Call Davis Guggenheim! Time for a new movie about a remarkable public school in Los Angeles!
Cedrick Argueta, the son of immigrant parents, received a perfect score on the AP Calculus exam, one of only 12 students in the world to do so. Some 302,000 students took the exam.
Cedrick is a student at Lincoln High School, which has 1200 students. His teacher is Anthony Yom. Lincoln is a regular neighborhood public school, not a magnet or a charter.
“As far as math whizzes go, Cedrick is unassuming. He likes to play basketball with his buddies, and his favorite reading of late was the Harry Potter series. Knowing he was going to do television interviews this week, he donned a blue LHS hoodie and sneakers.
“Math has always just made sense to him, he said. He appreciates the creativity of it, the different methods you can take to solve a problem.
“There’s also some beauty in it being absolute,” Cedrick said. “There’s always a right answer.”
“When asked about his perfect exam score, Cedrick just thanked everybody else in his life.
“It just sort of blew up,” he said. “It feels kind of good to be in the spotlight for a little bit, but I want to give credit to everybody else that helped me along the way.”
“Cedrick is the son of Lilian and Marcos Argueta, both of whom came to the United States as young adults – she from the Philippines, he from El Salvador. Lilian, a licensed vocational nurse, works two jobs at nursing homes. Marcos is a maintenance worker at one of those nursing homes. He never went to high school.
“Lilian Argueta, pausing during one of her shifts this week, said her son’s accomplishment is still sinking in. He texted her when he found out, and she told him it was great but, she said, she didn’t understand the magnitude until reporters started calling.
“Argueta said that she always told Cedrick and his younger sister to finish their homework and to “read, read, read,” but that they knew she’d be proud of them whether or not they got straight A’s.
Cedrick’s teacher was very proud too, although he is accustomed to good results.
“All 21 of Yom’s AP Calculus students who took the exam last year passed; 17 got the highest score of 5. It was the third year in a row that all of Yom’s kids passed the test.
“Yom, 35, said he treats his students like a sports team. They’d stay after school, practicing problem solving for three or four extra hours, and they’d come on weekends. On test day, they wore matching blue T-shirts sporting their names, “like they’re wearing jerseys to the game,” Yom said.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“There’s also some beauty in it being absolute,” Cedrick said. “There’s always a right answer.”
Aesthetic sensibilities are there, along with a philosophical take on why math appeals to him. Hope the hype is kept in perspective.
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All over the country there are teachers doing amazing work with all types of students. Some of this work may be reflected in test scores, but not always. All of these efforts should be lauded and appreciated, but they rarely are. There was a recent incident of a principal that gave her own life pushing children out of the path of an out of control school bus. I don’t see the president calling her a hero, yet she is. Educators give in many ways, and students benefit in many ways, not just scores. Kudos to this young man, his family and teacher. Immigrants helped build this country, and we should praise their accomplishments, not scapegoat them.
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Amen! This comment should be required reading for John King and Donald Trump!
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I cried when I read this story. It’s a family, school and community victory! I just love it. I hope the henchmen leave this teacher the heck alone.
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Yet Yom would be labeled an incompetent teacher if Common Core high stakes tests and Vam were used to determine if he was a competent teacher.
Yom must teach more than just the 21 AP Calculus students. What if the other 150 – 200 students he must teach were in regular math classes, lived in poverty and did not do well on the Common Core Crap tests?
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Next year we will have brand new versions of AP Calculus AB and BC with new exams (because the old ones were “too easy”)…
https://advancesinap.collegeboard.org/stem/calculus
Over the last 2 years most of AP courses were already updated to include “critical thinking” and “close reading”, etc.
The kids say the new courses are at least 3 times as hard as old.
The % required to get a 5 is much higher now
AP Physics 1 and 2 the students who normally get 5s got 3s and 2s…
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You do know that the College Board is now controlled by the corporate public education demolition derby?
David Coleman—one of the psycho masterminds behind the destruction of the traditional public schools and the end of the teachers’ unions—-(born 1969) is the ninth president of the College Board, a not-for-profit corporation that is best known for designing the SAT exam and the Advanced Placement (AP) test. He is frequently described in the media as “the architect” of the Common Core State Standards Initiative.
https://www.collegeboard.org/about/leadership/david-coleman
David Coleman was listed #9 on the Top Ten Scariest People in Education Reform.
