Reader Christine Langhoff writes in response to a post wondering about Exxon Mobil’s fervent advocacy for the Common Core standards:
“Exxon Mobile came into the Boston Public Schools in about 2003, trying to destroy our contract by inserting merit pay through a project called the Massachusetts Math and Science Initiative (MMSI), a branch of the National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI). And surprise! David Coleman is also a member of this board.
“Despite its official-sounding name, this was a private project begun by Tom Luce who served in Bush’s cabinet as an under secretrary of education. Failing to win the governor’s race in Texas in 1990, he was inspired to form “two nonprofit ventures that led public schools across the United States to measure performance based on standardized tests.” One of the first iterations was called “Just for Kids”. An early innovator (read NCLB) – all good ideas come from Texas! Currently, he is now a “reformer”on the board of the Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE), Jeb!’s spawn.
“The Mass Math and Science Initiative set up shop in my school (89% of our students were minorities). We already had an outstanding track record of well-prepared kids diligently working their way toward scores of 4 and 5 in a host of AP classes. But the goal was not to have kids do well, the goal was simply to get more kids to take AP classes. Why? Follow the money.
“Although teachers had long taught AP courses successfully, no outsider consultants were involved. Suddenly, we were inundated with “verticle alignment” workshops, AP workbooks, CD’s, mandatory extra time for teacher AP training (including Saturdays) and cash payments to students taking the tests, as well as “merit pay” to AP teachers for high scores. In other words, what had been an in-house effort to take our most talented students a step forward toward distinguishing their academic records was co-opted to make bank for test fees, materials and consultants.
“In the same time period, the College Board began to require that AP teachers write up and submit an AP curriculum to them for approval (un-reimbursed, of course), and AP training courses began to be required of teachers so that they would be “qualified” to teach those “endorsed” classes. More “ka-ching” at the cash register.
“Remember that our faculty and students had a long track record of success in this arena. Under pressure from the school department, our numbers of students taking AP classes expanded exponentially, until nearly every student was enrolled in some AP class or another. So we met the goal of more kids, but of course our percentage of high scores fell off precipitously.
“It so happened that my own kids were applying for college during this time period. I noticed that though AP had been on the lips of admissions officers of “elite” schools four years earlier for my older child, now there was little interest. Every admissions person I asked about this at competitive liberal arts colleges had the same answer – that credential has been devalued.
“See:
http://www.nms.org/
http://www.nms.org/AboutNMSI/BoardofDirectors.aspx
http://www.dallasnews.com/business/columnists/robert-miller/20130402-odonnell-foundation-hires-tom-luce-dallas-attorney-and-education-advocate.ece
http://www.susanohanian.org/show_research.php?id=18”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
You could substitute many other programs and see the same business model.
This is where the money is: he outside consultants’ salaries, the materials, all his.
You have to give these people one thing: entrepreneurship at its finst.
This is th real meaning of free-market.
People need to understand this business model to understand what drives ducation reform.
As a coda, the then Chief Operating Officer, who was later appointed to the superintendency, is now retired from the school system. He currently is the Executive Chairman of the Board for the Mass Math and Science Intiative, and previously was the Senior Field Consultant for the School Turnaround Group. Here’s a link which will give you a look into the thinking that drives this group:
Click to access STG%20Turnaround%20Brief%20-%20March%202012%20-%20Bolder.pdf
Exxonmobile could be a good citizen by giving up their tremendous taxpayer subsidies and pay their taxes;corporations are people after all. Then the government would have more money to pay for school improvements and aid to give to each district. They don’t do this because corporations, and the people who run them, don’t care about kids, teachers, schools or education. In fact, all they do care about is money.
Many families find that colleges don’t accept all of the AP credit that the families think will get accepted. Also, the AP classes don’t always cover the content to the depth that the college version does. If the subject is not in the student’s major, it may not be a problem. If the course IS in the student’s major, the student can be harmed by not taking the college version. It is difficult to learn the advanced math, physics, etc., if the foundation basics are not mastered. Pushing AP classes on every student is not necessarily helping the students.
That’s true, Chris, but about half the students who enrolled in the Chemistry series at MSU Bozeman a couple of years ago dropped. The ones who made it through were overwhelmingly those who had had the opportunity to “fail” AP Chem.
Credible universities don’t exempt their science majors from the Natural Sciences introduction sequence, even if they do well. Some of my high-scorers were put in “accelerated” introduction courses, though, which served them very well indeed.
