<p>I dont' like that as we move to national statewide testing- we have curriculum being determined by the test makers- not the teachers.
In WA we have the WASL and we have students being less prepared for college than they were 5 years ago according to local professors, because schools are usuing curriculum that is written by the publishers of the test.
get a load of one teachers campaign.</p>
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Testimony to the Seattle School Board, October 20, 2004: I am a second grade teacher here in the Seattle School District. Seattle Administrators are apparently in the process of making the TERC Math Curriculum mandatory for Seattle Elementary Schools. A more unworthy curriculum could not be found. We would laugh at anyone who said he/she wanted to become a pianist, but refused to practice. Yet well-placed practice is exactly what is missing at every juncture from TERC. We would also roll our eyes at the wanna-be pianist who refused to take instruction from the teacher. Yet systematic instruction from the teacher is exactly what is missing from this program. The children are supposed to "discover" and "invent" their own methods of solving problems. Imagine spending $55,000 a year on a piano teacher who let the children "discover" how to play the piano. It would be an outrage--and so is TERC. To facilitate TERC, I was given a 9 volume set of large manuals. To confound anything, be sure to put it in 9 volumes. It takes several years to ferret out the nuggets of worthwhile material buried in the time-wasting busyness of TERC. It is ironic that those who say we learn by discovering, come out with 9 volumes of direct instruction to teach teachers. The first question in the assessment book for second grade is a prime example of the lack of logic in this program. The question is open ended, but asks the teacher to look for specific information not asked in the question! TERC mires the children in mindreading and the teacher in baseless speculation. In the assessment book for teachers, one would expect at least some objective answers to math assessments, but there are none. Indicators are given of what the teacher is to look for because this is a PROCESS-ORIENTED program, not ANSWER-ORIENTED. This is heady stuff for those who drink the TERC kool-aid. These same reformers who are pushing TERC would not be so sanguine if the engine in their car was off a few centimeters here and there, but the manufacturing PROCESS was good. I dare say they would not care a wit about the process. They'd demand precise calculations. Fortunately for India, its educational system cannot afford experimental reform programs like TERC. India, which continues to use traditional math curricula, has wellprepared math students who are hired for our technical jobs. It is interesting that big corporations are pushing the reform agenda which dumbs down our students, seemingly giving the corporations an excuse to look elsewhere for technical workers. A full critique of the TERC program can be found on the internet site founded by Berkeley University professors to advise and correct the alarming adoption of programs like TERC into the public schools (<a href="http://www.mathematicallycorrect.com)%5B/url%5D">http://www.mathematicallycorrect.com)</a>.
Administrators who are concerned about disproportionality, would do well to heed their warning. It is experimental programs like TERC that leave huge gaps which are especially damaging to children of disadvantaged parents. Their parents cannot provide remediation for them like many middle class parents do. NOTE TO PARENTS: The following districts have adopted the TERC math curriculum and are in various stages of implementation: Bellevue, Everett, Seattle, Spokane, Tacoma, Bainbridge, Richland and North Kitsap. TERC is being sold as the curriculum to help students pass the WASL. The new WASL contract is with Pearson which also publishes TERC.
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btw: in your example, Honors/college prep chem is a prereq to AP Chem in our district. Ditto, honors/college prep physics for AP physics.