The College Board is called a non-profit but David Coleman’s total pay is $743,192. That is some non-profit.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/09/30/how-much-do-big-education-nonprofits-pay-their-bosses-quite-a-bit-it-turns-out/
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He should become a math teacher.
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And without taking a single thing from this remarkable student, these “feel good” stories always make me a little nervous; it’s all too easy to say, See? So long as the student is properly gritful, ANY student can achieve at this level and, therefore, poverty is not a barrier to high achievement.
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Part of the Problem: I think you are being properly cautious.
However, as I see it, if you read the entire article you will be struck by the fact that the “poverty is no excuse” argument used by rheephormsters as an excuse to starve public schools and support charters & privatization & such is not supported by the facts.
This young man is fortunate to have the kind of stable and nurturing life that many other students don’t—and his parents, on many different levels, are largely responsible for that.
Other students don’t have the same level of support. Therefore, if the pushers and enforcers of self-styled “education reform” want the same kind of “outputs” they are going to have to provide the necessary level of “inputs” for those that come to school in less fortunate circumstances than Cedrick Argueta.
Whatever it takes. No excuses. In Rheephormish: you want Lakeside School (Bill Gates and his two children) outputs then provide Lakeside School-style inputs.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
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I preface my comment by letting everyone know that I passed along the LATIMES piece to the owner of this blog.
As far as I could tell—and I checked the Abraham Lincoln HS website to confirm—this is “a regular neighborhood public school, not a magnet or a charter.”
I mention this only to let folks know that if the above statement in the posting is wrong, blame me.
As I see it: as commenters on this blog who are regular readers of the LATIMES know—correct me if I am in error—the number of times charter schools in LAUSD are mentioned in general articles about LAUSD schools, or featured in photos accompanying run-of-the-mill education pieces, IMHO gives the strong impression that not only are there a lot more charters than there actually are, but that when it comes to the “good” schools that there are far far more of them that are charters than those that would be classified as “a regular neighborhood public school.”
It is now all the rage among those pushing corporate education reform to appear above the fray, “platform-agnostics” that are only interested in what’s best for the kids. They supposedly don’t pick favorites. The LATIMES is part of this new rebranding trend. If so, unless I got the facts wrong, why isn’t the school this young man attends being lauded and featured for being what it is rather than a charter or some other rheephorm showpiece?
As everyone knows by now, I am partial to Ionesco’s observation:
“It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.”
😎
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I second your comment, dear Krazy one. We who live in the LA community and read the LA Times know that they tout the charter schools continually (as their master has paid them to do), and if they can take a hit at public schools, they double up their Broad-cash laden fists and slam them.
But this is news, and hopefully the few readers who care about education will pick up on it. As Part of the Problem implies, we cannot assume however that every public school has this kind of student, nor this kind of teacher.
Lloyd speaks of Coleman and the new testing…and it is an alarming new intrusion into SAT exams of which we must be mindful. Coleman seems determined to divide America by segregating inner city students who often do not have the intellectual and parental nurturing that wealthier, generally white students, have.
So much is based on politics and who is in power.
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Great story! Calculus is elegant. It is usually the algebra required that trips kids up. When I teach math, I teach the humans behind it. It takes the edge off and offers a personal connection. Even just an introduction to Turing, Galois, Gödel, and of course Newton generates interest. Sadly, VAM and test and punish discourages these lessons.
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VAM is not elegant, not calculus, and not absolute. It has no correct answers because it is a misapplication of a cattle birthing formula. Junk science, as Diane elegantly and absolutely called it.
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This also happened in a traditional public school in Sanford (Orlando), Florida with AP Physics.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/education/school-zone/os-seminole-high-junior-perfect-score-physics-20160129-story.html
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Here is the truth answer for any success to most of subject in school and in workforce.
[start sentence]
…They’d stay after school, practicing problem solving for THREE OR FOUR EXTRA HOURS, and they’d COME ON WEEKENDS. = EXTRA 21 TO 28 HOURS PER WEEK.
[END SENTENCE]
In short, these 29 LUCKY students did not work part time for their basic necessity like shoes and eyeglasses.