I wish we could somehow snatch AP science back from Exxon’s jaws.
My university at least accepts a full range of AP courses, as do most I have seen. The level of credit does depend on the exam scores, however.
My son, at least, found his AP chemistry class sufficient preparation to successfully take physical chemistry at our local university his senior year in high school.
My criticism is not of offering the opportunity of AP, just the current mania of trying to push every breathing student into it. The Principal at my child’s school was enticing parents by giving the impression that by signing up for AP classes, the families would save lots of tuition dollars. One student found that his college accepted half of his AP classes.
I did not mean to imply that A P should be abolished. I just think it should be advocated responsibly.
If the principal is claiming just taking an AP class will give a student college credit, that is fraud. At every college and university I know of the score on the exam determines the amount of credit, if any, that a student receives. When you say that students did not get credit, what were the scores that got the student credit, what scores did not get the student credit.
Agree on responsible, informed advocacy. For example, In some communities, AP is one of several options. Some high schools offer Int’l Bacc, which as Carol Burris from Long Island has pointed out, does not always rely just on how well a student does one day on one test to determine college credit.
In some communities, there also is the option to take “college in the schools” courses, which have been developed cooperatively by high school and college faculty. And in some places, students have the opportunity to take courses on college campuses, with state funds paying all or part of their tuition, book and lab fees.
Each of these has tradeoffs.
Joe
I am not acquainted well enough with the parent that said her son’s college didn’t give her son college credit for half the courses to know details. She and her husband both are Ph.D. university researchers, so I’m guessing that they know what classes and scores wouldn’t qualify. Response to 10:08 question by teaching economist.
It’s true that different colleges/universities have different policies about how much value/credit they will give to students who have completed dual/credit courses such as AP, IB, College in the Schools, “Running Start”, Post Secondary Enrollment Options, etc.
To help make this clearer for Minnesota families, a Macalester College student and our staff constructed an interactive map explaining the different policies for each Minnesota public and private non-profit college/university.
Ideally, organizations would construct similar maps for other states. But in the mean time, it’s important for families and students to check with various post-secondary institutions on how they view these courses.
Most schools make it pretty easy to see which scores count with which exams. I am surprised that folks would be surprised about what counts and what does not count.
Taking the merchandising of education to the next level! Its similar to the housing market collapse where the hunt for new financial products to sell, led to the mass production of toxic assets. In both cases the free market is perpetually compelled to find or create new products and markets with very little regard for the long term ethical or practical outcomes.
An unfettered capitalism has a one track mind, and absolutely no heart!
I rise to defend the original concept of the IB and AP courses, specifically chemistry.
The existence of a very tough exit exam meant young students could safely experience the accelerated content of an AP course in high school, with differential outcomes, without “degrading” the credential. They could have an A in their high school course, and still get a 1 or a 2 on the exam. An African-American student of mine did that, and was snapped up by MIT. She’s finishing her doctorate at Tufts right now, in chemical engineering.
A student who did well at a high school level might not have mastered the “passing” level for the 180-minute exam. Just over half of AP Chemistry students passed, even before AP course admissions were opened up. The test was normed against a cohort of students at fine universities, who had finished the year-long Introduction to the Discipline series, with separate supporting lab courses. The B/C boundary zone was the cutoff for a score of “qualified”, which is a 3.
The rationale in the AP Acorn guide was that different instructors might choose different aspects for emphasis, so a student who hadn’t seen some topics would have a chance to show mastery on others. It was an opportunity to teach deeply, and help students find their own style for success in confronting the stress and joy of more advanced work. The College Board already had launched it’s access initiative, and I was passionately on-board for that, before the Exxon take over.
It’s true that there was (and is) a cohort of experienced teachers at elite schools who had gamed the test, and had a system for drilling students on every known permutation of an AP question meme, without ever attempting to move deeper at all. I once saw a set of flash cards for “descriptive chemistry”, for instance. Test prep companies sold practice books to that end, and even bubble-averse teachers like me used question banks from previously published tests. The Exxon intitiative subsumed all that, in a wall of cheap, flawed online test prep materials so brutally superficial it crushed student interest and motivation, rewarding nothing but compliance.
