Come to Rochester --- Our A's are Easier!

Rochester is considering a change in their grading policy for Advanced Placement courses. The idea is to lower the grading scale needed to earn an “A”, with the hope that more students will be more willing to take AP classes.

The highly respected Washington Post education reporter Jay Mathews took the Rochester ideas to his national audience:

Washington Post: Should we inflate Advanced Placement grades? (11/27/09)

I am quite certain that the idea is proposed with the best of intentions. But I just don't think lowering the bar is the right approach.

Be sure to read the comments posted by teachers and students… very insightful.

==> Mike.

I pasted the article below in case the link doesn't work.

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Should we inflate Advanced Placement grades?

The Rochester Community public schools in Michigan do a fine job. Their leaders often have great ideas. But according to school board member Mike Reno, they are talking about doing something to their Advanced Placement courses that could be troublesome, even though I once thought it was a good idea. (Some people who know me say that is the very definition of a bad idea.)

Here is what Reno revealed in an email to me:

"Our district, in an effort to increase AP participation, is proposing to lower the grading scale for AP classes. The idea is based on the notion that kids in Rochester don’t want to take AP classes because they are afraid that the tougher work will lead to a lower grade, and they don’t want to damage their GPA for fear it will harm their college entrance chances. The district’s logic suggests by that lowering the grading scale, students will have a better chance of getting a better grade, and therefore be more willing to take the class.

"This is not their brainchild. They claim other districts are doing it. They are calling it internal weighting. They believe this is a better approach than grade weighting, where an A in an AP class would be worth, say, 5.0 instead of 4.0. The district argues that colleges strip off weighted grades, whereas an internal weight benefits the student during college entrance. (I believe grade weighting has value when calculating class ranking, vals, sals, top scholars, etc, but think colleges are free to recalculate anything they’d like). Am a crazy to think this is a bunch of nonsense?"

When I first began writing about AP in the 1980s, I saw some sense in AP teachers being somewhat easy on report card grades. You wanted kids to stick with the course. Since they would take an AP exam written and graded by outside experts, they would know eventually how close they were to a college standard. If the student got an A in the course but a 3 (the equivalent of a college C-plus) on the AP exam, that would be a useful wakeup call. I recalled that the AP teacher who inspired me to be an education writer, Jaime Escalante, was livid when another AP teacher gave Fs to a lot of students, leading them to drop the course.

But I later realized I had misunderstood what Escalante was doing. He graded his students pretty tough. He wouldn't flunk them because that would be too much of a turn-off, but if they were doing the kind of work that would get them a 3 on the exam, he came them a C, not an A, on their classwork. He understood that they needed to know BEFORE the exam what they were likely to get, so they would be motivated to work harder if they needed to catch up.

That is precisely what many AP and International Baccalaureate (the other popular college-level program in U.S. high schools) experts told me when I asked them about the Rochester idea. Roy Sunada, for many years a leading AP teacher and administrator at Marshall Fundamental High School in Pasadena, Calif., said none of his first reactions to undermining AP course grades were printable. "I will stand firm in my belief that artificial measures or grand-sweeping programs are not productive in encouraging students to seek academic rigor," he said.

Reno himself had good arguments against the Rochester proposal. "If AP in high school is not the time to introduce the real-life challenges to our youngsters, then when is the right time? Do we allow them to leave our community with high hopes and aspirations--and perhaps a false sense of their skills--only to get crushed in college when they are not prepared?" He also put in a good word for "the kids that really bust their humps and get real A grades and stay on top of the game. Don't they deserve the reward and distinction?"

On the other side was Trevor Packer, the College Board vice president who directs the AP program. He thought the Rochester idea had merit. He called it "another, viable way to weight AP grades in ways that more fairly represent the level of achievement." He and other veteran educators also supported the extra grade point weighting system for AP and IB found in many districts. In Fairfax County, Va., for instance, a student who gets a C in her AP course will see that letter on her report card, but she will get an extra grade point for it, a 3.0 instead of the usual 2.0. That bonus, several teachers say, is important to students who know they are going to struggle in the course.

