AP Exams Is What Matters. On the other hand, we found that passing the corresponding AP exams is related to college graduation rates. That is, students who demonstrate that they are ready for college and that they can successfully complete an AP course and pass an AP exam in high school are also those who are most likely to graduate from college. In general, school systems that do a better job of preparing students for college and career produce more students who take and pass AP exams and also produce more students who later graduate from college. based on a study they commissioned, "The Relationship between Advanced Placement and College Graduation" http://broadprize.org/symposium/2006BroadSymposiumRelationshipBetweenAPandCollegeGrad.pdf .
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Joined: Feb 2011
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Funny... when I was in AP classes, outside of math, there wasn't all that much homework. Mostly by skipping the math, I probably averaged less than an hour per school night. Sure, there was the odd project where I needed to put in a good 3-4 hours in a night, but that was offset by enough nights where I had little or nothing that I needed to do (except math, and that wasn't going to happen).
It was the kids in the classes labeled "college prep" that had all the homework, because they needed practice, practice, practice. Well, AP is the new "college prep." Nobody who seriously wants to attend college skips taking AP credits. While I get the WHY of the correlation between students who do well on AP exams being college-ready, versus those who simply take the AP course... that does sort of produce weird black hole for highly capable 2e students and those who lack the means to pay for or get to an AP testing location. The main reason that my DD doesn't take AP exams isn't that she wouldn't do well on them-- but that getting a seat with accommodations is nightmarish beyond belief, and may well force us to travel even overnight to find a willing test site. Does that mean that her A's in those classes are meaningless? Probably not. Her answer to "why didn't you take the AP test?" is that she didn't take an AP class to get college credits in the first place-- she took it because it was the most rigorous coursework offered, and therefore best met her educational needs. Personally, I think that is a jolly good answer for a 14yo high school academic standout.
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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Joined: Feb 2012
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I am completely out of the loop on this college stuff. How do the dual enrollment programs for high school/college credit play into this?
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Joined: Aug 2010
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OKay, I'm still going to say this: It gets worse. The College Board offers some speculative reasons about why some students are college-ready and others are not. One is that more college-ready students took the PSAT. (Guess who sells the PSAT.) Another is that college-ready students took more AP tests. (Guess who sells AP tests.) Still another is that more college-ready students completed a “core curriculum.” (Guess who will be selling tests based on the Common Core national standards.) is not the same was this: Those students who met the SAT College and Career Readiness Benchmark had a number of critically important academic characteristics that must be shared by all students if our nation is to make meaningful gains in educational attainment. This year’s report highlights characteristics of these students to help demonstrate successful patterns that can be replicated in schools and districts throughout the country.
Students who met the SAT College and Career Readiness Benchmark were more likely to have completed a core curriculum, which is defined as four or more years of English, three or more years of mathematics, three or more years of natural science, and three or more years of social science and history. However, of the students who completed a core curriculum (75 percent), only 49 percent met the SAT Benchmark, indicating a need for more rigorous core courses.
Students who met the SAT College and Career Readiness Benchmark were more likely to have taken honors or AP courses, more likely to have taken higher-level mathematics courses (e.g., precalculus, calculus, and trigonometry), and more likely to be in the top 10 percent of their high school graduating class than their peers who did not meet the SAT Benchmark. Shoddy, crappy journalism. You can write about that, and express concerns about it, without doing what Richwine did. (I admit, I missed "must be shared by all students if our nation is to make meaningful gains in educational attainment." Er.) I'm amused to see I did not complete a "core curriculum." (I only took 2 years of high school science. Yeah, ask me how I got away with that. I don't know.)
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Joined: Feb 2010
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Based on your quotes, I think Richwine's post (at a conservative journal of opinion, after all) is a reasonable summary of the report and does not merit your condemnation.
On a lighter note, one of the "critically important academic characteristics that must be shared by all students if our nation is to make meaningful gains in educational attainment" is that students "be in the top 10 percent of their high school graduating class". Is the College Board pulling our leg?
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Joined: Feb 2011
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{snort} No, they just live at Lake Wobegon.
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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Joined: Apr 2013
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... Richwine's post (at a conservative journal of opinion, after all) is a reasonable summary of the report Agreed! Provoking both thought and discussion, it serves a useful purpose. ... On a lighter note, one of the "critically important academic characteristics that must be shared by all students if our nation is to make meaningful gains in educational attainment" is that students "be in the top 10 percent of their high school graduating class". Is the College Board pulling our leg? Tugging at our leg, or at our purse strings? When there is but ONE definition of success or path to success that people buy in to, we run the risk of societal imbalance by throwing supply and demand out of whack. Measuring success by this definition may be setting the tone for the equity movement in which selected students are enrolled in support classes to boost their high school accomplishment/achievement (in anticipated future Common Core curriculum), receive similar coaching throughout college, and in some scenarios are described as ultimately taking government jobs which allow any accumulated college loan debt to be forgiven? ... This year’s report highlights characteristics of these students to help demonstrate successful patterns that can be replicated in schools and districts throughout the country. Interestingly, this mirrors the practice discussed in the Jan Cross TEDx Talk which pointed to successfully creating change by presenting a societal norm which models the desired behavior. This may also be applied to gifted advocacy. http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/169478.html#Post169478
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Joined: Feb 2011
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I have to say that if that's emblematic of CB's understanding of statistics and mathematics, then I have some serious misgivings about allowing them to define proficiency in this domain. LOL. This might explain why DD preferred the ACT.
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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Joined: Aug 2010
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I totally agree that the "must be shared by all students" part is laughable. To me, as a writer, that reads SO much like something the Big Boss put in after the report was written. Someone lower down probably said, "But...but..." and got told to shut up.
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