So, I was teaching AP in Massachusetts during the events Christine describes, not far from her district. There was a non-College Board Texas company which claimed to have AP and pre-AP course materials for sale, and online support. when I followed their links, there was nothing actually there. College Board resisted, then succumbed to a Gates Foundation grant, and now has been taken over utterly.
I’d like to hear from some people who were inside College Board during the sell-off, especially those who resisted.
Thanks to ChemTchr for the frank discussion of the plusses and minuses of AP. Here’s a column written by St. Paul (district) inner city public student who explains how grateful she is to her school for encouraging and helping her take college level courses. She’s had a challenging life.
Yes, absolutely teachers who attend workshops to write curriculum or to learn how to teach college level classes should be paid.
There are dividends from helping youngsters like this, who some years ago would not have been encouraged to take college level classes while in high school.
http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/news/2013/11/14/community-voices-getting-caught-and-earning-college-credits-too
My name is Brittney Poole and in my high school years leading up to my 12th grade year I have switched schools a lot. My 9th grade year I went to Open World Learning Community and Central SR High School. While I was at those two schools I struggled with taking the importance of school seriously. That caused me to get into a lot of trouble and to fall behind with my grades and credits.
My 10th grade year I went to Twin Cities Academy High School and Washington Technology Magnet. When I was at those two schools I learned the importance of school and how if I don’t take it seriously that it could and would effect me in the long run. I also was able to take credit recovery classes as apart of their extended day program. I started getting out of trouble, earning good grades, making up credits, and earning college credit.
My 11th grade year I went to Washington Technology Magnet again. I continued to get good grades and earn college and recovery credits. My 12th grade year from September to November I moved to Arlington Texas and went to Summit SR High School. In that school I earned college credit and I was earning above average grades I was even on track to graduate. In November before Thanksgiving I moved back to Minnesota and I was told that I wasn’t in Texas long enough to earn credits that would transfer to Minnesota because Texas goes by semesters and Minnesota goes by Quarters. That caused me to fall even more behind in school than I already was.
I was devastated but I still had to graduate so I enrolled in Creative Arts High School. There they have a college credit program and a credit recovery program but I was more focused on trying to graduate so I worked on my high school credits and credit recovery. During that school year I also went to night school at Gordon Parks High School. I liked it so much, that I then enrolled in the Gordon Parks summer school and online school and earned make up credits. I had more credits I needed to make up and I wanted to be full time at Gordon Parks High School to graduate on time, so I am now earning college credit there and making up those 3 months of school to be able to graduate in the spring of 2014 with my class.
Looking back at my journey through out high school I am glad that I earned the opportunity to go to Gordon Parks High School and earn college and make up credits. Having access to college credits and credit recovery has kept me motivated and in school. It also made me more appreciative of school and life in general because the Saint Paul School District didn’t have to open up a school allowing students to be able to make up credits but they did. None of my previous schools have been able to meet my learning needs as well as at Gordon Parks High School. In Gordon Parks High School they have a program in some of the English and Math classes where you can earn college credit. There is also an outside of school program to earn university credit named UHURU Youth Scholars.
My goals for the time that I’m at Gordon Parks High School are to graduate in the spring and earn college credit while I’m here and to be 100% ready for college when I leave the school. Looking back over my life I’ve struggled a lot with my school and life situations. But I feel that me not being able to graduate on time, and having to do a lot of make up work to get close to where I am now has made me stronger and it still is making me stronger as I fight to finish these last 9 credits and graduate in the spring of 2014.
My advice to all the freshmen’s in high school is to take school very seriously and to not joke around and fall behind because if you do you will have to work 3 times harder to accomplish everything which as a result is not worth it. I would have rather did all the basic work in high school and be on track to graduate and worked hard to finish, than to have to do 3 times the work and work 3 times harder to get to a confident spot in terms of graduating.
© 2013 Brittney Poole
Joe:
It’s pretty hard to generalize from a set of one.
chemtchr:
It sounds like the College Board (or somebody) has turned the whole AP system into a racket. This smells a lot like the Common Core. Create a demand for goods and services that aren’t needed and might even do more harm than good, but that people are compelled to pay for. It looks like one big shakedown of taxpayers, parents, teachers, and, ultimately, children.
Some of these efforts are about as noble as a chimney scam, but apparently because the scammers have advanced degrees from elite universities, and they know how to employ their vast lexicon of buzzwords, we keep falling for them. Or maybe it’s because their billionaire funders have greased the wheels. Either way, the kids lose.
