Is my kid's teacher nuts?

Parents Forum
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<p>southbel - It’s clear that your school district is better than ours. </p>

<p>While ours also requires kids to be recommended to AP level and all the kids in the AP classes are A students in the honors track, in a typically class there might be 1 5, a couple of 4s and the rest much worse. Meanwhile, the class average is in the high 90’s.</p>

<p>My wake up call came when my son (top 1% in the school) who had a near perfect average in Physics B started studying for the AP exam. Whatever he had been taught, it didn’t stick in any way. I had to teach him a semester’s worth of mechanics in two weeks. He went from a 1 on his first practice to eventually getting a 4. </p>

<p>I’m sure he is at fault for not working hard enough during the year to actually learn the material, but I can assure you if the teacher had given one exam where he got a grade commensurate with his understanding of mechanics (eg about a 60%) he would have worked hard all year, instead of for the three weeks heading up to the test.</p>

<p>This is exactly what happened in his AP calc class the same year. First test average was in the low 80’s (unheard of for the school). He got the message and understood that the effort required there was higher. It was the only class where multiple kids got a 5.</p>

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<p>@poetgrl- </p>

<p>Only test best of the honors kids take AP classes in my kids school. Maybe we don’t have enough talented kids in our district. I don’t believe that. I think too many teachers don’t know how (are afraid to?) challenge the kids with hard work.</p>

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<p>Dreadpirit - I do like my daughter’s high school even though it is quite competitive. They have, consistently, scored the highest on AP tests. The average score is a 4 with plenty of kids getting 5s. Rarely is there a student that scores anything below a 3. </p>

<p>I know this means my daughter will be well prepared for college but it is a bit frustrating that many of the colleges, particularly the Southern colleges, seem to weigh so heavily on GPA and do not put enough emphasis in the rigor of the courses or the school itself. One other thing her school does that is different and sometimes confuses schools is that the students have a ‘major’ in high school. They take some pretty specialized courses as well. Some of the schools have a hard time matching that up with their core requirements. For example, her computer science requirement was not just a compsci course but a biomedical science course using computers.</p>

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<p>@southbel</p>

<p>From what I’ve read and seen, college admissions (especially at highly selective college) do a good job of figuring out which high schools have tough standards and which ones don’t.</p>

<p>Sounds to me like you school has it together and I suspect your guidance office has perfected their explanation to colleges.</p>

<p>Colleges talk about the importance of GPA but selective schools spend a lot of time getting to know where kids are coming from. Trust me, it’s much harder to stand out when you have a school like ours where the top 10 kids all had four year averages over 98.5%. In the end, all of their work gets discounted.</p>

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I’d like to see evidence for this other than speculation. Personally, I think teachers who are just tough graders are dispiriting to kids, especially if they are they are the kind that just “don’t give As.” I don’t think being a tough grader is the same as having high standards, either.</p>

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<p>The handful of juniors and sophomores (two and three grade levels ahead, respectively) are presumably the top students in math for whom any math from high school through college sophomore level is easy, and only may find math difficult if they take courses like real analysis (junior or senior level courses for math majors) in college.</p>

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<p>This thread should be required reading for anyone who is ever contemplating becoming a high school teacher. It shows you what you’ll be up against if you have any standards about your subject, whatsoever.</p>

<p>“Mos Eisley High School. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.”

  • Obi Wan Kenobi</p>
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<p>I tell all my first-semester freshmen that they need to be on their toes because if past performance of previous first-semester freshmen is any indicator, the As that they earned in high school could mean that they are, in reality, anywhere from an actual A student to a C+(ish) student. We frequently have freshmen with 4.0 HS GPAs who struggle to hit a 3.0 in their first semester. In my experience the reputation of the high school has very little to do with whether or not the high school GPA has any real meaning (but keep in mind that my school does not receive applications from students at the Boston Latins and Horace Manns of the world…then again, we are still a selective institution). </p>

