<p>It was unfortunate that DS had to trade off his music passion vs class rank. (For top students, an unweighted A in band brings down weighted GPA. Study hall does not.) But no regrets … music made him tick and always will. </p>
<p>Yes, that’s true. In many schools the weighting system penalizes kids who pursue extra electives instead of study hall. Common sense would say any class is more rigorous than study hall but nearly every weighting scheme I’ve heard penalizes the kids who do this and assesses a study hall as more rigorous. </p>
<p>It is more fair to first take an unweighted average and then add a small bonus for each honor or AP class taken. This mathematically eliminates the problem of the number of electives taken reducing the bonus gained from each honor or AP class. AP whatever is not less rigorous when you are also taking an elective instead of a study hall, but that’s what the usual equation says.</p>
<p>Considering that some students believe class rank is important enough to plan their schedules around, and in some situations it will affect college admissions or scholarshups, it’s discouraging that educators don’t seem to be putting much effort into trying to adopt a system that provides the most accurate assessment. Of course no ranking system is going to be perfect, but it seems to me that schools should not be using a system that clearly doesn’t do what it is intended to do when more accurate systems could be used instead.</p>
<p>from a practical matter, however, how many highly ranked students are actually taking ‘study hall’? I would bet it is rare, since top-ranked students are generally looking for ‘rigor’ on their transcript, and study hall is anything but.</p>
<p>Yes, I get the unweighted band vs. weighted honors/AP. The solution is to eliminate publishing class rank, which many high schools have done. </p>
<p>D’s school does not publish class rank beyond val/sal, but does publish bar charts of the percentile groupings. It’s pretty easy to figure out whether someone played the GPA game.</p>
<p>At D’s school most music classes aren’t included in weighted GPAs, but in a neighboring town band and orchestra are honors classes and it’s not possible to be val/sal without one of them in 9th grade. </p>
<p>In my daughter’s HS class of 2012 the Val who ended up at Harvard took study hall senior year to keep up his class rank instead of taking an unweighted elective. My daughter took four years of unweighted chorus which left her out of the running for Sal or Val (they did not disclose any other ranking but when I pursued it for a scholarship opportunity I was told she just missed the top 1% of her class of 500 students).</p>
<p>“from a practical matter, however, how many highly ranked students are actually taking ‘study hall’?” Actually, it’s not that uncommon in our school. Some do, some don’t. Our kids who take study hall are still taking 7 classes, which is more than some “top students” at other schools. </p>
<p>In a grade-inflated school, the penalty for taking electives is greater than many people may realize. I ran the numbers of three hypothetical students who all took the same core schedule of maximum rigor honor and AP classes in the four core areas and filled all other requirements, and all got straight A’s. There are 10 openings in the schedule of our kids after filling graduation requirements including 4 years of the 4 core subjects, 3 years foreign language, and a few misc things. I assumed they also filled one of the misc. requirements with an AP class, though that is not required, but the other option is standard level. </p>
<p>Student 1 who opts for 10 honor/AP classes (these are almost all AP, since there aren’t a lot of honor classes they aren’t already taking in their core schedule) gets a GPA of 4.82. This might not even be possible because some AP classes have prerequisites which may not be weighted (eg. Art). Student 2, who opts to take 10 study halls gets a GPA of 4.76. Student 3, who takes 10 electives gets a GPA of 4.54. As you can see, the student taking study halls is lower than the max possible, but the student taking electives is much lower. </p>
<p>Does this really matter? Well, our valedictorian GPA is around 4.75. If you want to be in the top 10% of the class, you will be right on the edge if you choose 10 electives, even though you get straight A’s and take all honor/AP classes in all core subjects and one required elective area. That’s 8 AP classes. So if you want to be sure to be in the top 10% you would need to choose several additional APs <strong><em>or study halls</em></strong> instead of electives. When you get into the details you see how ridiculous this particular class ranking system is (it’s a popular one on a scale of 4 for regular classes and 5 for honors or AP classes). </p>
<p>Vicky Abeles’ son is still stressed out: <a href=“http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/09/25/vicki-abeles-stressed-students-balance-column/16110085/[/url]”>http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/09/25/vicki-abeles-stressed-students-balance-column/16110085/</a></p>
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<p>This is pernicious nonsense. Please. It sounds as if the very existence of school is blighting her children’s life. </p>
<p>My kids are happiest when they’re busy, and academics are fast enough to be interesting. Should all students be required to adhere to schedules which please Ms. Abeles and her ilk? </p>