Why do you think the kids lose? No doubt some may be mislead locally, but providing some high level classes for strong students seems appropriate.
Teachingeconomist:
Who said anything about being against advanced classes? I said I’m against educational racketeering. That’s what the original post was describing, and it’s the sort of thing that chemtchr was describing.
While I’m not against advanced classes, I’ve been a skeptic of the AP enterprise for quite a while. In the years before I retired from teaching, I noticed that some of my students ended up taking three, four, even five AP classes at a time. It was obvious these kids were ridiculously overloaded with schoolwork, but the pressures to take more AP classes just kept increasing.
Anyone reading this who doesn’t believe increased academic pressure often leads to depression, substance abuse, and related problems–that person is living in a dream world. Sure, someone’s son or daughter took lots of AP courses and did well, with no ill effects (that he knows of). But if you really want to educate yourself on this topic, talk to any clinical psychologist who works in an affluent suburb. Or check out this website: http://www.racetonowhere.com/
My son took 1 AP test his sophomore year, 6 his junior year, and 2 his senior year. What limits would you have placed on him!
Teachingeconomist:
This is exactly the kind of response I was expecting.
First, I’m not in a position to put restrictions on your children, or anybody’s children.
Second, your reasoning on educational policy appears to be based primarily on your experience with your own children. That’s a serious fallacy, one I used to run into it all the time in dealing with administrators who tended to use the experience of their gifted children as a baseline for what they considered good policies for every child in the school.
Third, considering that colleges commonly require special permission to carry an overload (over 18 semester hours), and that high school students typically attend class five days a week for each class (and that lab courses in the sciences are commonly designated as four-hour courses), carrying six AP classes might be the equivalent of 20 to 30 semester hours at an actual college… Yes, it would be very reasonable to put a limit on the number of college-level courses a high school student may take. (A high school student who may be all of sixteen years old.)
Finally, such a limit would be appropriate in the interest of SANITY for everyone concerned. In the case of you and your child, everything turned out great, didn’t it? Does that constitute a good case for encouraging, or even allowing other kids to take a similar overload? No, it doesn’t.
Randel,
First, glad to know that you are not in a position to limit student’s ability to fulfill their academic potential. The most accomplished graduate of our local high school was offered admission to a top ten graduate program in mathematics when she graduated from high school. I doubt that would have happened if limits had been placed on the courses she was allowed to take.
Second, my opinions on educational policies come from a variety of sources. I am in favor of the development of online courses because of the students I teach from small high schools (the median high school in my state has a little less than 250 students). My position on peer a valuation and salary scales comes from my experience in higher education where such things are common place. My view of the education provided in schools of education has been formed by interaction with students and faculty in my universities school of education. My view that school autonomy and all and only admission standards used by traditional zoned schools are incompatible is based on some simple principles of political economy.
Third, while my son took 6 AP exams his junior year, he did not take 6 year long AP classes. One class was the science engineering calculus class at my local university (few schools accept transfer credit from incoming freshman, but most accept AP credit), there were two semester long independent studies, an AB physics class (but the two calculus based AP exams), and a year long AP chemistry class. He graduated having taken 25 credit hours of lower division, upper division, and graduate work at our local university along with the 9 AP exams. Oh, and he graduated at 16. Would this have violated your reasonable limits?
Finally, what was driving him insane was the quality of the standard courses at the high school and not being taken seriously as a student. This seems to be a common attitude among his peers.
My district is pushing AP like crazy. I am teaching AP Human Geography for the first time this year. I really enjoy it, and it’s great for some kids, but I get no extra pay or preparation time and I’m burned out already. BUT, districts get $50.00 from College Board for every AP test score 3 or over. My district got over $100,000 last year, so the push is on. At one school in my district, over HALF of 9th graders take the APHG instead of regular Geography. That’s at least 150 kids taking AP at one school alone, as FRESHMEN! There is no WAY that many students should be taking AP, but the money the district gets is too much to resist.
Louisiana Purchase:
Thanks for that information. I had no idea that school districts had this kind of financial stake in AP. Under other circumstances, the fifty dollar payment would be called a KICKBACK. This is looking sleazier and sleazier. Should those 150 students all be taking what’s supposed to be a college course at age fourteen? Is there a sound educational reason for it?
