<p>A</a> warning to college profs from a high school teacher</p>
<p>I'm particularly interested in this part:</p>
<p>"I mentioned that at least half my students were in AP classes. The explosive growth of these classes, driven in part by high school rankings like the yearly Challenge Index created by Jay Mathews of The Washington Post, is also responsible for some of the problems you will encounter with students entering your institutions."</p>
<p>What do you think?</p>
<p>Wierd, thought there were responses to this, incl mine.
Note he says he taught 3-4 sections out of 6 (!) andmost of his students were 10th graders. Yikes. Of course they were green. He’s been blogging for a while. Haven’t read more. But adcoms don’t work in isolation. They know. This goes hand-in-hand with kids who think it’s impressive to self-study lots of APs.</p>
<p>Not much new in that article. </p>
<p>I would add that the high school English curriculum, nationwide, is based in literature: contrasting, evaluating, etc. Unfortunately, kids need to be able to research and write. College students can graduate without taking any literature classes, yet the only paper writing they have done in high school is from reading literature IF they did any at all. Most high school English teachers have such large student loads, that even if they were inclined to do more types of writing the grading would be overwhelming.</p>
<p>High school kids are underprepared, but perhaps the biggest problem is that kids who did not think they would ever go to college decide that maybe that is better than going to work. They did not put much effort into high school because they did not see the value.</p>
<p>The best students are still doing well in college.</p>
<p>One of the hallmarks of high school learning is teaching to the test. AP, by it’s very nature, teaches to the test, and should never have been considered college equivalent. It tests Bly the ability of a student to memorize and regurgitate. The retired high school teacher is right on in his criticism, but he didn’t need to warn us about what was coming. AP has been around far longer than NCLB. We are very used to kids who think they are well prepared when all they really know is a collection of facts.</p>
<p>Not all AP courses and teachers are equal. I would compare my daughter’s AP lit class to the best college lit classes. However, her teacher was Ivy-league educated and worked those kids.</p>
<p>Whole bunch of colleges are giving out huge scholarships based on PSAT, SAT and ACT - pretty much multiple choice tests.</p>
<p>Y a w n …</p>
<p>I regret reading that warning to the end to find something useful. Should have known better. </p>
<p>The whining is getting old.</p>
<p>My kids’ APs were not taught to the test. I have mixed emotions about them. Most could cover the higher level without pretending they were college equivalents.</p>
<p>My kids learned a lot about reading and evaluating literature in their AP classes. However, neither of them wrote a single research paper (even though they think that a 2 page essay with two citations is a research paper.) in AP English, or in any other high school class for that matter. And, we’re in a highly ranked public school district. I’m appalled by this more than any other high school experience they had. </p>
<p>My engineering major son will graduate from college next year with only 1!! 2 credit English class on his college transcript–a technical writing class he took in his sophomore year. His writing now, though mostly grammatically correct, is unsophisticated and unprofessional, as you might imagine. He does not believe me when I try to explain that his writing ability is AS important to the rest of his career as his technical talents are. </p>
<p>In an attempt to prevent my daughter from ending up in the same situation, I refused to pay for either of her AP English tests (knowing she didn’t have the money and/or didn’t care enough to pay for them herself). I do not want her to be tempted to or encouraged to (by counselors at schools who are too focused on 4 year graduation rates) skip those college level English classes.</p>
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<p>If that is the case, then some of the blame should be laid on the college’s technical writing course, which should have taught him how to write clearly about the technical subjects that he will be writing about in an engineering career.</p>
<p>I agree that research and writing are the skills most sorely lacking in today’s HS grads, including many coming out of fancy high schools with gaudy AP credits. It’s a complete joke to equate AP classes with college level work. Not to say there aren’t outliers, but a lot of AP classes are rote memorization and the most brain-dead sort of teaching to the test.</p>
<p>We’ve pushed our daughters hard to acquire research and writing skills while still in HS, in part by taking research- and writing-intensive college classes as HS juniors and seniors, but even apart from that, seizing every opportunity to write. And not just any college classes, mind you, because many have low expectations in this regard, but classes where the professors have high standards and assign real research papers and give real feedback on the research as well as the writing. Developing those skills has served D1 extremely well in college, and I’m confident D2 will find the same.</p>
<p>ALL students at our kids’ college HAVE to take a minimum of 2 writing courses – no exemptions that I have ever heard of, even if they enter with 60 AP credits. My S is also an engineering major and has written several published journal articles, so I believe his writing is appropriate for his field (very concise). D has to write A LOT and often in her field and many of her peers have written scripts, stories and/or books on the side.</p>
<p>It is an increasing strain on all the teachers we know to meet the rigors of No Child Left Behind, as well as teaching kids to perform well on standardized tests. It of course does a great disservice in not allowing depth and analytic and critical thinking skills.</p>
