<p>"It was the kind of memo that high school students would dream of getting, if they dreamed in memos.</p>
<p>Lisa Waller, director of the high school at Dalton, a famously rigorous private school on the Upper East Side, sent a letter to parents this summer announcing that tests and papers would be staggered to make sure students did not become overloaded. January midterms would be pushed back two weeks so students would not have to study during vacation. "</p>
<p>The article notes that some parents see these pronouncements and policy changes on homework as lip service. I think that is the reality, at least at the competitive NYC high schools.</p>
<p>I don’t have a problem with this. </p>
<p>The recommendation I have problems with from Race to Nowhere is to eliminate AP classes. There is tension between two groups: </p>
<p>1) kids who are forced to take too many AP classes by parents or for the purpose of competitive college admissions and they have no joy in their lives, </p>
<p>and</p>
<p>2) kids that really want to learn the subjects in depth and want to accelerate their learning in subjects that interest them. Some of these kids are bored with slower classes and actually need the challenge. For these kids there is no joy in wasting time with anything easier. </p>
<p>My kids and a lot of their friends are in group (2) , but I admit that there are a lot of kids in group (1) and it’s a problem with our culture. </p>
<p>Still, I think we work to change the culture of (1) without denying the opportunities to group (2).</p>
<p>The only problem i have with this is that my school didn’t do it.</p>
<p>Excellent idea. We use to have 2 easy weeks followed by a hard week in which we had 4 exams.</p>
<p>I am not convinced many APs and lots of homework tends to work in favor of #2 in CRDs list. It is not always a choice of easier vs. harder. My D is finding her AP classes to be faster moving, yes, but less intellectual or challenging. They are focused on covering the material in a way that maximizes learning for a standardized test, rather than learning to think/explore in depth/take risks, etc. and so for her, this AP-filled jr. year has so far been significantly less interesting and less thought provoking. These courses are supposed to be college level and instead she’s finding them to be rigid and boring.</p>
<p>From the linked article:</p>
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</p>
<p>Sounds a lot like CC.</p>
<p>Many of those private schools believe their courses are more rigorous than APs.</p>
<p>Most of kids at Dalton do not play varsity sports due to lack of facility, whereas other similar schools require their students to participate in at least one varsity sport, so I don’t know why Dalton kids are so stressed out.</p>
<p>
I remember in one class, a parent was complaining to the teacher that there was too much homework, while my son came home with almost none, having done it all in class. Even with several AP classes, he still had enough time to spend hours every day teaching himself Linux, stuff from MIT’s open courseware site, and to spend much too much time on computer games. He even gotten written up in Gamer’s Magazine for a mod he worked on! It’s very hard for schools to get this right. Some kids need more advanced courses, but lots are getting more than they can easily handle.</p>
<p>It is my opinion that, with certain obvious exceptions (e.g. foreign languages, computer programming), a good teacher does not need students to do a lot of homework, while a bad teacher uses homework to compensate for bad teaching.</p>
<p>There is homework and there is homework. A research paper is necessary for any advanced course. Problem sets are necessary for math. Most college courses require many hours of homework (research, reading, problem sets) outside of class, and that’s not to compensate for bad teaching. Most of those elite private schools do operate more like colleges.</p>
<p>Reading is obviously unavoidable. But you’d be surprised that what I said can be true even in math courses with problem sets.</p>
<p>Yep, it is hard to believe until you see it, but I have side-by-side comparison of two AP Physics C teachers, and the difference in homework, for the same learning, is just remarkable.</p>
<p>Dalton kids don’t have to play a sport? Truly, what are they griping about?</p>
<p>Not playing varsity sports doesn’t make the curriculum easier. The athletes are rejuvenated by sports, and they function much better when they get a lot of play and practice.</p>
<p>The athlete wannabees are the ones griping about practice.</p>