As to overload: I agree. We are offering two AP classes to the freshman class this year, and I have several students taking BOTH AP classes. They are stressed out of their minds, and I am not allowed to say one thing to parents or counselors about my concerns. I HAVE to allow the students to register in my class, whether it’s a good idea for them to take it or not.
Teachingeconomist:
“First, glad to know that you are not in a position to limit student’s ability to fulfill their academic potential.”
That would be a pretty slick putdown if it bore any connection with reality. My original comment stated that when enterprises that act like rackets hold sway, the kids lose. This has nothing to do with limiting a child’s potential. It has everything to do with two legal scams that I believe are being perpetrated on the American public: Common Core and AP.
Personally, I’m all in favor of advanced courses, enrollment of high school students in college courses, early graduation, and distance learning for small schools. I support home schooling and, especially considering the way public education has been trending, UNschooling. I’m in favor of allowing students to remain enrolled while absent for athletic training, acting auditions, and the like. I’m in favor of academic prodigies skipping middle school and enrolling in college, if that’s what the child and parents decide is the best path. I would support a student who wanted to drop out, get a GED, and enroll in a community college if he or she found high school intolerable. In short, I’m in favor of bending over backwards to give kids a chance to learn. What I’m NOT in favor of is siphoning public school funds into privately managed charters. And I’m not in favor of public vouchers for private schools, or vouchers for home schoolers.
One thing I was suggesting in my followup comment is pretty simple, and wouldn’t deprive. Schools should establish a policy for AP course loads that is comparable to the policies of a typical college or university, keeping in mind the ages of students and the larger number of contact hours typically required in high schools. High school students could obtain special permission to carry an overload, per written policy on a case-by-case basis, just like college students.
Your particular gift for ignoring the main substance of a comment and distorting the rest–and expressing that distortion in a taunting question–well, it’s kind of mindboggling. I’m sorry I took the bait this time. I’m not gonna say it won’t happen again, but I’ll do my darnedest to avoid it.
I’ll just try to reinforce what I said earlier. Some high school students sign up for more AP courses than is good for them. This heightens the negative stress usually associated with high school and can lead to cheating, sleep deprivation, substance abuse, and depression, and a host of other ills. (The average high school student needs more than nine hours of sleep per night to function optimally, and on a different schedule than adults or children do. Even without AP courses, students aren’t getting enough sleep.)
Academic stress is a big problem at all levels, and it’s getting worse. The escalating arms race for college admissions, the AP course as a status symbol for parents, the pushing down of these pressures to younger and younger children–it really is insane. I want to re-recommend the movie Escape to Nowhere. And here’s another website for you: http://www.sleepfoundation.org/article/sleep-topics/teens-and-sleep
I certainly agree that some high school students sign up for more AP classes than are good for them. I don’t think a rule is the way to fix it, rather it is to treat each student as an individual.
Your link reminded me of another controversial position I have taken: high schools should not start until 9 or later. I know it would never happen because it would be inconvenient for the adults involved, but it would be best for the students.
Lots of research to support this view, TE.
I thought it was uncontroversial when I first posted it, but apparently nothing about educational policy is uncontroversial. Unfortunately my local high school offers some attractive optional classes starting at 7:00 a.m.. I strongly advised all my kids against taking those classes.
My daughter will graduate high school this year, in NYC. She has benefitted greatly from the AP courses taken at her high school. They’re extremely intensive and have both sparked her interest/curiosity and made her work that much harder. She’s learned a great deal from taking these classes. She has often talked about the difference in expectations from the standard curriculum.
Christine’s post would be depressing (well…ok: it IS depressing), except that it’s really just one of so many crimes against our children. But I’ve got to say that, even though the colleges might not be paying much attention to my kid’s AP courses, I have to say that they definitely had a strong influence on who she is. I hope Exxon/Mobil doesn’t visit NYC as it did Massachusetts.
I’m on the fence about AP classes. It seems at my son’s school that the best teachers and equipment are given to these classes, while the “regular” classes get the left-overs. The expectations of AP classes seem over-the-top and the regular classes are too low. Why can’t there just be one class with high, realistic expectations to serve all kids? I’ve even been told by teachers that enrolling in AP is more like a private school experience, while taking non-AP classes will ensure your kids will be with the “troubled ones.”
I think the differences in academic skills between students are too large to put them all in the same classes.
What happened to honors? When I was in high school 15 years ago, there was regular, honors and AP.
