According to this article, quite a few schools are doing just that.  The reasons vary, but the frustration seems to be one of academic authority in the classroom versus one institution dictating academic excellence to all.

In reality, the AP system offers students the chance to earn college credit and prove commitment to a certain level of academic rigor.  Use the system well and you start school as a sophomore!  But for most, the AP helps raise the bar so that high school classes resemble college classes and ease the transition from high school to college.  Should kids feel pressured to take AP exams?  No, but they should be encouraged to take the best courseload they can handle to prepare best for college.  Do colleges really give too much weight to AP exams?  Probably not.  A student who can ace lots of AP exams should already stand out in GPA.  A student who does not do real well on the exams but takes the courses shows effort and willingness to accept challenge, which colleges appreciate.  But as with any standardized test result, great test scores do not guarantee college admission to the elite schools.

The complaints from teachers seems odd.  Why would a teacher complain about having to teach a more rigorous class?  The AP requires teachers use a certain book and make sure the content of the class prepares the student for the content of the exam (and the format as well).  But I know from experience that teachers go about the same AP class in very different ways.  Teachers are not prohibited from innovation or creativity or even more rigor.  Yes, if the AP grades come back poor that teacher may be removed from AP eligibility in the future, but that could happen even if the teacher gives AP practice tests every day, just as one who never did that could have students ace the AP exam.  The proof is in the quality of the class curriculum, which is the whole point of the AP — getting that rigor, that pre-college experience.

So here is one vote for not removing the AP, but making it better.

The PSAT will be given in just one month — October 15 and 18 — across the country and here in St. Louis.  It is given to juniors as part of the National Merit qualifying process, but also to sophomores who want to see how they stand in performance on the SAT.

Many kids ask me why even bother taking the test if they know they cannot do well enough to qualify for National Merit.  I tell them that is not the point of the test.  Less than 1% of students qualify for National Merit, so the test is really not designed just for them.  It is given as a way to preview the SAT, to have a real test environment with the same style questions and time pressures.  Most sophomores or juniors have not taken a test of this difficulty or length.  So taking it in and of itself helps give the student insight into what the future holds with the SAT, and that student’s relative ability at that moment in time.

But taking the PSAT cold is not a good idea because it will give you a score lower than your actual potential and you will not be able to sort out errors due to lack of familiarity from errors due to concepts or time or other skills.  Knowing your actual baseline before you take the test will tell you how well (or not so well) you did when you get the actual results back.  The more preparation one does before the test, the better the read one has after taking the test.  Plus, any PSAT prep is also SAT prep.  Finally, the earlier a jump one gets on the PSAT, the earlier the SAT process can end or the longer one will have to prepare and test multiple times if that is the necessary road.

If you want more information of preparing for the PSAT, just drop me a note here.

Jason Stephens, an assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Connecticut, knows that cheating in high school is rampant.  And he is currently conducting a study on a way to end cheating.  This is the basis of his thesis:

Stephens and others say cheating has become widespread over the last 30 years. In the aforementioned national survey, a full 94 percent of high school students admitted to at least one form of cheating, ranging from allowing someone to copy their homework to cheating on a test, according to Don McCabe, a professor of management and global business at Rutgers University who has done extensive surveys on cheating.

Stephens doesn’t blame students for the phenomenon.

“Virtually all of them are cheating because the pressures of having good grades is extraordinary, more so now today than 20 to 30 years ago,” he said. “It’s not because these kids are morally bad. It’s because the stakes are higher and the time is less.”

The competition to get into a top college is fiercer than ever.

“It’s not enough to get a 4.0 grade point average. It’s also being involved in a varsity sport, volunteering in the community, maybe having a part-time job — along with the social lives these kids live,” Stephens said.

Cheating is an expedient, if deceptive, way for time-crunched students to get it all done, he said.

“Most kids see that as wrong. The sad thing is that most kids do it anyway,” he said.

Underlying all this is a major cultural shift toward achievement and materialism over the last 30 years, he said. A national survey of college freshmen shows that most students now view college as a steppingstone toward the ultimate goal of getting a lucrative job, a radical shift from 1967, when the survey began, he said.

