<p>Next year, we are losing our AP Chemistry class because the school feels it is much more important to add an "intermediate biology" class for students who failed the yearly Biology End of Course exam.
Our AP Chem teacher is being told to teach this class instead. Since there's normally around 15-16 students a year for AP Chemistry, there's usually only one class anyways, and thus, it's seen as the most expendable. </p>
<p>Let me emphasize how ridiculously easy it is to pass the Biology End of Course exam.
The class of 2013-2014 isn't required to pass the EOC, but we took it last year anyways.</p>
<p>One of my friends, since he knew that passing the exam would do nothing for him, and to spite our terrible Biology teacher, decided to not try on the exam.
On the short answer portion, he wrote "JESUS TAKE THE WHEEL! EVOLUTION DOESN'T EXIST! MY TEACHER NEVER TAUGHT ME ANY OF THIS!" and illustrated with several stick figures.
On one part of the multiple choice, he bubbled in a giant cross and a smiley face.</p>
<p>He still passed, with a fairly high score.</p>
<p>We lost AP Calculus BC for the same reasons. (Need for an "intermediate algebra" class, pre-algebra class and "fundamentals of pre-algebra" class)</p>
<p>Well, yeah. Bell curve. Only a small portion are not closish to the norm.</p>
<p>But your school is definitely sucking by failing to provide educational resources for all of its students. Public school is school for everyone, not just the middle fifty percent.</p>
<p>If someone is failing out of school and no one intervenes, there’s a higher potential for bad things to happen.
Good students will generally be okay whether they have AP Chem or not. In my state, for example, dual-enrollment is free. Other schools will let you graduate early. (When good students get discouraged, I think it’s more because of personal/socioeconomic problems or a lack of parental support than the academic quality of the school. It helps to go to a school that provides extra opportunities for you, but it’s not necessary. You learn to seek out opportunities on your own.)</p>
<p>It makes sense for schools to care more about those that are below average than above it. Getting everyone to a basic level of education is their job. Not saying this is ideal though.</p>
<p>I know. My school does not allow students to take summer courses to be more advanced because the inferior students who fail all their classes are the ones tanking all the resources. This is pretty much due to as people mentioned above, the school’s job is to get everyone a basic education. </p>
<p>IMO, instead of putting students with several different levels abilities in a whole building, they should just segregate them by ability, such as instead of creating five schools with student from all across the spectrum, they should put all of the top fifth in one school, the students between the 80th and 60th percentile on another one, and so on. None of the schools of my county offer AP Chemistry because of this, but if we had a school where the top fifth of the students attended, there would certainly be a reason to add this class, especially as very few people would be wasting resources by taking the physical science course we offer(basically, it’s a standard course that just skims over small concepts of chemistry and physics, so it’s pretty much there to help the non-overachievers fill their graduation requirement.)</p>
<p>Your school’s not doing a very good job. If people are too stupid to learn, why waste time and resources on them- kids who do so poorly are the only who just don’t try.</p>
<p>@Ach7DD there are a lot of issues with this system though. We used to have grammar schools all over the country, which were selective but state run, but that meant that kids that didn’t get into them didn’t get the same chances. It wasn’t fair, basically, so now only a few counties, including mine, still have the system.</p>
<p>What would you do with the student who is 98th percentile in math and science, and 35th percentile in language arts? Put them in with the 60-80% students, so they can fail language arts, and not be challenged in math and science?</p>
<p>My school is weirdly opposite. We have lots of opportunities for advanced kids, and lots of help for those who are failing.