You are right, I misspoke. Our school has honors for 9th and 10th (with option of one or two AP) and then more AP classes for 11th and 12th. I meant that the honors and AP classes have higher expectations, while the regular classes have low expectations. The AP kids seem so stressed out all the time, and the honors classes do not give anymore GPA weight than regular classes, but are much harder to get an A. So to get into college with a higher GPA it almost makes more sense to take the easy class and get an A, rather than a B or C in an honors class (if you don’t go the AP route).
High school GPA is becoming less meaningful every year
TE:
Less meaningful to whom? And for what purpose? High school GPA is the best predictor of student outcomes in college. A high GPA has a very strong correlation to success in higher ed, far strong than an ACT or SAT score
There is just not much of a range in GPA. The top 10% of students in my local high school is jammed between 3.85 and 4.0. At my institution ACT scores have a much wider variation (we have students who scored between 16 and 36) than GPA.
Christine,
You are exactly right. GPA is the best predictor of college success.
But let me add something: UNweighted GPA is the best predictor. The more a GPA is weighted with “bonus” points, for AP classes, for example, the less predictive it becomes.
As Geiser and Santelices wrote in “THE ROLE OF ADVANCED PLACEMENT AND HONORS COURSES IN COLLEGE ADMISSIONS,” (2004):
“an unweighted HSGPA – a GPA that does not grant additional points for honors – is consistently the best predictor of both first- and second-year college grades for each of the three cohorts in the sample. The greater the weight given to AP and honors, moreover, the weaker the prediction. Thus, the half-weighted HSGPA is the second-best predictor, after unweighted HSGPA, in all cases, while the HSGPA weighted with a full bonus point for AP and honors is invariably the worst predictor of college performance.”
Why do so many students take AP courses? They freely admit, it’s to make themselves “look good.” They want AP on their transcripts, and they want the bonus points.
Here is a brief summary of one of many studies done by independent researchers, not funded by the College Board, showing the value of high school students taking dual credit courses. As noted in previous posts, there are a variety of approaches to Dual Credit courses. AP and IB are not the only ones.
http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/publications/dual-enrollment-student-outcomes.html
“Dual enrollment programs enable high school students to enroll in college courses and earn college credit. Though dual enrollment programs have typically been reserved for academically focused students, growing numbers of career and technical education (CTE) programs are offering dual enrollment opportunities to students.
This study uses rigorous quantitative methods to examine the impact of dual enrollment participation on students in the State of Florida and in New York City. At both locations, the authors examine postsecondary outcomes for participating CTE students. In Florida, they also examine the outcomes of dual enrollment participation for all students.
The analysis suggests that dual enrollment can improve postsecondary success for all students, including those in CTE programs.
An article based on this study, “Dual Enrollment Can Benefit a Broad Range of Students,” was published in Techniques: Connecting Education and Careers, vol. 83(7).
In a typical year half of the valedictorians at my high school have not taken the minimum number of academic classes required for admission to the public universities in my state. They are officially unprepared for college despite having a 4.0 GPA.
The students that are prepared and enroll at my institution typically have a GPA between 3.0 and 4.0 and an ACT score of between 16 and 36 ( that is between 790 and 1600 for the SAT folks). The wide range of ACT scores does a better job of predicting retention and graduation rates than GPA.
Here’s a link to 2012 summary, that Columbia University researchers prepared about the value of high school students taking Dual Credit courses. Below the link is the last page of the summary:
Click to access dual-enrollment-research-overview.pdf
What States and Schools Can Do
Eliminate restrictive eligibility requirements for dual enrollment, since program
participation can benefit a range of students.
Expand outreach to underserved populations and provide dual enrollment courses
tuition free for low-income students (if not for all students) in order to ensure that
they are able to take advantage of dual enrollment opportunities.
Integrate dual enrollment into high school CTE pathways and programs,
since participation may positively impact college outcomes for CTE students.
Include dual enrollment as part of a high school senior year redesign effort.
Florida’s senior year “College Success Academies,” for example, are comprised of remedial and dual enrollment courses to help prepare students for college.
Create measures within high school accountability systems to reward high schools
for providing dual enrollment opportunities. In Florida, high schools receive credit on annual “report cards” for student participation and performance in college courses.
Whenever possible, offer dual enrollment courses on college campuses, since research
suggests that students benefit more from attending DE courses held at colleges.