“They’ve gone from looking at college as a place of enlightenment or the development of a meaningful philosophy to being a place where you get status and credentials in order to get a well-paying job. I even had a student refer to himself as a client the other day,” Stephens said.

Stephens thinks that modifying incentives will modify behavior.  I agree with that economic-based behavioral approach, but fail to see how his program can succeed — he wants to de-emphasize grades by moving toward projects rather than tests.  What will keep kids from cheating on projects?  And how can schools that have limited spaces and are competitive by definition evaluate students fairly without some real metric of skills?  And is competition not part of the world?  One could argue that the better incentive process to study would be severe punishment for those that cheat — including criminal prosecution.  If most people cheat because of an ethical lapse plus an apparent need, the criminal code is designed just for such a scenario.  Or one could use a form of social approbation — one caught cheating must repeat a grade and for the remainder of his or her time at school wear a uniform and work as a custodian, even when in class.  I just cannot see softening academic standards as a panacea for a moral failing.

In an unfolding saga, the GMAC, which administers the GMAT, has fully shut down a cheating ring.  As a result, 84 of the violators have had their scores wiped out.

The GMAT is a computer adaptive test.  It works off a single library of questions that can appear based upon the number of questions one gets correct.  Apparently, an “enterprising” group of individuals decided to start a website that stored these questions (they relied upon their memory to recreate the questions) and of course charge a fee for access.  It took the GMAC folks a while to break the ring because they first had to win a copyright suit to learn the names of the individuals.

Again, a story like this leaves me wondering, (a) is it not simpler just to study for the test and take it legally, (b) what could kids like this accomplish if they channeled their energy into lawful endeavors, and (c) why do people do these things knowing that ultimately they will get caught?

U.S. News has a wonderful article about ways high school students can help focus their efforts to get into competitive colleges.  The article features a quote from Dr. Annalee Nissenholtz, head of college counseling at Horton Watkins.  I encourage everyone to read it, as it is one of the few articles I have seen that provides a wealth of accurate information about the college application process.

With regard to essays, a hot topic with seniors right now, the advice provided is quite good — when selling yourself in your essay, remember the key is sincerity and honesty.  An admissions officer can spot a phony person or essay in a heartbeat, and besides, you are trying to present a real person anyway!

Other information discussed with regard to SAT and ACT and AP — all good advice you can find me saying in this blog or on our website.

Bottom line…a thoughtful plan and due diligence can help anyone get to yes for college.  We have the plan, you bring the diligence!

The College Board released the scores of the class of 2008, and the scores remained the same as the previous year, on average — a 502 in critical reading and a 515 in math.  Writing came in at 494.

While one can be happy that scores did not dip as with the ACT, the actual averages are disturbing.  The SAT divides questions into three levels of difficulty:  easy, medium and hard.  If one aces all the easy and gets a few medium questions, one will be above the average in all three categories.  Consequently, far too many of those taking the test are not able to answer the easy questions.  Conclusion:  critical thinking and written expression skills are sorely lacking across the country for college-bound students.

The first week of school has started for most students in town, and I am sure parents see the confident smiles and hear the bold statements — “school is great” and “I have everything under control.”  WRONG!

The first week of school can be very deceptive and create a false sense of confidence.  Everyone is just getting back from summer vacation.  Teachers and students spend time getting to know one another and to become familiar with classroom policies and rhythms.  Homework assignments tend to be a bit lighter than in a week or two.  In the meantime, students think school is not nearly as difficult as anticipated and so they slack a bit — at precisely the time they should be getting good habits into place.

What to do?  Parents, make sure you help your children avoid the softball mentality of the first week.  Help them with structured homework time and even give them some extra reading to do if they really have finished homework.  Suggest organization of binders, materials, even (gasp) rereading books and notes.  Because we all know the adage about the calm before the storm…

As this wonderful story in the New York Times details, Michael Phelps has had a struggle with ADD since kindergarten.  His story will sound quite representative to parents in the know — teachers identified distractive behavior, Michael felt stigmatized and had difficulty and did not know how to help himself, and ultimately medication and some tutoring offered little help.  But in the end, Michael still remained an average student with lots of negative views about academic performance.