Erin McVadon Albright, the IB coordinator at Annandale High School in Fairfax County, said that was a powerful inducement for one of her most intriguing students. He came from a low-income family that did not even have an Internet connection at home. He wanted to play football, which meant he had to take a government class online over the summer to have time for IB. He was using the computer at the office where his mother was a receptionist, but she was afraid someone would complain. He almost dropped the course until Albright managed to lend him a school laptop which he could take the public library to do his work.

Jon Gubera, AP director for the Indiana education department, said "grades are the single most relevant academic currency for students. In my experience, the best way we were able to incent marginal students to take a leap of faith and join an AP course was through providing a weighted grade so as to reassure them that their overall GPAs would not be ruined by earning a C in an AP course."

Gubera had little problem with the Rochester idea. It reminded him of what happens on many college campuses--"a 70 percent on a final exam, for example, translates into an A in the course." He also thinks some AP teachers do similar internal weighting on their own, without any guidance from their districts. They will give the student working at the 3 level a representative C in course work leading up to the exam. But when they mark the final report card--weeks after the student has taken the AP exam--they will award extra credit and bump them up to a B.

Does that make sense? Grading in American high schools is like cage fighting. There aren't many rules. If there are AP or IB teachers out there with their own special tricks, post a comment here to educate the rest of us.

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Diluting Rigor with "Positive Energy"

There are two board seats up for election for the Rochester Community School district, and there are seven candidates for those seats.

Here is what one of them had to say in the local paper today:

Rochester Eccentric: Talbert focused on student success (10/21/07)

I know candidate Beth Talbert. She's an intelligent, nice person who has been involved in the district for some time. I served with her on a committee, and in that particular setting I felt she truly wanted to improve rigor in the district. I like her. But outside of that setting I continue to hear this same alarming message over and over, which suggests that there is some "status quo" thinking swirling around in her:

"Clearly college success and employment success has a lot more to do with other factors than just whether or not you took AP exams," she said. "In no way do I want to minimize that; I absolutely think we should be encouraging that. But that's a very small segment of our school population. So what I personally would like to do is just broaden this dialogue. What about the other 90 percent of our students?"

That might be fine if the district were too focused on AP, but it's not. Michigan is in the bottom half of states when ranked by AP exams taken per thousand upperclassmen, and Rochester ranks below it's peer groups by almost any measure. And there is no official board-level effort whatsoever to change that. None. Zero. Zip.

But the larger problem I see with this kind of thinking is that it's the same kind of "positive energy -- no meat" thinking that has been used to dilute academics in this district for years.

I've got to wonder how that statement would play in Grosse Pointe, Okemos, Troy, Bloomfield, Jenison, Forest Hills, East Lansing, Birmingham, East Grand Rapids, or any of the other districts that are helping lead their children in great numbers to high levels achievement.

But let me be clear: This posting here is not about this particular candidate, but instead is meant to focus on the underlying philosophy I find so harmful to public education. I've been battling it for my three years with sitting Rochester board members and some district administrators.

For years, the unwritten philosophy in Rochester -- and many other districts -- has been that AP is only for the "top students." The district didn't allow sophomores to take AP classes. The high school course catalogue is chocked-full of electives designed to provide "choice" for students who are not "AP Caliber"; classes like "Wilderness Survival" and "Guitar", and classes that teach "checkbook math" and cooking.

While the article contains the obligatory, "In no way do I want to minimize that (AP Participation); I absolutely think we should be encouraging that" comment, there seems to be a very clear effort to divert attention from AP.

In fact, the very next statement again reinforces the misconception that AP is for the elite, "But that's a very small segment of our school population... What about the other 90 percent of our students?"

Good question. What ABOUT the other 90 percent? Why aren't they being directed to the type of rigorous work that will prepare them to compete with other students for seats at selective universities?