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<p>In my daughter's school, there were two chemistry classes offered. The first was the regular college prep chem. The second was the Honors or Advanced Chem, with the 20 or so best students placed into this class. The following year, the Advanced Chem was converted into AP Chem. It was the same teacher, the same 20 top students, the same text book. The only difference was that the school paid the fee to get the AP designation and give the test. There was NO difference in the course. It was exactly the same except there was an additional expense to the school. Just trophy collecting.</p>
<p>I generally like Jay Mathews work, but this list is an absolute crock of hogwash - a manipulation of statistics, and in no way a measure of how good the school is. I know a little about the top school on the list, and a lot about Pensacola High School - Shades Valley is a pretty good high school, one of the best in the COUNTY system, which is not where the rich suburban parents send their kids, OR the poor inner city kids either - it is actually a middle income to slightly upper middle school, with some really poor, others wealthy, in short, normal distribution. The thing though is that the IB program is a school within a school, drawing candidates from all over the county, it is an artificial "school". Same thing for PHS - a poor, rough inner city school (couple of members of the football team arrested for raping a special ed girl in the bathrooom at school kind of place) with a separate IB program within the school - the IB students would otherwise never attend.</p>
<p>All it proves is that IB programs are good and attract students, and these students take lots of IB tests, duh! What about the average student at those high schools?</p>
<p>IMHO, I always appreciate when Jay releases the "Challenge Index" just because of the reaction it causes (see this thread). It has significant flaws, but to be fair he acknowledges pretty much all of them. It is NOT a list of the best high schools in the country (though Kaplan/Newsweek/Washington Post have ignored him on this point. At best, the list is intended to show those public schools that do the best job of encouraging all of their students (including those who might not otherwise have any inclination to take AP) to challenge themselves through the AP or IB program. It's completely unscientific, but Jay is an AP/IB freak -- and I think he sees the annual list as a way to just keep the conversation and debate going.</p>
<p>Here we go again... Newsweek puts the big headline "Best High Schools" on the cover and everyone lines up to check out their status. Mathew's Challenge Index ONLY calls attention to those schools who have eliminated gatekeeping. The higher the index, the more accessable the courses are to ALL students. No one follows a college student around and tells him/her to not take a class because it will be too hard for them. It shouldn't happen in high school either. Those students who have experience with challenging course work (AP or otherwise) in high school are significantly less likely to drop out of college. Students with 1's and 2's on AP Exams have a leg up on those who never take the courses and are more successful with college coursework. Enough of this best high school business! Iderochi has it right!</p>
<p>I agree Mathews list is hogwash because it says nothing about how the kids did on those AP and IB tests. Also any school with an IB program has a leg up because those kids take all the IB tests and usually take the AP exams as well. At Richard Montgomery (number 11 on the list) most of the seniors in the magnet IB program spend the last month of their senior year doing nothing but taking IB and AP tests. RM's county-wide magnet test in program accounts for about a 25-30% of the senior class and a huge chunk of the tests taken.</p>
<p>On the other hand folks who think they can tell the quality of the high schools based on the median income of the county are woefully naive about 21st century America. RM sits in one of the wealthiest counties in America but also has some extremely troubled schools. The kids in my sons middle school spoke more than 30 different languages at home. We have machete wielding MS13 gangs, drugs, violence, transients, you name it. The best of the schools in the county are excellent and the worst - well they can be pretty bad. They don't call our local HS Crimestein for nothing.</p>
<p>How can we judge a high school based on AP/IB programs? Absolutely ridiculous. I have a friend who attend one of the "top 15 schools" according to the report and he says gettign into AP's is just where the counselors ask whether they would want to take an AP class or not. But my high school, u have to pass qualifying exams, get a 3.8, and get 2 recommendations. It's flawed. If it was measuring on how many people go to selective schools, that would be better</p>
<p>agree with rexrun, some schools encourage students to sign up for as many ap's as they can. at my school also, you have to take placement tests and get recommended for every single ap exam. We may not have a million ap test takers but we have 450 or so exams taken every year with 96% scoring higher than a 3 and 53% of all tests being a 5. like the old saying goes, "it's quality not quantity."</p>
<p>My high school, which is an IB school, took like 580 exams, with 211 people taking at least 1 IB test in 2004. The school pass rate was 82%. The pass rate for getting the diploma was 89%.</p>
<p>But as people have been mentioning, the 36 IB Diploma Candidates took around 220 tests, which means the other students who took IB tests averaged 2 tests a person, and the whole school, other than the Diploma Candidates, only averaged about 1 test a person. 65% of the Diploma Candidates were white, and another 15% were asian. All this does is show the school can give the top students the advanced classes but not necessarily help out the other students to get to that level.</p>
<p>patuxent, </p>
<p>I wouldn't say definitively that IB programs have a leg up. Many AP classes are only one year, while IB classes are 2, thus allowing you to take many more APs in the time it takes you to take enough IB classes for the diploma. Yes, you can double test, but there has to physically be time. Each IB test is split over 2 days, so you've got 12 days of testing, about. There are NO makeup days for IB tests. There are only like 2 or 3 make up days for AP, with specific tests on specific days. I could only fit 2 APs into my schedule last year (one of them I didn't take a corresponding class for, or prep with a book... happened to be my only college credits), but the classes I took would have allowed me to take 8 AP tests. This is where I would argue that it's easier to take more AP tests than IB tests, which would put the IB schools at a disadvantage.</p>