Most of all,
1) their parents well take care of them,
2) their teachers dedicate THEIR OWN FAMILIAL TIME (extra 21-28 hours per week)
3) Yes, these 29 students are exceptionally enjoy learning. = no stress, no fear
That is written clearly regardless of parental education background.
See what famous Teacher Rafe Esquith got from LAUSD after 30 + years dedication of his career (own money + precious familial time) to motivate his many student to be honest, caring and excellent citizens who are successful in life.
These young students did not understand that human conscience cannot grasp or fathom the devious strategy from technocrats with strong math skills. Therefore, I hope that Cedrick will retract his statement as soon as he is mature enough to understand MATH versus HUMAN CONSCIENCE. Back2basic
[start statement]
“There’s also some beauty in it being absolute,” Cedrick said. “There’s always a right answer.”
[end statement]
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I hope that Cedrick will learn the ABSOLUTE TRUTH and there is always a right answer in HUMAN CONSCIENCE.
Here is a powerful quote from Dr. Sandra Stotsky, an expert on using literature to teach civic virtues, stresses the educational value of exposing learners.
[start quote]
…the educational value of exposing learners “to characters who exhibit such traits as:
courage, hope, optimism, ambition, individual initiative,
love of country, love of family,
the ability to laugh at themselves,
a concern for the environment, and
outrage at social injustice.” (Stotsky, 1992)”
[end quote]
Today, we have more than enough bankers and technocrats who RUIN national /global economy, pollute environment and deteriorate public education. Therefore, math is neither being absolute, nor always a right answer in CIVIC VIRTUE. Back2basic
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I suppose it’s nice that this kid got a perfect score on the Advanced Placement test. But I fear the presumption here is that AP is “good.” As some researchers note, “The College Board’s Advanced Placement (AP) program is considered by many to be the gold standard for a topnotch high school education.” But guess what? It isn’t.
Research has shown that in Advanced Placement courses “the focus is on delivering information, perhaps even more than is found in an introductory course” at college. That same research found that instruction in most AP classes was “inconsistent with the results of the research on cognition and learning.” The report said that AP courses and tests were often a mile wide and an inch deep.
A 2004 study found that “the best predictor of both first- and second-year college grades” is unweighted high school grade point average, and a high school grade point average “weighted with a full bonus point for AP…is invariably the worst predictor of college performance.”
But high schools award bonus points, and that’s why many students take AP, to pad their transcripts.
A 2005 study found that AP students are “…generally no more likely than non-AP students to return to school for a second year or to have higher first semester grades.” Moreover, the study authors concluded that “close inspection of the [College Board] studies cited reveals that the existing evidence regarding the benefits of AP experience is questionable,” and “AP courses are not a necessary component of a rigorous curriculum.”
A 2006 MIT faculty report noted ““there is ‘a growing body of research’ that students who earn top AP scores and place out of institute introductory courses end up having ‘difficulty’ when taking the next course.” Two years earlier, Harvard “conducted a study that found students who are allowed to skip introductory courses because they have passed a supposedly equivalent AP course do worse in subsequent courses than students who took the introductory courses at Harvard.” A Dartmouth study found that high scores on AP psychology tests do NOT translate into college readiness for the next-level course.
Students readily admit why AP is important to them: “You’re not trying to get educated; you’re trying to look good;” and, “The focus is on the test and not necessarily on the fundamental knowledge of the material.” Students know that AP is far more about gaming the college acceptance process than it is learning.
Even more perversely, the College Board –– which also produces the PSAT and SAT and helped to create the Common Core, and says all of its products are “aligned” with the Common Core –– now recommends that schools “implement grade-weighting policies…starting as early as the sixth grade.” Yes, that’s right. The SIXTH grade! Stupid? No question.
A 2009 research study found “students who took and passed an A.P. science exam did about one-third of a letter grade better than their classmates with similar backgrounds who did not take an A.P. course.”
The 2010 book, AP: A Critical Examination noted that “Students see AP courses on their transcripts as the ticket ensuring entry into the college of their choice…there is a shortage of evidence about the efficacy, cost, and value of these programs.”
More recently, research concludes that ” the impact of the AP program on various measures of college success was found to be negligible,”
And yet, hundreds of millions of dollars taxpayer dollars are being used to fund AP programs and tests precisely because of misinformation and misperceptions.