The article goes on with the kinds of statements that are common in education:

"What if your student is a C student? Wouldn't it be great if our emphasis was on helping that student become a B student," she says. "Or the B-minus student becoming an A-minus student. Or the student who has no interest in college - hates coming to school - what are we doing to make sure in this economy they can get a job right after high school? ... I don't feel that we are focusing enough on the big picture."

Aside from the very last sentence, who on earth would be opposed to any of what was said? Shouldn't the school already be doing that? And who can tell what that means? Is that a proposal to design some sort of intervention strategy?

No, it's simply "feel good" stuff.

In fact, I'd bet that statement could be used by any candidate in any district in any of the past 10 years, and it would fit just fine.

This approach really concerns me because it's based on the appearance that the district needs to stop focusing on these elite "high achievers" and get back to the basics. That concern is completely unfounded, and there is no evidence that the Rochester school board has been focusing on AP (despite my efforts to change that!) In fact, if anything, the board has been too preoccupied with this "big picture" thing instead of focusing on anything in particular, and does far too little to focus on challenging all students.

The effort to "focus on the big picture" diverts attention from the small, measurable, attainable goals, that can be used to improve a school. See my previous blog posting on "The Great MEAP Disconnect" to see how "the big picture" is applied in Rochester.

Increasing student achievement at all levels is a philosophy, not a goal.

Public education will continue to flounder until it starts setting small, defined, meaningful and measurable goals, which target BOTH at-risk students and talented learners.

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AP benefits students of all ages

Great column in the Washington Post today.

Washington Post: AP - It's Not Just for Seniors Anymore (06/14/07)

I've collected most of the data for an update to my AP Participation in Michigan report (here is the most recent version), and I'm just waiting for the state to release the ACT scores so that I can produce the Balanced Achievement Indicator I created last year. Hopefully they'll release the data this century.

But in the meantime I'm attempting to contact some of the Superintendents and Principals of the districts and schools that have high AP achievement, and one of the things that seems clear is that many are NOT restricting AP classes to Seniors, or to Juniors and Seniors. I recently talked with the head counselor at one high school who had some gifted 8th graders take AP Calculus BC, and pass the exam with 4's!

Here is the Washington Post article, in case you can't retrieve it through the link above:

AP: It's Not Just for Seniors Anymore
Thursday, June 14, 2007; T08

Dear Extra Credit:

In your May 31 response to Elaine Jean of Loudoun County, you mentioned that the number of students who overdo Advance Placement classes is very small. How do you know this? Do you have any facts to support this? I have a real problem with a journalist who cannot back up claims with facts. You spoke about how honors courses rarely merit the name. How do you know this? Where are your facts? That is a big statement you are making. I have a problem with that.

I think you might be wrong, by the way. I have worked with honors-level teachers at Potomac Falls High School. They do terrific work. How do you know so much? You say that an outside standard such as AP is needed to prepare students for college. AP is great. I have taught it for a number of years. But I think of hundreds of students who did not take it, and they turned out just fine.

Do us all a favor and be careful of what you say. Especially if you really do not know for sure or cannot substantiate your claims with facts.

Jay Whitehead
Warrenton


I apologize. When I do this column, I like to give readers such as you the maximum amount of space for your good thoughts and questions, and limit my responses, since many are sick of reading what I write. But in this case I did not provide enough facts. Here they are:

According to the College Board's AP director, Trevor Packer, using 2003 to 2006 data, 47.4 percent of AP students took just one AP test, 22.3 percent took two, 12.4 percent three, 7.2 percent four and 4.3 percent five. College admissions officers say three to five tests is fine if you are seeking admission to a very selective college. So, 69.7 percent of AP students took fewer, and 6.4 percent took more than five. Those who took six were 2.7 percent of the total; those taking seven were 1.6 percent. I often hear of students taking a dozen, but nationally they constitute less than a tenth of a percent.