Take measures to ensure that DE courses are high quality and rigorous so that students derive maximum benefits from participating.
This research finds more benefit from high school students taking courses on college campuses than on taking such courses in the high school. As noted, my review of research finds tradeoffs among different forms of dual credit. So we urge states and school districts to provide a variety of Dual Credit options.
Sorry, my last post was not clear. Everything below the link provided above was a quote from Columbia University researchers EXCEPT this paragraph. This last paragraph expresses my views, based on a review of this and a number of other studies.
“This research finds more benefit from high school students taking courses on college campuses than on taking such courses in the high school. As noted, my review of research finds tradeoffs among different forms of dual credit. So we urge states and school districts to provide a variety of Dual Credit options.
Business model has NO PLACE in education. DUH…
The DEFORMERS speak VOODOO for money and control. It’s all quite sick.
I so agree. Our conversation seems to keep devolving into whether offering AP is a good idea. Pressure from above to offer more & more AP courses to more & more students must be submitted to a smell test. Does it serve the population in a measurable way, or is it a sign that a market is being developed for ed-profiteers? You may have asked yourself the same question when you found your GP pushing free samples of a new drug on you.
I have done my best to kaibosh my own AP class, which was little more than test prep for my subject. I replaced it with a concurrent enrollment program through UConn for tranferrable college credits. It provides similar benefits for the students, while also allowing me professional autonomy and placing the emphasis back on the class where it belongs, and not on some canned test at the end.
On a fast skim through the prior comments I see no discussion of the high school rankings game. Each year national, state and local organizations put out their high school rankings. A variety of “metrics” are “crunched” to generate these rankings; each ranking organization has a slightly different weighting but we tend to see the same schools appearing on multiple lists. A few years back several schools in Houston ISD, most of which had already been in the field, experiences a jump in their ranks. One of the metrics was . HISD had previously expanded AP enrollment district-wide, which had raised some rankings. But the big jumps came the year ALL 9th-graders were required to take the AP Human Geography class. SO, there is a great incentive at the campus level to log more AP tests to pad that ranking. Disclaimer: my campus made top 100 and continued to rise throughout this period, but showed a significant jump in that first year when the tsunami of 9th graders took the AP HG.
The superintendent in Houston was an unabashed advocate for AP. When he was in Guilford, NC he was also promoting AP, even going citing (in print, at conferences) the College Board “study” that said PSAT score predicted AP score.
I contacted him via email, and asked him about that particular “study,” and he gushed over it. Then I asked him if he’d actually READ the “study.” He hadn’t.
When I told him the problem (the College Board compared very different samples), he terminated the correspondence.
“The superintendent in Houston” being Terry Grier – let’s also note his less-than-sterling exits from every prior superintendent job. At the time of HISD’s 9th grade AP HG expansion, we mere peons had a widespread perception that he was angling for a seat on the College Board’s Board of Directors.
@ Debbie:
And Voila!
There he is:
http://about.collegeboard.org/governance/trustees
Part 1
Exxon Mobil has involved itself in “educational” endeavors, but its purpose is surely not education. The bottom line is that it’s all about money.
Exxon Mobil is one of the corporate “reformers.” They keep pushing “reforms” that have already been discredited. They want more “rigor” (the standards), more testing, and more accountability (though never for themselves). They keep reciting the myth that public education is “broken” and in “crisis,” and that their brand of “reform” is necessary to restore American “economic competitiveness.” They have resurrected the theme of A Nation at Risk that, in essence, public schooling is a “threat” to national security. It’s a wonder that anyone takes their nonsense seriously. But big money can sway minds, and policies.
Two quick points:
The Sandia Report (1993) took apart the assertions of A Nation at Risk, concluding that (a) “business leaders surveyed are generally satisfied with the skill levels of their employees, and the problems that do exist do not appear to point to the k-12 education system as a root cause,” and (b) “The student performance data clearly indicate that today’s youth are achieving levels of education at least as high as any previous generation.”
2. The World Economic Forum ranks nations each year on economic competitiveness. The U.S. is typically a top-ranked country. But recently it’s slid toward the bottom of the top ten. The factors cited for the decline by the WEF are weak corporate auditing and reporting standards, suspect corporate ethics, big deficits (brought on by Wall Street’s financial implosion) and unsustainable levels of debt. More recently, the WEF cited ”a lack of macroeconomic stability” caused by decades of fiscal deficits and debt that “are likely to weigh heavily on the country’s future growth.” The economic policies that piled up all the debt were supported avidly by Exxon Mobil and its corporate brethren.