As I’ve mentioned before, educators and citizens cannot be against the Common Core but in favor of College Board products like the SAT and Advanced Placement. They are part-and-parcel of the very same thing.
And they are not what we should be “celebrating.”
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Individual stories of success like this make us all feel good, and I join in the applause. Surely there will be a movie. But what I want is for this teacher to be able to replicate this success for 25 more years. Can he keep working like this for all his life? If he cannot sustain this effort, is the school prepared to invest in a good teacher who also can sacrifice afternoons and weekends?
My point here is that heroic effort is fleeting. How many teachers have spent all those extra hours and been successful only to move to jobs in administration or the private sector that allow them to raise their own children or belong to the local library board?
My second point goes to what really happens to produce good educational outcomes, measurable or not. It sounds like a recipe. For the best results, start with a nucleus of students that are compatible and interested in almost anything. Add a teacher in love with the subject. Pour in a community of supportive people. Bake at a stable social temperature for 13 years. The loaf you get will be the best. But take away any of those ingredients, and the bread will be inedible. Adding other ingredients like political fighting, societal disapproval of education, distruptive behavior, or corruption will ruin the result as well.
I bet more than 29 of those 1200 kids are good students. As an old farmer, I would suggest that good crops grow from fertile soil.
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Good crops do grow from fertile soil.
But that fertile soil might be enhanced – short term – with fertilizers that, over time, do damage to the soil.
If we celebrate the fertilizer, and begin to think that it – rather than the soil – is the necessary ingredient for growth, and push hard for more farmers to use the fertilizer, then what have we accomplished?
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I would imagine, given time, they district officials will treat this teacher with the same respect as they have Rafe Esquith. The district will state that Eli Broad, via his dupe Deasy, is responsible for this young man’s math skills. You know what I thought when I read this article? This young man has an aptitude for math. Perhaps his math teacher cultivated it, but is it not obvious that this young man is a mathematical genius?
Who takes the credit for Celine Dion’s amazing voice? Her parents?
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There was a comment above about getting rid of AP classes, and about keeping classrooms diverse with students from (I am taking license here) special needs to highly gifted.
This has long been the view of some educators…I am NOT among them.
I have observed all sorts of classrooms in over half the states in the US for almost 50 years, and it is clear to me, and to most educational researchers, that for the good of individual students, they be joined in some form of placement with others who are similar…but always being taught to the top of their potential achievement level.
It is an artificial equivalency notion that the 160 IQ will raise the level of the 90 IQ. I am a firm believer in selected classes for the Highly Gifted as well as classes for Special Ed and Special Needs students. If we do not educate the most capable students to succeed, we will lose them from the public schools and their parents will flee to charters as we see happening today.
The best system I have seen is the rare public schooling where the Highly Gifted are in advanced classes for subject matter, and join with the entire group for social interaction. The same holds true for Special Education students. All students need to know how to function in the plurality of the real world, but some will be able to go to universities and others will be able to earn a good and fair living at vocational jobs…in MY perfect world. The reality is that “all men are NOT created equal” but all people should have the best PUBLIC education possible which offers opportunities for each according to their ability.
I know I am going to take some heavy hits for this opinion which has been shaped by decades of empiric observation and professional analysis.
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Wow.
Tracking and ability grouping avidly endorsed. With the added claim that “most researchers” are in agreement.
Not so. As Adam Gamoran wrote some years back in a synthesis of the research, “Little evidence supports the claim that tracking or grouping by ability produces higher overall achievement than heterogeneous grouping.”
A very quick summation of the research is that the effects of such grouping are pernicious. The “gains” for those in the upper tracks are minimal and the negative consequences for those in the lower tracks are long-lasting.
As Jeannie Oakes writes, “it is safe to conclude that there is little evidence to support any of the assumptions about tracking.”
One of the very critical problems with tracking is that tracking placements “usually come to signify judgments about supposedly fixed abilities.” Part of the purpose of public education is to provide equal opportunity, but research shows not only the “ineffectiveness of tracking” but also the “disproportionate harm it works on poor and minority students.”