As for honors courses, some are rigorous and well-taught. But my reporting over the years, and what little data exist, suggest that most do not do much to prepare students for college. I have burrowed into three very different high schools -- one poor, one affluent and one average -- for several years at a time, and in each case found several honors classes that did not merit the title. A study of 81,445 University of California students from 1998 to 2001 showed that students who took honors courses in high school had first- and second-year college grades that were no better than those of students who took no honors courses.



Dear Extra Credit:

As Ms. Jean said [Extra Credit, May 31], in Loudoun County, as well as in Fairfax, when an AP class is offered in a given subject, the honors class is not offered. So, for instance, in ninth-grade history, one could take honors or regular history. Then in 10th grade, because AP history is offered, honors is no longer an option. This puts a student in the position of choosing AP or a regular class. Her point was that that was not a very good choice for a lot of students. The difference in the level of difficulty between regular classes and honors is significant, as well as the level of difficulty between honors and AP.

I do not believe in having my children take an AP class in 10th grade, unless they are exceptionally gifted in that subject. Given that my children are considered very smart and have been in gifted-and-talented centers throughout their schooling, I still would not place them in that class in 10th grade. Why? It is a college course! Three years before they start college! Do you think we are getting a little out of control around here? But honors was not offered. So instead of being challenged, they were bored in regular history.

In 11th and 12th grades, when AP is more appropriate, the choice still is AP or regular. So, for example, my son loves and is great in science. He took many APs in that area. But he is not in love with history, and he chose to take "only" three APs in his junior year (BC calculus, AP chemistry and AP English). He chose not to take AP history and therefore was stuck taking regular history, a class so easy that he did his calculus homework in class. Had he been able to take honors English, he would have been challenged and had to work hard.

Marcy Newberger
McLean



Many people agree with you about ninth- and 10th-graders not being ready for AP, so I hope the many students in other school districts in this area who have taken AP in those grades (or their parents) will tell me what they thought of the experience. I have visited some ninth- and 10th-grade AP government courses in Montgomery County and saw no significant difference between the quality of student discussion and student work and what I have seen in many 12th-grade classes.

The problem, I think, is the weight you and many others put on the word "college." Your son was probably right not to have too many APs on his plate. But I would challenge the assumption that because AP is a college-level course, it is too far above a regular high school course, and there should be an honors course alternative for students who cannot leap so high. But the difference between high school and college courses is sometimes not so great. I had college courses 40 years ago that were not as difficult as some of my high school courses then, and that situation still exists. These AP courses are intro college courses, and like the introductory courses in average state colleges, not that demanding if you do the reading and listen in class (something many of us during freshman year of college did not do).

Some advanced college courses are, of course, out of the reach of ninth-graders, but those do not include AP geography or AP world history, the AP courses most often taken by ninth- and 10th-graders. One of my children also did fine in AP chemistry in 10th grade, and he will assure you he is no science genius. That is why he, like his parents, went into journalism. But I would like to hear from people who have more recent experience in ninth- and 10th-grade AP.

Please send your questions, along with your name, e-mail or postal address and telephone number, to Extra Credit, The Washington Post, 526 King St., Suite 515, Alexandria, Va. 22314. Or e-mailextracredit@washpost.com.

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Don't let AP fade away from your school!

Of all the news and opinions swirling around right now, I hope this one doesn't get lost in the noise.

The Lansing State Journal did a fantastic piece encouraging students to take Advanced Placement Classes.

LSJ: Join Class: Lansing students, parents need to bolster advanced classes (03/26/07)

The motivation for the article is disturbing. The district is considering the elimination of some AP classes due to budget woes. The "news and opinions swirling around right now" can explain why they have their woes.

Budget woes aside, this is an article that should run annually. Michigan is in the bottom half of the country for AP Exam participation, ranking 29th in the nation. We trail Alaska, New Mexico, and Arkansas.

AP classes are hard, but that is exactly the reason kids need to take them. They need to be prepared for the challenges that await them in college. Learning this lesson early can help to keep them from getting discouraged in college, and dropping out.

I believe every college-bound student should be taking at least one AP class during their high school career. Authorities recommend that serious college-bound students should be taking five, starting as early as their sophomore year.