<p>I really wish there was something that could be done about grade inflation–all the good feelings that students experienced in grades 9-12 turn to ash pretty quickly when their college professors make it clear to them that those grades did not reflect reality.</p>

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<p>Don’t get me wrong. There wasn’t grade inflation at my kids’ school. My kids’ school is one of those schools that sends the top half or so to top 25 colleges. The grading was tough.</p>

<p>But, it wasn’t tough unilaterally. By which I mean, you couldn’t get unlucky and get the jerky calc teacher and get a C when your buddy got the easy teacher and got an A even though you did more and did better. Okay?</p>

<p>There were/are a lot of tough and fair teachers there. They ALWAYS allowed revisions. It was a lot of learning going on the first year of high school. My youngest had to rewrite one paper three times. But… you could rewrite until you got the grade you wanted. Why? The teacher was teaching how to write a paper to the grade you wanted.</p>

<p>I’ve heard this same kid say, “I only have enough time to get this paper to a B. I just don’t have time for more.” She said it about a philosophy paper this first semester in college. She knows what an A, a B and a C paper look like and how long they take her. </p>

<p>You see? Now that is excellent teaching, not capricious grading.</p>

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<p>Poetgrl - exactly! My freshman didn’t walk into 9th grade knowing how to write an A paper. Kid tried hard, worked hard, studied hard, and WENT TO TEACHER for guidance. Teacher says, looks just fine. Kid gets D. 33% of semester grade. Competitive high school/region. That is the very definition of capricious grading, and either a lazy teacher or one who pegs kids as A, B, C, or D students on day 1 and won’t deviate.</p>

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<p>Seriously, I’ve never seen these teachers that some of you are talking about. I think the principal of my daughter’s school prides her school on being tough. There’s even school rules on retakes, days late on homework, etc. The teacher can’t be a grade inflator even if they wanted to. In some ways, I am happy because my daughter got a good education but darn it, her GPA isn’t near as high as some of the kids I see on CC and elsewhere.</p>

<p>There is one area where GPA always kills her - scholarships. SO many of them are GPA dependent and that’s where she feels like she got a bit screwed. I tell her to ignore that and concentrate on the fact she got a great education. Kids can’t help it though - they don’t see the intrinsic value all the time.</p>

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<p>Tough but fair grading is one thing, poor communication from teachers is another. My daughter is taking AP Bio this year, and, for her and almost all the other students in the class, it is their first experience with AP (they are sophomores). On the very first essay assignment of the year, my daughter worked long and hard and got a paper back with a D on it. That’s it. No comments, red marks, notes or circles. Just a D. When my daughter asked about the reason for the low grade, the teacher said, “that’s the rubric.” Daughter asked if the teacher would be distributing the rubric, or if it was available online…not so she could contest the grade or even raise it, but so she’d do a better job on the next essay. </p>

<p>Teacher said “no, I don’t give them out. Don’t worry, there will be other assignments.” Which, you know, FINE. But, daughter was legitimately asking so that she could perform better on future assignments, which seems to be appropriate, especially early in the year!</p>

<p>It’s this teacher’s first time teaching AP Bio, so hopefully this will improve. </p>

<p>I totally empathize with teachers who deal every day with students and parents who think they should get top marks just for having a pulse. the good ones far outnumber the bad, in my experience.</p>

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<p>Re: #72</p>

<p>Shouldn’t a teacher teach the student what she needs to do in order to do well in the assignments?</p>

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<p>ucbalumnus – EXACTLY. I think good teachers can tell the difference between “how can I raise the low grade I’ve already earned” and “how can I do better on my next assignment?”</p>

<p>It’s a good life lesson, I suppose, for all those future annoying bosses and clients we all face as adults, but with the way college admissions are now, it can be a costly one.</p>

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<p>lauriejgs ~ I would expect this from our school system in AP classes. Like others have said, I suspect they are preparing students/parents for the grading in AP where 3 on the AP exam is suppose to = a college C. If you notice your school’s record on AP scores, they are probably trying to align the class grade with the likely AP score. A bit of the-tail-wags-the dog, but I really felt it was the strategy used.</p>