See, for example: http://academic.sun.ac.za/mathed/174/Oakes.pdf
If we were really interested in siding with kids, and with fulfilling the core mission of public schooling, then we’d take heed of the research (there’s lots of it) and abandon tracking, use testing diagnostically, integrate curriculum, and infuse teaching and learning with inquiry – for all kids.
Yet, as Tom Loveless wrote less than two years back in a report on American education, “Despite decades of vehement criticism and mountains of documents urging schools to abandon their use, tracking and ability grouping persist—and for the past decade or so, have thrived.”
There are reasons for that, but research isn’t one of them.
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Ellen. I was a gifted student. The world and workplaces are often run by people who are not. The best thing we can do for gifted children is to not separate them from other students. Do not underestimate the need for a rich social experience for all students.
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Mathvale…I certainly agree that the HIGHLY GIFTED, those in LAUSD who test at and over 150, benefit greatly from integrating into the general population and learning to get along with all others….however, in classrooms I have seen, starting in 1st grade through 12 grade, these children totally lose interest in school through not being challenged intellectually. Too many teachers tend to use them as assistants, to grade papers, and to do other busy work. This is why so many excellent and active learners are fleeing to charter schools.
There are vast differences in the diverse learning abilities of this group and it is the challenge of public schooling to extend equal opportunities to them as well as to the other end of the spectrum.
Most educators understand the need for Special Education and the proficient teachers who focus their skills on the hard to teach students, so as to help them rise to their greatest potential.
I have observed in too many classrooms where the entire continuum is lumped together. Teachers generally use the most capable to help the least capable…which may be worthwhile at one level, but as a general practice, slows the education of the most adept learners, and forces them to restrain their natural interests and curiosities that lead to their best educational opportunities and outcomes.
This is not necessarily a white student v. student of color issue. While my view and that of my colleagues may not be the predominant theory, it is a fact in many classrooms.
I worked for two years in So. California at a program for the Highly Gifted focusing on grades 2 and 3. I observed almost on a daily basis how the Highly Gifted students pretty much taught each other, with the teachers acting as facilitators providing the road maps for using and expanding the curriculum. Often these students outshine their teachers knowledge rapidly. For instance, an 8 year old who is already proficient in calculus, and their teacher is not, needs the intellectual opportunity of learning at their own level and pace, and not learning simple fractions as their classmates are doing. The school should be flexible enough to allow this student to study math with 7 graders. Public schools need the flexibility to do as most Magnets do to incorporate the wide assortment of learning capabilities.
However, this same student spends part of their day with ‘age similar’ students who do not operate at this level of academic giftedness, so at some classes and in the social aspects of school, all of these students are exposed to each other. Often the Highly Gifted student may need this exposure to his own age peers to learn how to develop social skills. Despite the tomes of theory, there is no one way to educate all students.
As a parent and an educator, I would prefer children to be educated as to their unique ability, rather than becoming an “assistant teacher” and wasting years of her/his life treading academic water. We find at university level, so many highly intelligent students who have to take basic English and Math courses to catch up before they can matriculate to higher ed courses. This is a failure on the part of the school systems that cannot be overlooked…and it is as much a failure as those many students who drop out and never graduate high school.
Conversely, the Special Needs children in regular classes, IMO, too often feel like failures in a regular classroom, when they cannot keep up with the median group, to say nothing of their feelings toward the gifted and the highly gifted. And the teachers who have to function in this type of mixed grouping often are wearing cervical collars from the stress of dealing with this mix and the complaining parents.
I have observed all types of classrooms for so many decades, that this partial separation seems the best answer to real world differences that public education presents.
So, the only truisms I have found as an educator/researcher for almost 50 years to provide optimum public educational opportunity are to :
1) fund public schools adequately (California is finally above Mississippi but still below most of the country), 2) keep class size contained to fewer students, 3) nurture well trained (not all Grad Schools of Ed are doing a great job) and dedicated teachers (not all teachers become teachers for the right reasons), 4) maintain dedicated line item funding for librarians, nurses, counselors and psychologists, classroom aides (I have now worked on many projects training parents and grandparents to be volunteer aides in hard strapped districts, particularly ELL learner communities), and of course, janitors who keep clean schools, and with adequate comfort such as AC, 5) fire many of most districts middle managers and use that funding for the list of real education in # 1 – 4 listed above.
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