I'm sure that recommendation will raise some eyebrows in Michigan. However, it's just as likely to be getting nods from many educators in other states. Some of the top performing states in the nation are putting three times as many of their children through AP classes.

You can read other my my blogs on AP by looking in the BLOG TOPICS, or by clicking here.

I put together a 2005-06 study on AP Participation in Michigan, which can be found by clicking here.

I've pasted the article below in case the link doesn't work.

==> Mike.



Join class: Lansing students, parents need to bolster advanced classes
A Lansing State Journal editorial

Lansing School District students and their parents have an important opportunity to boost enrollment in their Advanced Placement classes.

Advanced Placement classes provide college-level work in the high school setting. Students who complete AP work successfully often can get the credits recognized by a college, saving them money and jump-starting their higher education.

In addition, the rigorous course work can prepare them for the higher expectations of college.

Lansing schools offer 24 Advanced Placement classes at three high schools, an impressive number. But in tight financial times, the district must watch expenses and is reviewing enrollment for those classes. Beginning next year, they will require a minimum of 25 students enrolled to offer an AP course, up from 20 students this year. About half the courses offered this year wouldn't have made that cut-off.

To its credit, the district is pursuing options for its most ambitious students. Officials say some AP classes may be offered online, or via video conferencing.

And don't forget that students can attend Eastern High to pursue an international baccalaureate program instead of, or in addition to, AP course work.

Lansing is not alone in facing fiscal challenges; area suburban districts have had to find new approaches for Advanced Placement offerings as well. This is not a situation that reflects poorly on Lansing schools.

But there is an additional perspective for students and their parents to consider.

Recently politicians and policy-makers have cited a startling fact: The lifetime earnings of a college graduate will be $1 million more than those of a person who did not attend college.

This is a golden opportunity. To offer the maximum number of AP courses, the district needs the maximum number of students to sign up. Yet it seems quite likely there are capable students - college-bound students - who don't sign up because they are intimidated by the amount or difficulty of AP course work.

The new economy requires everyone to push toward a higher level. Doug Stites of Capital Area Michigan Works is among community leaders working on the "Keep Learning ... Our Future Depends on It" campaign. Among his suggestions: That everyone strive to climb one level higher in education. High school grads need to pursue college; those with a bachelor's degree need to pursue a master's, and so on.

Signing up for an AP course in high school can be a step on that lifelong path to learning. Parents should urge their students to consider that when making class choices.

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Local Educators Talk AP

Dave Groves of the Oakland Press wrote a great piece on Advanced Placement in Oakland County.

Oakland Press: Local educators tout AP courses (08/26/06)

There were some encouraging signs in the article, but only time will tell whether Michigan's education culture can play catch-up, or will instead remain behind the times.

==> Mike.

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Jay Mathews and the School Rating Scoundrels Club

Jay Mathews of the Washington Post is a highly respected education reporter that has been covering Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate programs for several decades.

Every year he produces the "Challenge Index" (published by Newsweek), which ranks public high schools based on their particiaption in the rigorous AP courses.

I felt quite honored when he recongized my report in his weekly column "Class Struggle".

Washington Post: School Rating Scoundrels Club (08/01/06)

==> Mike.

P.S. Jay has several great books for those interested in understanding what drives great schools. Here is a link to Amazon to find books by Jay Mathews.

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Advanced Placement Participation in Michigan

Advanced Placement is considered by many to be the "gold standard" in helping to prepare our high school students for the challenges they await at college.

I began trying to research the topic in order to benchmark the performance of Rochester Community Schools, but quickly found that data was not available. In early 2005 I asked if the district administrators would try to collect data from neighboring districts, but was told it was too much work.

So, using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), I collected data from approximately 100 school districts across Michigan.

As I had suspected, Rochester did have room for improvement.

But more than that, I learned that Michigan as a state was sadly lacking.

A PDF copy of my report can be found on my website:

Advanced Placement Participation in Michigan (2005)

==> Mike.

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