<p>The Brookings Institute is not relying on anecdotes, unlike Ms. Abeles. The assertion our kids are dying under too much academic pressure? False for most children. Homework loads haven’t increased over the last 30 years.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2014/03/18-homework-loveless[/url]”>http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2014/03/18-homework-loveless</a></p>
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<p>Of course there are schools in which students are assigned lots of schoolwork. Those schools are clustered in relatively few towns. Some students do have lots of energy and curiosity, and want to be busy. Why not let them have fun? Why insist that 1) they’re only doing it to be competitive, and 2) they would be happier doing less. That’s not been proven.</p>
<p>This seems like a fairly standard case of market failure. Being at the top of the high school pile is a positional good, and children, parents, and teachers are piling in because there are no central restrictions.</p>
<p>“By design, he’s not the classically overscheduled child.” He’s not, and yet he’s having problems. So her solution is to force other people not to “overschedule” their kids? It didn’t work for her child, if one wants to look at anecdotes. This author seems to be confusing excessive homework with “overscheduling”. Her child is not overscheduled, yet he is stressed so she wants to blame overscheduling because she doesn’t like that. Perhaps she should be discussing with the teachers and the schools what is an appropriate amount and quality of homework. Sure, that can be an issue, but it’s not “overscheduling”. </p>
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<p>Seems to me that the solution is to allow such students to" take" 6 classes and then go do something useful with their life outside of the school walls. 
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<p>Not if your school eliminates class rank, including Val & Sal designations. Bcos as you note, there is no good way to rank that is fair to all. A senior who maximizes their schedule with uw electives above and beyond a normal, rigorous course load will lose GPA relative to someone who takes the minimum load of honors/AP. (A bad message to send.)</p>
<p>In my limited experience with a kid getting into HYPS, it was not the test scores or GPA that did it. Yes, those were good, but what really made the difference was honors that came activities outside of a classroom. Her GPA would have been higher if she studied more, but at a certain point other qualities and activiites count. Micro managing study halls seems to miss the intellectual boat entirely, IMHO.</p>
<p>“Seems to me that the solution is to allow such students to” take" 6 classes and then go do something useful with their life outside of the school walls. 
" That is allowed, and some kids do it. The second study hall may require approval of what they are going to do with the time, but I’m not sure about that. My daughter did it to take a college class, but I think she could have had an internship or research project. Upon further reflection, I realized that they cannot take 10 study halls because they come up short a credit, but I think they can take 9–more than 2 per year. Our schedule allows for a lot more classes than are required for the diploma. </p>
<p>“Not if your school eliminates class rank, including Val & Sal designations” Ok, we don’t technically have a val, but the maximum GPA achieved by each class is listed on the school data sheet. I’m assuming that admissions can put two and two together. I would be surprised if the GC didn’t point this out in the student’s letter. It wasn’t my child so I have no info on this. We also, thank goodness, don’t have ordinal rankings like some schools do–I think that’s a horrible, destructive idea. Just deciles listed on the data sheet. It’s all low key enough that I didn’t know anything about it until I learned my daughter’s senior year on this site about the school data sheet and when I looked up ours, I saw the info. The students in the top 10% are named at graduation and before that no mention is made by the school of any class rank outside of the data sheet. But I think some parents are very keyed into this because there has been a lot of debate about whether to provide this info at all.</p>
<p>What I really dislike about this movie and the associated anti-stress movement is how it is being used by school districts to justify offering fewer opportunities for students who truly have the academic interest and capacity. You have to build the system for those who use it right and not to ruin it for everyone in order to manage a few aggressively competitive parents and kids. My public school district goes out of its way to keep high achievers from flying too high. There is a mandatory non-lab freshman science that makes it difficult for science kids to do AP level work and still take all of the physics/chem/bio sequence. Honors in English is doing extra work in the standard English class. Who is it serving to have my 9th grader reading at college level in a class reading Shakespeare with kids reading at barely a middle school level? She is bored and annoyed, and they are intimidated. </p>
<p>We took her out of the system and sent her to a very, very strong private school where there are three levels of math above B/C calc (she opted for A/B), and she read Dante’s Inferno in a month. She was far from the “smartest” kid there, absolutely thrived, and loved the academics despite 4-6 hours of homework per night and mandatory after school sports. She was required to take at least one year of arts electives (and actually took one every year). The school does not rank, and has few formal AP courses (although many take the tests), and no weighting to the GPA published to colleges. Most colleges ignore the weighted GPA anyway and look at the actual classes in the transcript and whether the rigorous box is checked.</p>