Part 2
It goes deeper. Exxon Mobil is one if the big corporate sponsors of (oxymoronic) Teach for America, which is no no friend of public schooling. It helps to fund the National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI), dedicated to the (false) proposition that “The United States is losing its competitive edge in math and science while the rest of the world soars ahead.”
The NMSI board of directors includes Exxon Mobil VP for public and government affairs Ken Cohen, former Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine (who says STEM education is vital to the “future of our economy”), and David Coleman (of the Common Core and the College Board). NMSI funders include the Gates Foundation, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, the Dell Foundation, the College Board, Boeing, JP Morgan Chase, and Exxon Mobil. Tom Luce is the chairman of the NMSI.
Luce is a real tool. He wrote a 2004 propaganda piece with Lee Thompson titled, “Do What Works.”
In “Do What Works,” Luce and Thompson accept at face value the wild inaccuracies of “A Nation At Risk.” They wrote that “accountability” systems should be based on rewards and punishments, and that such systems provide a “promising framework, and federal legislation [NCLB] promotes this approach.”
Luce and Thompson called NCLB’s 100 percent proficiency requirement “bold and valuable” and “laudable” and “significant” and “clearly in sight.” Most knowledgeable people called it stupid and impossible.
Luce and Thompson wrote that “data clearly points to an effective means” to increase AP participation: “provide monetary rewards for students, teachers, and principals.” This, by the way, flies in the face of almost all contemporary research on motivation and learning.
Part 3
The NCSI claims, falsely, that there is a STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) “crisis” in the US. However, as Beryl Lieff Benderly reported recently in the Columbia Journalism Review (see:http://www.cjr.org/reports/what_scientist_shortage.php?page=all ):
“Leading experts on the STEM workforce, have said for years that the US produces ample numbers of excellent science students. In fact, according to the National Science Board’s authoritative publication Science and Engineering Indicators 2008, the country turns out three times as many STEM degrees as the economy can absorb into jobs related to their majors.”
ExxonMobil is also pushing the College Board’s Advanced Placement courses, not only as a STEM catalyst but also as a necessary “reform” for public education.
The College Board says that “research” shows that even those who take and “fail” an AP exam do better in college. But guess who funded the “research?” Yep, the College Board. It even has “research” showing that PSAT score predicts an AP score…but if one actually reads the “study,” it’s clear that the research mixes apples and acorns.
Independent research doesn’t back up the College Board. Geiser (2007) notes, “systematic differences in student motivation, academic preparation, family background and high-school quality account for much of the observed difference in college outcomes between AP and non-AP students.” Klopfenstein and Thomas (2010) find that when these demographic characteristics are controlled for, the claims made for AP disappear.
As I’ve noted numerous times, David Coleman (of the Common Core and the National Math and Science Initiative) is now the head of the College Board. And the College Board is “all in” on Common Core, claiming that its products (PSAT, SAT, AP) are all “aligned” with Common Core.
Sadly, many administrators and educators (not to mention parents and students, and politicians) are buying the nonsense. And as long as they do, Common Core will continue to roll along.
Go back to the source: The College Board is a private, profit making corporation, subject to no oversight or accreditation, and our colleges allow it to sell three college credits @ $91 each (or whatever they are charging these days).
The AP syllabus audit, on which I work, at least set up some guidelines for what should be taught in so-called advanced courses. But of course, it isn’t necessary to take a course in order to take an AP exam, a fact of which most people don’t seem to be aware. If I wanted to make a complete idiot of myself, I could take the physics AP this year. I’d get my name right.
Naive little me. I didn’t make the connection until I clicked on the link to the 12 trustees of the College Board and there’s none other than President Coleman!
I spent hours filling in my CSS form for the colleges that my daughter’s applying to. The CSS which, it turns out, is a part of The College Board.
From K through whenever…? David Coleman has really positioned himself, hasn’t he?
I’m embarrassed to be partaking in a system in which he’s such an active player. Embarrassed and disgusted. Businessmen plundering the education world.
Diane: Ms Rhee backed down. Do you think David Coleman would agree to a nationally televised debate with you? Maybe he would choose Bill Gates as a second.