<p>just today President Bush talked about the need for MORE AP classes everywhere...</p>
<p>is he ahead or behind the curve on this</p>
<p>tokenadult,
To answer your question about the high school I know best, the independent prep school my kids have attended does offer more than 20 AP's, limiting the students to 3 per year. The school is nationally known for it's academic rigor with a number of elective courses as or more rigorous than the AP courses. The graduating students attend HYP,other Ivy's and top LAC's and other highly selective schools in large numbers.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I don't think our president has a CLUE about any educational matters. Don't see the need for more AP classes myself--more important is for all kids to receive the qualilty ed they need & deserve. For many, that does NOT mean APs, just a good environment, good peers & great teachers. For kids that need more than HS has to offer, there are on-line and programs with CCs & Us also.
It makes no sense to continually expound about what the schools need without providing the funding or resources to impoement all these changes. It just adds so much more stress to already stressed & often over-worked teachers.
Technically, at my kids' HS, kids are only supposed to take one or two APs/year, but are allowed with approval by counselors & parents to take more as appropriate. My S took 3 APs + other courses as a junior & 5 APs + marching band as a senior. He enjoyed his classes & chose them freely. He had no trouble keeping up. He had some peers who took similar courseloads, while others took only one or two APs & a few took none. They all got into fine Us, many with substantial merit $.</p>
<p>The year my S graduated from high school, his class had about 450 students and there were, I think, 19 NMSFs.</p>
<p>For whatever it's worth, for 2006 (the year my S graduated), there were about 35 NMSFs out of a class of 230 or so. It was the most NMSFs from any one school in the state, tho it does not have the largest # of seniors by any means.</p>
<p>CityGirl'sMom: Both. ;) Ahead of the curve for the school districts in rural areas that don't really do this; ahead for the poorer kids who can benefit by getting advanced standing in college or look better for merit $$; but behind the curve for the magnet school, high SES, high-stress kids (i.e. those that frequent CC and many like them)></p>
<p>"Are kids who could have attended that school going to magnet programs or private schools instead?"</p>
<p>There are some excellent private schools in the NYC area. There are also several parochial schools that siphon off kids. But really the tippy top kids have always been a pretty small group. I think there's a pretty big group that just missed NMSF standing especially this year when I think the cut off jumped several notches.</p>
<p>"Just to establish some context here, where are students going to college from the high schools each of you know best? "</p>
<p>Our school (the one with only 5 NMSF students in a class of 750) generally sends one or two kids to each of the Ivy leagues schools and top LACs. No one to Caltech or Stanford recently. Kids have been accepted at MIT but I think all the recent ones have gone to Harvard. We have a science research program which as produced an Intel semifinalist or finalist nearly every year for the last four or five years. We've got kids at every end of every spectrum (economic, academic, ethnic).</p>
<p>Very diverse high school, sending 40-50% of grads to four-year colleges, one to Princeton, one to Harvard, a few to highly ranked LACs, a bunch to traditional merit aid schools, and the bulk of the rest to various state colleges. Money is definitely a factor.</p>
<p>"Several kids in our high school took precalc over the summer."</p>
<p>My son's school does not offer anything above Geometry in summer. He already knows most of the precalc stuff plus some basic calculus, but that counts as nothing as far as the school is concerned.</p>
<p>Like every other educational fad du jour, eliminating AP's will hurt the kids who are already suffering from low expectations, will have no impact on the kids at the top of the heap. At demanding schools with good teachers and a culture of success, you could call the history class "underwater basket weaving" and the kids would still get something valuable out of it-- critical thinking, reading, writing a coherent sentence, or whatever. At the majority of public schools which serve the majority of kids in this country, AP was often the only bright spot..... the few really good teachers saw teaching an AP class as a plum; the kids who were turned on academically got to tackle challenging material, etc.</p>
<p>Of course, AP got abused.... mediocre schools calling 20 + classes AP even though the teachers were the same mediocre teachers who were now trying to teach to a test instead of challenging the kids; over-scheduled kids getting pushed into classes they weren't prepared for, bringing a remedial element to what was supposed to be college level material; an overall dilution of the curriculum in order to serve some political need in school systems where the kids at the top regularly get short-changed.</p>
<p>sigh. People, stop bashing AP. Just because some districts are abusing it, and just because elite privates like Fieldston don't need it, doesn't mean that the intent, and even the execution (in many places) isn't noble and worthwhile. For some HS kids, AP is the light at the end of a very dark and demotivating tunnel.</p>
<p>I've seen AP courses at big, diverse, urban HS's, and my kids have taken them at a small religious HS. In both places the classes were taught by faculty considered to be the absolute best the school had to offer; the teachers used the AP curriculum as a suggestion not a mandate; the kids were not "prepped" but were educated; most students scored 4's and 5's with no outside preparation beyond doing their homework; kids took AP's in their best subjects, and in things that really interested them rather than padding their schedules with AP's to "look good" for college. The system works when it's used appropriately... of course it stinks when abused by parents and administrators.... but so does everything else in contemporary education.</p>
<p>Why not pick on the abuse of special Ed by cynical and venal parents rather than on AP? It accounts for a much higher percentage of educational spending.... it effects the bottom line of virtually every school system in America....it is rife with special interest lawyers and lawsuits. Who sues a school system when an AP class is taught by a moron with a degree in pedagogy who knows nothing about physics or history? Nobody. Who sues a district when a kid with asthma is told to take a school bus rather than get a private taxi service pick him up outside his home and drop him off in the school driveway? Parents in my town, that's who.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Who sues a school system when an AP class is taught by a moron with a degree in pedagogy who knows nothing about physics or history? Nobody.
[/quote]
But I'd like to. And at my town public h.s., I'd have grounds for a lawsuit.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Who sues a district when a kid with asthma is told to take a school bus rather than get a private taxi service pick him up outside his home and drop him off in the school driveway? Parents in my town, that's who.
[/quote]
Excellent point, blossom. There are tremendous special ed abuses. Some parents are having the BOE pay ridiculous tuitions at special needs schools. These schools instruct the interested parents in what attorney to hire to ensure beating the BOE. Many of these kids do not need special arrangements. If they did, I wouldn't deny the services. But as it stands, many of these programs are nothing more than a scam, because the threat of law suits forces BOEs to cave & send the special ed kid off.</p>
<p>(Here's another scam, (off topic) -- not big bucks, but it adds up. I know of two nurses who always insist on chaperoning the class trips. THis is a job that dozens of parents volunteer for. One kid has asthma. Another has a peanut allergy. Both nurses have arranged to be PAID to go along! Claiming medical concerns. If they didn;t have RNs after their name, they'd just be another parent hoping to be picked. Not necessary, as the teachers have been trained & designated capable of using an epi-pen in an emergency. And the asthmatic can self-administer her inhaler. I don't know how these people sleep at night.)</p>
<p>I'm happy with how my d's all-girl Catholic handles APs. The numbers are limited, and some extremely challenging honors courses like organic chemisty are also offered. A girl with a passion for chem will be encouraged to take a three year progression of high honors chem, AP chem, and organic, rather than fill up on science courses with an AP designation simply to impress colleges. The girls are not allowed to take two AP sciences at one time. The school would encourage an honors physics course to accompany AP Chem instead. Believe me, the curriculum is intense enough to challenge anyone.</p>
<p>The girls are also required to take two years of fine arts. One crazed family is raising a stink about how these arts requirements shouldn't apply to their science-focused d. They are yaping about how much $$$ they've donated over the years, hoping that that gives them leverage. To their credit, the administration has not backed down.</p>