"Want the best for your child, not for your child to be the best"

Parent Cafe
81

“When you get a culture of people who are determined that their kids be the “best” and conform to certain narrow ideals of achievement no matter the personal cost, there isn’t much the school can do about it in the end. If the school isn’t challenging enough the kids will be pushed along outside of school hours.”

-Exactly! And this kids who are pushed (by parents or by their own curiosity and deisres) will also perform well beoynd others in a classroom. And what others do? They will try to catch up by stop slacking. American middle school is such a waste of all kind of resources, it is at such a low level, that kid does not need to use ANY brain to get all As. Just do your homework - comment of my 13 y o grandson, not coming from me. But I agree with him much more than anybody who argue otherwise. The answer to them: just try to check the academic material for yourself!

82

Well, I know my kids wanted to be challenged and work hard. The problem is that often the workload in the more challenging classes is just excessive. In the last 2 weeks, for example, for just English class D has had 2 major projects, plus a mid-sized group project, plus quantities of poetry worksheets (2 / night) and 2 poetry analysis essays. None are beyond her ability-wise, but the time commitment is too much for just one of many classes. IMO, the school makes the mistake of equating rigor with quantity, not quality.

83

"IMO, the school makes the mistake of equating rigor with quantity, not quality. "
-yes, agree. Lots of unproductive busy work that does not develop analytical thinking, but rather trying to keep it underdeveloped, I wonder if it is done on purpose. Much easier to control non-thinking ship…

84

I think in our school it is done partly on purpose to limit the numbers of kids in the advanced classes, since they do not have enough teachers who are qualified or willing to teach the higher levels. So, first in the summer they give a huge assignment, and hope that discourages some of the faint-hearted. My suspicion is the sudden avalanche of homework in Honors English right now is to decide who they will recommend for AP next year. Course selections were made in Feb., but this particular teacher would not sign off on AP recommendations then, so now is the time when she will weed out.

85

Maybe it is time that the committees stop equating quantity with quality. (They don’t, actually. Most of those Type AAAA students with 12 AP’s have the same results as some other students with 3 AP’s, but the former ** assumes ** that the admissions results will be different, which is the reason for the horse race. The results I mean are usually the state’s flagship and maybe another state’s flagship, too, and possible a couple of privates but definitely not an Ivy.)

The committees have to start somewhere, so unless they’re going to ignore class titles and comparative weights of GPA’s, they will have to find a different ruler by which to measure the rigor. And it is true that students who are intellectually superior – as opposed to those who are simply in battle training and proving they can manage a physical endurance contest – also want to take as many advanced classes as possible. The difference is that the intellectually superior students do not need to stay up half the night or most of the night to accomplish what the wiped-out zombie students try to do. That difference will be apparent in the teacher recs, because the student who does all this relatively “easily” will be distinguished from those who “work really hard.”

I’m familiar with the syndrome of the few hours of sleep a night. Most of my students study after dinner, then take a late-night nap for 2 or 3 hours, and then rise around 3 a.m. for the day. On the weekends they sleep extra if they can. They might have e.c.'s on Saturday morning, but then they’ll nap all of Sat. afternoon and will sleep almost all day on Sunday.

And this is going to keep on happening until the schools stop offering AP classes to “everyone,” which – at the most competitive schools-- is essentially what happens. If you have to get 2-3 hrs. sleep/night to handle that many AP classes, then you don’t belong in those classes. The parents insist on their non-superior students being enrolled in as many AP classes as are available, regardless of the efficiency and capacity of that intellect.

86

Lack of sleep can definitely lead to depression, fwiw. In adults too.

87

I don’t know if the difference between those who can handle 12 APs and those who cannot is a difference in intellect. In fact, the difference may rather be in time and stress management skills. The idea that the difference is intellect may actually be the problem here (kids and their parents want to prove themselves intellectually and think inability to manage the stress of 12 APs amounts to intellectual failure or inferiority to their peers, so they bite off more than is healthy for them).

88

And by the way, if anyone wonders how I know what the intellectual capacity is of the “all-nighters,” it’s because I tutor them. They come to me not only for college admissions planning but because they can’t express themselves (for most of them, English is their native language) and have bad study habits. It’s also obvious when they don’t understand the prompt about which the college is asking them to write. In both their class work (I generally don’t help them with AP stuff but with basic stuff) and with the college applications they show themselves to be not of “elite college” material. Yet they’re allowed to take all of those AP’s and to pose and swagger and brag about how merely being enrolled in their competitive high school gives them an advantage for elite college admissions. (They think.)

