Congratulations to my school which has come out 33rd on the list of Newsweek's top high school. The index is based on Jay Mathews' theory that a measure of a high school's success is how many students at the school take AP tests and how many they take divided by the number in the senior class. His idea is that there is a value in having kids take the more challenging classes even if they don't pass the tests. I've never been quite comfortable with that definition of a quality high school, but the Newsweek rating has sure done a lot for increasing demand to get into our school.
It has also had an effect on the demand for AP courses across the nation. Schools are doing more to open up the enrollment in AP courses to students who were previously discouraged from taking the classes. All in hopes of raising their Newsweek rating. At our school, we have not changed our guidance to students not to overload themselves, but to still take a challenging schedule. We are told to counsel kids who want to take more than 3 APs and be sure that they and their parents have an idea of what the workload and demands will be for that schedule. I think we help the kids take a nice balance that fits their particular skills. And while I get a few kids for whom my AP courses might seem too much of a challenge, we work through it and the student does benefit from the tougher course. When I think of those weaker students and how they performed by the end of the course, I can totally buy Mathews' theory that the more challenging schools are the better schools. I'm just not comfortable reducing all that a school is to one number based on taking AP tests. It ignores so much more that goes on in high school, but that is not easily quantifiable. There is no index that can rate how many students can become involved in some extracurricular activity that stretches them in less visible ways than the AP tests. I'm just as proud of how there is something for every student's interests at our school and how many of our kids are involved in so many outside activities whether it is the ones that I sponsor: Quiz Bowl and our Student Legislative Assembly or the group that raises money for retired blues singers or a group that arranges for speakers to come to the school and talk about current events or the drama performances. When kids look back on their high school careers, it is probably those activities that they will remember and they'll be grateful that the school provided such opportunities for them to take leadership of whatever it was that interested them.
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3 comments:
Betsy,
On average - how do you kids score on the AP exam's?
My wife teaches at a high school - and she's not a big fan of the AP classes - because it seems that very few, if any, do well enough on the AP exams to be eligible for college credit.
Bintohead, I've had been lucky enough to have had some wonderful students. if they don't enter the class at a level to do well, they're willing to work hard and learn from their mistakes as the year goes on. In the 7 years that I've been teaching AP classes, my students have scored between 4.0 and 4.8 on the AP US History exam and between 4.1 and 4.6 on the AP Government and Politics exam. This is out of a 5 point scale.
Some of the bigger districts in California have made it an official policy to have AP classes at all the schools. Whereas just a decade ago the AP student would either transfer to the school that had the classes or split his day between schools. Obviously that mean, especially in a district with extremes, that schools that were considered "white" had the AP classes because of interest, availability of competent teachers and a pool of students capable of mastering the material.
They, my experience primarily in the Los Angeles USD, simply added the AP classes to the curriculum and then either assigned or pushed some students to sign up. Sometimes without the kids or parents knowledge. But after the press release went out two things happened, these usually smart but unprepared kids got buried in the work required and the school district simply didn't care whether they passed the exams but not only didn't care if the kids took the exams.
And then it simply becomes a self perpetuating mess. The students don't have much choice, the teachers generally like the work load and the district gets to cover themselves in honor as expanding educational opportunities to the so-called underserved population of students.
I signed up to tutor the kids in Government, History and English and for two years spent most of the time in my class/office working with may four or five kids that were serious about getting a good mark and needed the extra guidance. However most years no one came in because no one had signed up for the exams. But the district could go to the different racial or ethnic interest groups and brag about how they had made AP accessible for all the students.
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