It’s the middle 50% and average kids who have a rough time.</p>
<p>(But idk we’re weird.)</p>
<p>But yeah, in your scenario with AP chem, even though it’s unfair, it’s probably necessary to have that extra class for those who need it.</p>
<p>Akin to a college admission process, such as standardized testing during the end of 8th grade, while allowing kids who are the top of their class at a lower high school to ascend to a higher ranking one? While I certainly disagree with the side-effects of this method, such as how it may seem to be promoting elitism, the gap between overachievers and underachievers is pretty wide, to the point that you see schools struggling because they have three or four kids that finished calculus II during their freshman year, while they also have some other kids who are struggling with pre-algebra, so they are pretty much in a bind as they cannot offer all math courses between multivariable calculus and introduction to pre-algebra due to their tight budget.</p>
<p>@UKGirl23:</p>
<p>I am aware of the ethical and moral problems with this kind of system, though the schools would be serving the kids to the best of their abilities. If we have several kids that are struggling to simply pass a basic science course, while on the other hand we have several others who can ace college-level chemistry and physics courses, it’s somewhat impossible for a school to serve the latter kids to their full potential without losing the former group, so we’d need several different schools to account for each kid’s abilities.</p>
<p>@CTScout:</p>
<p>That’s why specialized schools exist.</p>
<p>Y’know, just disregard my post in general. It’s just that I really disagree with how we have several school that seem to be catering to the general population, instead of having each school cater to a more specific sector, which tends to not fully allow kids that are highly advanced reach their full potential while losing the failing ones.</p>
<p>A lot of music used to be difficult to find because record stores catered to the general population instead of coordinating with each other to ensure that each area had access to diverse record stores that specialized in different kinds of music.</p>
<p>True, but music stores are each independent private businesses, it’s not exactly the same thing with public schools. There are already magnet schools specializing in STEM or performing arts, though they do make up a very small percentage of schools in general.</p>
<p>Well, apparently, the decision to limit AP classes to 1 or 2 a year is being currently debated at my school, since the teachers feel most students cannot handle more than that.
If this isn’t a gross generalization of student academic ability, I don’t know what is.</p>
<p>@agreatperhaps your reply is very ironic given how you mentioned that you’re in advanced math in one of your other threads :p</p>
<p>I think halcyonheather makes a good point. to be honest, I’ld be annoyed at what the OP’s school is doing too, but, at the end of the day, the better students don’t need it. they’re more proactive, and colleges won’t hold something out of their control against them</p>
<p>
I hate it when schools try to limit your course rigor. if a student is jumping from 0 AP classes to 3 or 4, I can understand it, but making a student take less when they know they can handle more is silly.
if the decision is being debated, you might have a chance to put in your input. couldn’t hurt to talk to one of the higher ups or write a letter</p>
<p>@stressed- well we don’t get more focus than the students higher up- also, most of us in that class seem to be smart in at least some other subjects, so i’m giving us a pass. not to mention that i think if it’s really one or two subjects a subjects a student struggles in, then the students should be allowed to drop those subjects rather than feeling forced to take them just because the state feels they ‘need’ it (example: never going to use y = mx + b in my life)</p>
<p>Um, duh. Even ‘good’ public high schools are depressing mediocrity incubators. I wouldn’t ever say anything to them, but I really wish that my parents had sent me to good private schools. We could easily afford it and I was identified as bright/gifted/whatever the moment that I entered my Kindergarten classroom. Instead, I’ve been interacting with barely human knuckle draggers for the past 13 years.</p>
<p>If I’m able to afford it, no way am I letting my kids rot with the mediocre filth that is the average American high school student.</p>
<p>@agreatperhaps
Algebra is a pretty important concept regardless of what career you’re interested in…
It’s just a fundamental part of being an educated human being. If you walk out of high school not knowing how to solve a linear equation, I’d be pretty angry if I was a taxpayer.</p>
<p>In other cases, certainly, there are some concepts you’ll probably never use that you learn in high school…
However, in learning to solve those problems, you utilize the analytical thinking process that you honestly would truly benefit from and can apply to other situations in later careers down the road and even other avenues of their life. That (and the incredibly broad, slightly unrealistic scope of curriculum that teachers are required to teach) is what makes some STEM classes so difficult, but it also makes it rewarding in the long-term.</p>
<p>You’re never going to use any other high school subject either, but high school and most four-year college degrees aren’t intended to be vocational training.
(And the point of math isn’t to memorize formulas anyway, and I wish teachers wouldn’t act like it is. y=mx+b is one of the more obvious ones and they still don’t really explain how it’s derived before they give it to you.)</p>
<p>(Real life sucks most of the time anyway. I’m not sure why everyone insists that it be shoved into everything more than it already is.)</p>