Solution: A registry for tutors. Qualifications would be parallel with teacher credentialing, and fussy parents would only hire registered tutors, who would have to record their hours on a database. That registry would later be available to the colleges, and college applicants would have to disclose what they were tutored in and why.

89

Whoa, epiphany, you want to add yet another hoop for these stressed out kids to jump through? Under your system, it would become a mark of inferiority to “need” tutoring, so kids who want to get ahead will try to do without, meaning even longer hours of study and even less sleep. I thought we were looking for ways to keep the kids off the train tracks here…

90

I understand your criticism, Zekesima, and your concern. There’s no shame in tutoring for any number of legitimate reasons. But if the student or the family is pretending to make the grade for advanced preparation, more harm will be done by continuing the charade (leading to lack of sleep). This is precisely what happens now. An extremely high proportion of all of those with type-AAAA lifestyles are being tutored. I know this firsthand. The “tutoring culture” is actually more prevalent among students in advanced classes than among students who struggle in CP classes. Are you implying that having to be honest (not that different from turning in your papers via TurnItIn) is going to break these students emotionally? That their mental health is dependent on dishonesty? Why would you want to support such hiding? They will be better adjusted, then and later, by owning up to their true abilities and needs, and they will actually grow more quickly, including intellectually, by coming to terms with that now.

91

Please keep in mind, folks, that merely a few years ago (say, 5) there were more “controls” in my own State about who took AP classes. That is, at many highly ranked publics, the student had to take the Honors Level (and do very well in that) in order to be “promoted” to the AP version the following year. That in itself both capped the number of possible AP’s the student could take in 4 years AND was a weeding-out tool. Since the education systems have been increasingly overwhelmed by budget problems, leading to understaffing, and since that retraction has been coupled with an enormous influx of ambitious families (read overpopulation) into those particular schools – some of which are now overenrolled by 1500-2000 students – such schools are swimming in students, badgered by aggressive parents, and suffering from insufficient staff to monitor who is taking all of these AP classes. No one’s minding the hen-house.

I don’t excuse all that. Leadership is still ethically and practically required. Just exposing the reality.

92

If a majority of the top performing kids are relying on tutoring to get their grades in the toughest classes, then why would you make it a requirement to have to report it on some college application? If the practice is as widespread as you say, then presumably the colleges already know about it and don’t care.

To be fair, under your system, students should also have to disclose how many hours per night they studied for each class. Would this add to the kids’ stress loads? I think so. Again, in order to get ahead with the adcoms, students will claim they studied less to get their grades, making their peers feel even worse about themselves because they needed longer study hours plus tutoring. I don’t see how any of this helps relieve the stress crisis they are facing at places like Gunn.

As to your suggestion that AP classes should be harder to get in to, I have mixed feelings. At my son’s school (mostly half Hispanic, half white), there is already a big racial imbalance in the classes. Creating more prereqs for APs may mean shutting out the few minorities that manage to get into these classes.

93

Kids grow at different rates and what some can do in hs- and want to take on- usually has little bearing on what others can do- or can tolerate. To one poster, there’s no such thing as the more advanced students magically “lifting” others, if those others aren’t able or ready.

I agree with so much epiphany is saying. And, am liking GFG’s observations.

Getting tutoring or mentoring, contrary to popular opinion, is not seen as bad. It depends.

94

Never said that. You decided it would have to be part of my supposed “system.” I merely stopped at the registration aspect. I think it would be ridiculous to quantify hours of studying. There’s no need to aggrandize my suggestion.

Again, the solution should really rest with the high schools, not be put on the students. However, Zekesima, adult responsibility encompasses more than just who has already demonstrated the (relatively) “easy” ability to master AP by mastering Honors well. It includes taking leadership in the area of college counseling at the school. These high schools are terribly irresponsible in what they omit telling the students about the difficulty of admissions to elites, despite 12 AP’s, etc. They fail to exercise strong guidance in developing the students’ college lists, and they fail the students in many other similar ways. In a way, the students (and their parents) are running the schools, determining the school culture, etc.