<p>Many teachers we know cannot wait until they can retire, like the author of the article. Thankfully, others continue to enter the field, and hopefully will help us come up with some solutions. Many of us are aware of the problems but the answers will have to be multi-faceted.</p>
<p>ucbalumnus, I agree that the blame should be laid at the college, but not necessarily with that particular writing course (though I am not sure). It was a sophomore level course, and he probably did sophomore level work. </p>
<p>The blame, I think, falls more on the college system as a whole–one that accepted two AP English classes as replacements for the required college English classes.</p>
<p>At my kids’ high school teachers are teaching 180 students. I can’t for the life of me figure out how even the most well intentioned English teacher can do an adequate job of teaching 180 students how to write. There is no way an English teacher could thoughtfully evaluate 180 final papers, much less the rough drafts.</p>
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<p>Typical base level English composition courses (that AP credit may be allowed to substitute for) are freshman level courses, so a sophomore level technical writing course should presumably be more advanced, and also more closely applicable to technical subjects than the typical literature oriented base level English composition courses (some colleges do offer base level English composition courses using other H/SS subjects).</p>
<p>If he did reasonably well in that course, but cannot effectively communicate technical subjects, then the college did not live up to expectations with respect to that course.</p>
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<p>The same could apply to freshman English composition courses in college. A college needs a lot of faculty and/or GSIs to teach those courses effectively with meaningful evaluation of larger term papers.</p>
<p>AP tests, and colleges’ own English composition placement tests, are limited to writing samples produced in a short amount of time, and therefore may not be as accurate in terms of determining how skilled the student is at writing. But they are used presumably because large numbers of students can be tested in this manner, with common scoring and grading standards applied.</p>
<p>I doubt there is any two credit (less than 20 hours with an instructor) English course in the country that could effectively teach a college student with no other college English courses everything he or she needs to know to be a competent communicator. </p>
<p>ucb, obviously, you believe that AP classes are equivalent to freshman/sophomore college English classes. I contend that they are not. My son got a 4 on one AP English test, a 5 on the other one, 740 on the SAT writing test and 34 on the ACT English test. He is capable of learning whatever it is his instructors or the system wants him to learn, which doesn’t appear to be much where writing is concerned. </p>
<p>I think that part of the problem is that effective writing skills are built over time with repetition and practice. But, grades on those AP tests excused him from 2 college level English classes and he missed the valuable practice those two classes and their college instructors (with the probable help of the TAs/readers that the high school teachers don’t enjoy) would have offered.</p>
<p>It depends on the teacher. Our AP English III (Language) teacher is outstanding, and the course is very difficult. The students constantly write essays, research papers, and literary analysis papers. It is certainly the equivalent of a college composition course. One AP English student who went to a college that did not accept AP credit told me that her freshman composition course was easier than her AP course.</p>
<p>Most STEM-oriented students at our high school won’t set foot in that class. They would rather take AP Calculus, AP Chemistry, and AP Biology or Physics the same semester than take AP English III! Consequently, they end up taking freshman English in college anyway.</p>
<p>scubasue…I agree with you. I am a hs/ms social studies teacher but have also taught English (degrees in both). There is a tendency in most curriculums to put the cart before the horse – it seems as though everyone nowadays focus almost exclusively on lit and composition but neglect to adequately teach fundamental grammar. Teachers want to hear students’ voices in well-written, cohesive essays; however, if a student can’t construct a proper sentence, that task is difficult.</p>
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<p>I agree on repetition, practice and I’d like to add feedback.</p>
<p>I gave our son (math/science nerd) regular writing assignments and went over them with him and he took a dual-enrollment university writing course which is where he learned research writing. Our daughter took a bunch of dual-enrollment writing courses at a community college. His undergrad program required the usual research writing and literature classes but beyond that, he had six non-math/science additional courses that required writing or research writing. He took some graduate courses that required research writing too.</p>
<p>I like the approach of the kids learning on their own with teachers and parents asking questions to see if they understand the material and then modifying instruction if it’s obvious that they don’t. I’m sure that there are some teachers that do that as I read about it here from time to time. I assume that they manage the testing issues in some other way or they don’t have to deal with testing issues.</p>
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My son too. I don’t really consider it a huge problem. I only took one writing course in college which focused on history since I was excused based on my AP English score. I did write plenty in college and quite a few professors specifically liked my writing (which I learned in high school where I only wrote a few research papers in history.) My kids had a similar experience - short papers (not research papers) in English, at least two, long research papers in history with footnotes, primary research required etc. Writing doesn’t have to happen just in English classes. Younger son also wrote a bio paper in the month after the AP.</p>