<p>Iderochi and M&B are spot-on. Even Jay admits the # is crude, and never claims these are "'top" high schools. The editors and headline writers take care of that. :)</p>
<p>while every school is different in how they encourage or discourage ap's, Jay is really challenging school admins that limit participation in ap ("gatekeeping" function). He is in essence challenging the quality argument bcos it is self-selecting.....if only the top kids in the HS are allowed into the ap/ib program, high scores would be expected (along with teachers' passing rates). But, his point is that other kids in the school are not provided that same opportunity. It goes back to Jaime Escalante in "Stand and Deliver."</p>
<p>btw: Our public HS only requires a B in the prior year class to take an ap course, and the passing rate is ~80% (with 60% earning 4-5).</p>
<p>I agree with much of what you say. However, you might want to be a little careful in calling various AP courses "light." For instance, the 2003 AP exam results reveal some interesting statistics:</p>
<p>The subject with the lowest mean score was not Physics, or Chemistry or Calculus. The lowest mean score was Environmental Science (2.61). I might also mention that U.S. Government, one of the subjects that you referred to as "light," had the fourth lowest mean score (2.69).</p>
<p>Here are some other mean scores:</p>
<p>Physics B: 2.83
Physics C E&M: 3.36
Physics C M: 3.36
Chemistry: 2.80
Calculus AB: 3.08
Calculus BC: 3.69</p>
<p>I know that rigor can be measured by more than just mean scores, but I do think that the mean scores can at least suggest that the "light" courses are not exactly a breeze for students. I know ... I teach two of them.</p>
<p>It seems abolsutely absurd to measure the quality of a high school almost exclusively on the basis of AP/IB. It may even be worse than the WSJ article a year or two ago that listed high schools on the basis of how many students were admitted to a select group of colleges (which did not include a number of extreemely selective colleges). There is so much more that goes in to making a good high school experience--passionate and effective teaching would be key, and is not necessarily something that can be manifested when you are teaching to a test. </p>
<p>I wasn't aware of the trend in the South and Southwest to gear "quality" schools so heavily to the AP tests or IB programs, and I'm not familiar with the communities. I would point out though that of the northeastern schools on the list not all serve an affluent or largely white population--Jersey City's McNair Academy is the most obvious example, and I suspect there are others.</p>
<p>In Florida, the way they integrate schools is by placing a sought after magnet program in an inner city school. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, my daughter's HS is in the top 50, but gets a state rating of "C", based on overall standardized testing. The IB program is separate from the rest of school, with separate vice principal, GCs, etc. So the IB has 100% college acceptance while the rest of kids are lucky if they graduate.</p>
<p>I guess it seems to me in looking at the list (and at the free/reduced-price lunch numbers) that in some cases the AP/IB stuff reflects pressure from highly affluent taxpayers who do see those programs, rightly or wrongly, as being a key to prestigious college admissions. In other cases, however, it seems to me that there is the possibility of an attempt to provide by-the-numbers proof of academic success in a district whose other schools are essentially failing to provide quality education for the students in that district. This is not to say that schools like McNair aren't doing a good job for a small group of students, but one can't help but wonder what is happening in the other high schools in some of the larger, poorer districts included in the list. I sometimes think that the specific form of success recognized in surveys like this may serve to divert attention from the more general issue of really improving public education in substantive ways.</p>
<p>soccerguy315 - at Richard Montgomery they arrange the AP and IB test schedules so the kids can take both even if that means starting testing at 5:30 AM and locking them down between tests. It is in my opinion ridiculous but there are parents, students, and administrators who are that driven. At one time RM had the highest IB pass rate in the world. I don't know where it is at now but it is still pretty high. </p>
<p>But the bottom line is this school is "rated" highly because it contains a county-wide test in magnet program that makes up a quarter of the student body and is effectively a school within a school. Take the magnet out and RM is a lot closer to Rockville or at least used to be. King Farm and the other upscale development in the schools district has brought more wealthy kids in. Still without the magnet it would look pretty dirtball next to Wootton or Whitman or even Walter Johnson.</p>
<p>As it is even with the magnet 12% of the kids are surrently FARMS and 1/3 have been at one time. 1/3 are URM and 22% Asian and a lot of these Asian kids living in apartments which means mom and dad are not Chinese software engineers.</p>
<p>This is inaccurate because he fails to look at magnet schools w/entrance exams. I go to Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Tech. and I know this topic very well because Jay Matthews actually came to our school to talk about his book "Ivy Smivy " or sumthing to that extent.</p>
<p>Our school requires all students to take at least 4 APs with some taking 9-10. Last year one girl from our school got the highest cumulative score and received a scholarship for that feat(Cumulative: 55 before senior year). </p>
<p>I know for a fact that our school has the highest national average AP scores in Calc, Stat, Pysch, Comp Sci AB, Gov, US History, English Lit/Lang, Chem, Bio, and Physics C(I maybe forgettign a couple). This was published by the CollegeBoard.</p>
<p>TJHSST also offers post-AP classes which are considered more advanced than a first year course. Multivar/Linear Algebra, DNA 1 and 2, Neurobiology, Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Mechanics, Supercomputing, and Computer Architecture. We also have a required research project that must be completed in a semester in a selected field.</p>