<p>I understand this is not for every kid, or even most kids, but my kid was much more stressed about not having any academic challenge and too much time on her hands than by having a packed schedule. Just the way she is wired. This is a parenting issue. You have to do what is right for your kid and not jump off the Brooklyn bridge just because everyone else is. Seems to me that the best solution may to just stop weighting GPAs, don’t publish rank, and just send the actual transcript of classes to colleges. Those that game the system by taking easier classes will be obvious, and those that want electives and lots of challenge can pick that.</p>
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<p>They really should be trying to pull up the low achievers instead of pulling down the high achievers.</p>
<p>@1012mom, “I understand this is not for every kid, or even most kids, but my kid was much more stressed about not having any academic challenge” My kids are exactly like this too. They want to learn, not waste their time.</p>
<p>" Who is it serving to have my 9th grader reading at college level in a class reading Shakespeare with kids reading at barely a middle school level? She is bored and annoyed, and they are intimidated." There seems to be an idea in the educational establishment that the high achievers will be role models and that the other kids will learn from them. There’s another idea that the high achievers will better understand the material through teaching it to others. These rosy ideas may play out in some situations, but there are a lot of alternative negative possibilities for both groups. I wonder how much actual evidence there is for these ideas and how much of it is just made up to placate the unhappy parents of the high achievers. It’s not obvious to me that the lower performers benefit. For one thing, they may be intimidated or discouraged when another kid gives an answer and they still don’t get it. If they see or hear that other kids don’t need to study, they may get the idea that they don’t either. Even if they are trying, they may not participate as fully in group projects, and if they aren’t it’s too easy for them to coast on the smart kid’s work. </p>
<p>Most schools seem to drop the pretense that this is the best way to teach some time in middle school or by high school. Sorry that yours didn’t.</p>
<p>RE post 72:
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<p>That is how my kids small, high rated midwest public school operates and yes kids go off to elite NE colleges. I would like to see this movie, if nothing, hopefully the movie will confirm that it isn’t an affluent coastal suburban issue which I sometimes sense is the issue.</p>
<p>I found “Race to Nowhere” and “waiting for Superman” to be very helpful documentaries. Glad PBS is picking up at least one of them.</p>
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<p>Indeed. In many cases, what ends up happening is that the lower performing students end up pulling down the higher performing students by getting the teacher to teach to the LCD and/or through bullying/ostracism for the “crime” of being high academic achievers. I’ve lost count of how many parents and former students who’ve experienced public K-12 systems across the US have experienced this. Thankfully, this is one thing I thankfully missed during my public magnet HS years though I did have a taste of it in junior high. </p>
<p>I met several high achiever college students with 1300+ pre-1995 SATs who were high school dropouts because the bullying/ostracism from not only their peers, but also teachers/educrats with this very mentality in their local high schools was such they couldn’t stand staying in their local high school and their parents were too poor and lacking in influence in their areas to make a difference. </p>
<p>Their only way they made it into college was through a “second chance” program offered by some colleges which accepted them on the basis of high SAT scores, GPAs, consideration of their life stories in interviews, etc. </p>
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<p>With the exception of a few parents who drank this sort of kool-aid, most such parents rightly regard this as a form of “Harrison Bergeroning” their high academic achieving kids. They also feel using their kids’ presence to “pull up the lower performers” is adding further insult to injury by off-loading some teacher duties and doing so while exploiting them in the labor sense. </p>
<p>One older HS alum recounted having several harsh exchanges with a few NYC area educrats who drank that kool-aid during parent-teacher conferences with his kids within the last decade. </p>
<p>I thought Waiting for Superman was much better than Race to Nowhere, though I wish it had talked more about all the private monies some charters receive.</p>
<p>I see a different kind of issue with the race for more and more APs. Most APs the kids are doing are not due to interest but for admission process and may be get some college credits. The outcome is that though the kid may be genuinely interested in a subject and have the skills to do great in it, it gets lost in the burden of doing multiple APs or rigorous courses. Some end up disliking the very subject they had an interest.</p>