Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums GT Research Predicting AP scores from PSAT scores

LOL! Really, though, those stats combined with the "PSAT scores are good predictors" would seem to be pretty solid support for letting way-out-there younger kids take AP classes.

I'd add a caveat, though, based on one of the other studies I was browsing last night. Yes, the rule of thumb is SAT = PSAT*10. But actual same-year SAT administrations tend to result in a band of likely scores where PSAT*10 is below the midpoint. So you probably ought to knock a few points off in the SAT-to-PSAT conversion.


I think it would be within the rules to show that on a transcript as Calculus, with no AP designation. Since you can take the exam without the classwork, there should be no issue there. And that kid's likely to have enough college-level coursework that the AP designation would have been meaningless, in any case.


Bwahahaha. I read that as, "if all those pressure-cooker schools run their 8th graders through AP Bio, that sort of undermines our goal of convincing colleges that AP classes are equivalent to a first-year course at a well-regarded 4-year school."

In practice, I suspect that the <9th graders taking AP classes are either native speakers of tested foreign languages (sanctioned by the CB), or individually tutored.

The school does pay the costs for administration of the exam, including proctors and also including special proctoring situations-- meaning those with accommodations. My daughter, for example, needs to be individually tested because of her accommodations.

That's testing alone, mind. Most high schools don't want to host a test for anything that they don't teach, (on the assumption that it doesn't do much to benefit their own student population, which is probably more-or-less true on average). So in most instances, hosting an AP exam also means teaching the AP class that supports the evaluation.

It does cost $$ to have additional classes with a teacher, and there is no way around the fact that a high school pretty much has to offer graduation requirements X, Y, and Z. Even if more than a full class of students would be better served by offering "AP Z" they still have to offer the regular course for those who aren't. That means that the school is stuck offering "remedial Z," "standard Z" and "AP Z" to begin with-- and if they have to add an additional section of "AP Z" that doesn't mean that they get to drop either the standard or remedial courses. So that is an additional teacher, or an overload on an FTE, at the very least.

Logistically, this is the reason why high-pressure high schools like our local one restrict access to AP coursework to 11th and 12th graders, basically. PARENTS would otherwise be elbowing one another out of the way to get their kids into those classes as freshman. (At least locally, that would also be-- in my estimation and based on observation-- regardless of readiness/appropriateness in the students in question, as well... so the school is sidestepping yet another way that parents 'compete' to have the most "accomplished" and "special-super-hero" children to brag about... :sigh: It's a local thing, but trust me here, it's real.)

Functionally, that would amount to reducing the AP classes offered to a titular credential on the transcript of students whose parents are obnoxious and entitled enough to get their kids in the door. Because naturally, those same parents aren't going to be very happy when their not-actually-gifted-but-bright-enough students start coming home with C's and D's in those classes... this is precisely the impact that those same parents have had on the district's GT programming, which is largely (now) a matter of fluffy enrichment activities that have nothing to do with a need for accelerated or advanced content or pedagogy. We even ran into it at our local university's "summer TAG camp" programs, where the organizers suddenly came up with a host of "age-restrictions" to prevent my DD from registering for the grade-appropriate camp (5th-6th grade) when she was 8, trying to shuttle her instead into an age-cohort with MG 3rd graders (she naturally rebelled FIERCELY at the notion of doing 'tie dye' rather than molecular biology experiments). Just an aside there to explain some of the forces at work in a practical sense when you begin talking about the politics of labeling things "special" and "advanced" in a region with highly educated parents with relatively high socioeconomic status as well.

That's the cynical and pragmatic side of things speaking. As parent to a child who is ready for AP coursework at a chronological age more typically reserved for 7th grade, however, I agree that children ought to be taking such coursework when they are academically well-perpared and ready. That just isn't how it seems to work; instead, it's by grade level, more or less. There are 10th graders who can't get in and belong there, and 12th graders who are in them and would almost certainly be better served by less advanced courses. Our local high school counselor/academic advisor told us point blank that she'd probably be better served by simply attending the local community college to start with, since her transcripts would have her topping out on their course offerings in less than a year anyway, even if they made exceptions for her and had her in all AP-coursework as a 12 year old true freshman.


Thanks for the chuckle at the tongue-in-cheek observation that clearly 8th graders should all be taking AP exams if we want them to be successful on the PSAT. Sadly, you just know that someone, somewhere has actually considered this more seriously.

The SAT is still a paper-and-pencil exam for all types of questions -- multiple choice, short answer, and essay. Some people have said cursive handwriting should still be taught because students practiced in it can write faster in cursive than using block letters. It has been shown that SAT essay scores have a substantial positive correlation with the length of the essay.

A similar study using the PLAN (the middle sibling in the
EXPLORE, PLAN, ACT trio of tests) scores of 10th graders to predict future AP test scores is "Using PLAN to Identify Student
Readiness for Rigorous Courses in High
School" http://www.act.org/research/policymakers/pdf/UsingPlan.pdf . Some gifted kids take the ACT for a talent search. Since PLAN scores can be used to predict ACT scores http://www.act.org/planstudent/score/actcomp.html , the reverse should also be true.

PLAN's got a much lower correlation than the PSAT does, though. If it's all you've got (or the ACT / EXPLORE is), then yes, it's another piece of helpful information.

Lots of Chinese-American children take Chinese language classes starting from kindergarten at Chinese school, which may prepare them for AP Chinese before 9th grade.

Bwahaha. Many of my first-year Chinese classmates in college had a long history of Saturday school. "Oh, that's what my mom's always saying to me!" was a common comment.

I'd guess the very young kids taking the AP Chinese test are native speakers, as opposed to kids of Chinese ancestry for whom English is their first language, Chinese school or no. 73% of overall exam takers get a 5; among kids who aren't native speakers it's 33%.

The Chinese listening SAT Subject exam is even worse. The mean score is a 764, and a perfect 800 is 57th percentile.

Anecdotal evidence for allowing qualified students to take AP classes before 11th grade:

http://news.ditd.org/July_12/eNews_July12_web.htm
Two American finalists were among the top winners at the second annual Google Global Science Fair! Grand prize winner Brittany Wenger won for the 17-18 age group after writing a computer program known as a neural network to help doctors diagnose breast cancer less invasively. The program will help detect patterns in a large database of breast tissue samples.

************************************************

In her acknowledgements https://sites.google.com/a/googlesc...b2eb41354-1333130785-87/acknowledgements , Brittany Wenger writes
"I would also like to acknowledge my A.P. Computer Science teacher, Mrs. Barrett. Before taking her class sophomore year, I programmed everything in C#. I am now confident in my java skills and have applied knowledge gained from her class to this project."

Her project also required knowledge of biology (of course) and statistics, regardless of whether she had taken AP courses in those subjects.