95

It is always interesting to read these boards and get insight into vastly different school cultures in different areas that would seem on the surface to have similar demographics.

Our high school screens for AP eligibility partly by teacher recommendation and partly by standardized test scores, yet we still see the pattern epiphany has mentioned. Btw, teachers in AP classes often go beyond the AP curriculum, scores on AP exams taken by students at our school are high, and it is not uncommon to see a student who has struggled to keep up with work in the class get a 5 on the exam without breaking a sweat.

Sometimes it is the peer pressure to stay up half the night and communicate with peers via electronic media, especially if there are group assignments. A student with lots of potential can stumble if they need lots of sleep to function, however. I do not think this is always an issue of students being pushed beyond their abilities - some students will manage a heavy course load better if they are taught effective time management skills, beginning with sleep hygiene. But, what to do if a study group does not meet until late at night the day before a lab report or problem set is due, and it will take a student working on their own twice the amount of time to complete the assignment? Or if assignments are not delivered with enough lead time for a student to pace effectively, as seems to be the case with TheGFG’s daughter?

Others will need to learn that “less is more” and limit numbers of honors/AP classes, especially if they are participating in time-consuming EC’s. (Quite a few of these surge ahead in the college years, especially if they dump their EC to concentrate on academics or avoid areas of weakness, or even carry the lesson that “less is more” forward.) Even those who could manage to get good grades on a full schedule might find that they are more creative, less vulnerable to depression, and take more joy in learning if they are not trying to do too much at once.In the long run, especially if a student chooses an occupational area in which creativity matters a lot, this can make a huge difference.

Btw, the colleges that frazzled kids attended (state school honors college, elite private) provided lots of tutoring and students who were used to asking for help from tutors, or studying in groups with peers, or looking to mentors for advice, seemed to have a distinct advantage. One of mine learned this the hard (the very hard) way. Of course, additional issues come into play in college, especially when students with vastly different levels of preparation are dumped into the same curved weeder classes and left to sink or swim, or highly capable students who were used to coasting by with “most rigorous schedule” in high school try to do this at a school where most other students are limiting the numbers of challenging classes they take at once.

At the high school level,at least at our school, whether or not a student would need a tutor (or assistance from an elder sibling or parent or a peer) seemed to me to have lots to do with whether the teacher was teaching effectively, or readily available before or after school. Our district turns the other way when parents complain that they are spending a small fortune on tutoring because a teacher is not doing a very good job.

It is the same few teachers that students and parents complain about, year after year, to no avail. I think that requiring students to disclose their use of tutoring services would advantage those who were getting help from a family member, or who had gotten the better teachers.

My kids completed their college application without any assistance, fwiw, and I did not see their essays until(with a couple exceptions) after the applications were sent out. Perhaps completion of the common app should take place under proctored conditions to level the playing field.

96

I never said you explicitly said study hours disclosure would be required, but fairness would require such a disclosure.

As to high school GCs, I completely agree with you. But getting them to back off this emphasis on Ivies/ top 20 schools won’t be easy because they benefit from getting students into the top schools as well. My son’s school loves to brag about how many kids got into top schools, and makes a huge deal about their ranking among other high schools in the country.

97

“I think that requiring students to disclose their use of tutoring services would advantage those who were getting help from a family member, or who had gotten the better teachers”.-frazzled

Exactly.

98

I have supported that idea for a long time, but then, I have also supported the idea of the colleges creating and proctoring their own entrance tests and conducting academic interviews like those of Cambridge & Oxford. But no one’s listening to me, and I understand why. :smiley:

99

I, for one, LOVE that idea, epiphany.

100

There is no such thing as a totally level playing field, even within the same economic class and racial category. My siblings and I had a genius mother, literally. You could call us severely advantaged in life.

The point of my suggestion was narrowly focused as one of many measures to reduce the number of inappropriate enrollments in AP classes. Yes, some of the problems are connected to poor AP teachers, but the reason those teachers are hired in the first place is directly because of the irrational demand of parents for unlimited availability of AP classes for their non-AP-qualified students. So inept teachers are hired. In some schools I’m acquainted with, for example, a bio teacher will be assigned an AP (or even CP) Chem course. The results have been disastrous.