Many people have turned Michael Phelps’ success story at the Olympics into a moral for kids with ADD — do not give up, you will find your gift.  The author of the Times story put it this way:

More to the point, I think, is the moral of her story, which offers hope for parents of any child with a challenge like A.D.H.D.: Too many adults looked at Ms. Phelps’s boy and saw what he couldn’t do. This week, the world will be tuned to the Beijing Olympics to see what he can do.

While I applaud Michael Phelps’ commitment to swimming and his remarkable athletic achievements, I cannot agree with this “moral” as acceptable.  It is analogous to telling an inner city black child struggling at an underperforming school to look at LeBron James and see hope.  Both suggestions, while perhaps well intended as motivators, avoid the issue:  what to do with an ADD child struggling in school.

I have worked with many ADD students over the years, and I can tell you that the ADD impacted each of them in different ways.  The common link is not the ADD, it is the wiring of the brain that cannot process information effectively enough to handle the “normal” method of receiving and returning information in the classroom.  Each success story with ADD students over the years involved going into the individual wiring, the individual learning style, and working within that structure to create a student who can perform in “normal” classroom environments.  Some need extra time; some need medication.  All need someone to help them learn how to learn.  The sad part of the Phelps story is that to this day he feels like a failure in the classroom, that but for swimming he would have a hard time going out into the workforce and earning a living.  What of all the other students with ADD who cannot be Michael Phelps?  Do we just dismiss them?  Wish them good luck?  Hope for the best?  Direct them to a swim coach?

We do too much stigmatizing to kids with learning disorders.  The brain takes so long to develop, maturing late into our twenties.  We expect so much of kids in one uniform system when we just cannot learn at the same rate in the same mold.  We need more patience and more individual work with these students.  Given the right path, they can find true academic success.  I have seen LD students go from 14 on the ACT to 28 in the course of 18 months.  I have helped LD students failing math in pre-algebra become A students in calculus.  Success is very possible.  It takes dedication and quality guidance — it surely does not need a dismissive attitude or denial or the distraction of swimming gold as a future.

I would like to see Michael Phelps find a great academic mentor and use his high profile to encourage students to continue working for success in school.  That would be a great gift that would benefit thousands of young minds.  That could be Michael Phelps’ next challenge.

The Post-Dispatch has an interesting feature story on the Ladue School District urging its teachers to obtain a masters degree.  It is not at all uncommon for school districts to pay teachers with advanced degrees more than those with a bachelor’s degree.  But as the article asks, is that fair?  Does it make sense?  Ladue chooses to measure performance and reward teachers with pay increases for delivering results.  Some of these teachers do not have masters degrees, so the issue becomes one of how effective the additional degree really is.  If the degree focuses on a specialty area, like secondary mathematics or special education, it makes a great deal of sense, because it builds an expertise, provides a forum for developing more advanced skills — skills that teacher can share with peers in the school. 

So, while the degree itself is not everything required, the right advanced degree certainly enhances the school district staff.  But as I mentioned in earlier posts, I think that performance driven incentives make the most sense and will help produce an avalanche of positive results — if the incentives are properly structured and the results adequately stated and measured.

This story in the Post-Dispatch discusses the growing use of teacher web pages in our schools.  Are they a good idea?  Do they help or hinder classroom performance?

The best advantage of an updated teacher web site is the ability to always have key information available — a syllabus, classroom policies and guidelines, homework assignments, handouts.  Indeed, using the Internet can actually save districts money by having kids go to the website to find handouts, and print them out for themselves or use them online.  Additionally, teachers can provide links to multimedia presentations, primary source documents and other great resources that would have cost so much money in the not so distant past.

Dangers?  Some kids can get too dependent on the website and not remember to write down assignments, bring materials to class, and complete work on a timely basis.  Also, teachers could become too tempted by the ease of technology and put too much emphasis on independent learning rather than classroom instruction and interaction.

As with other discussions we have had on technology in the classroom, it ultimately comes down to how a teacher uses the technology.  I think the websites help students overall and also help parents as well — parents can stay totally up to date on what their kids are learning, what the assignments are, and can find out if their kids have been slacking.  Finally, I think that a good and enjoyable website, particularly for younger kids, can help develop consistent homework patterns and encourage doing the work regularly because of the lure and ease of technology.