<p>I watched my D’s unweighted as well as her weighted gpa. I knew the colleges she was likely to be interested in would view them differently. Frankly her gpa just couldn’t take the hit of too many honors or AP classes (even weighted).</p>

<p>Trouble was our school system wasn’t consistent. Many teachers would grade this way, and then there would be few easy teachers -even in honors or AP. It drove the parents nuts.</p>

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<p>I agree with Hunt: The most fascinating teachers I remember from high school and college were not particularly tough graders; I went above and beyond because of the material and for the occasional “well done!” acknowledgement from the instructor.</p>

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<p>I’ve been in plenty of classes – and so have my sons – where the A was a foregone conclusion but the motivation was to “beat” one’s perceived peers in the class, those with the aptitude, skill, and dedication to keep the challenge alive.</p>

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<p>Interesting. I’ve never heard of a class like that, where the grades of other students were open for all to see and compete against. I mean, how can one beat one’s perceived peers if their grades are private?</p>

<p>I <em>have</em> seen a lot of kids who have padded their schedules with a class they <em>assumed</em> would be an easy “A”, who got burned when the class turned out to be much harder and much more work than they were expecting. Art classes at our high school come to mind.</p>

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<p>FWIW, I was at one of those high schools where everyone could basically take an AP class as long as they had passed the prereq (for AP Calc) or were perceived to be able to handle it (AP Lit and AP World). This is a small, rural school, and those were the only APs. (I think they’ve added AP Lang and AP Bio since my time). </p>

<p>Out of those tests, I received a 4 on AP Lit, a 4 on AP World, and a 1 on AP Calc. My grades were averaged to 95%, 98%, and 97%, respectively. Only one person in the history of our school ever got a 3 on AP Calc, there was one person six years before my time that got a 5 on AP Lit (but EVERY PERSON in my class got at least a 3, 2 others a 4), and there were a few 5s and a lot of 4s in AP World. </p>

<p>From this small set of data, I think I can deduce that you truly do need to be “ready” and “fit” to take AP classes, but also, you need to have teachers who can teach to the test while also to you. In AP Lit, we had the same teacher for Honors English 11, and from day one he started prepping and training us. He had us writing papers and essays with that critical mindset, and we’d apply AP principles to our 11th grade curriculum of British lit. Come senior year he transitioned to our technique and we spent much time practicing timed essays and working on style, often having “pop essays” where we’d knock out 2 in 75 minutes, which we felt was much harder than the actual test. </p>

<p>In AP World, we did a similar thing: we learned the history of the world chapter-by-chapter but we’d practice our essay skills along the way. We were even able to play games and still really digest and understand material. </p>

<p>Au contraire, in AP Calc, we just learned from the book and her power points. I understood everything she taught us (though I had problems with optimization), and our tests were basically our test review problems with different numbers, so most of us seriously just memorized the process and then did it over with different numbers on the test. </p>

<p>Come December I discovered this forum and started poking around, so by March, I bought a review book and saw the test setup for the first time. I was shocked and worried because it was so different than what I was used to in school. </p>

<p>So, in sum, from my experience, the instructor makes a difference, and it’s also the grading/teaching style. My AP Lit teacher almost never gave me a perfect score because I could always improve and do better. I was a top math student at my school, so my Calc teacher would give me my As and say how wonderful I was, yet in eventually bombed the AP exam. Needless to say, I’m now a writing major and not a math major, and I’m doing well because I learned at 16 year-old that I wasn’t perfect with my writing and that I couldn’t expect to be. And to be honest, I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.</p>

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<p>Is an “A” a foregone conclusion for everyone in the class? Or are you saying it’s a foregone conclusion for your child? I can’t recall my kids being in a class where it was the former.</p>

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<p>I think when somebody refers to an A as a “foregone conclusion,” they probably mean “for anybody who does the work at a minimum level of effort.” There are always going to be a few kids who just don’t turn in the work.</p>