AHypotheticalSituation < Kitchen

23 Apr 2006 - 02:49

a hypothetical situation

I remember someone here asking, a few months ago, whether it is as important for a high school- or college-aged student to experience success in school as it is for a younger child. Shouldn't they be tougher, we wondered, and able to stand up to adverse circumstances a bit better than younger kids?

What if a student encounters a teacher for a core course in high school -- in algebra, or in physics or chemistry -- who is the sort of teacher with whom a kid just can't win, no matter how hard he studies? The sort of teacher who asks questions on the final such as "here's some nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen. Invent life." He can get by in those circumstances, but he can't distinguish himself; noone in his class can. He studies like hell for a major test, and has no problems with it, in the sense that he understands the main points for the test and can do the assigned problems.

But then he gets a C on the test, and concludes that he is no good at this subject. He decides to quit trying. He vows that he will take no more of that subject, even though he started out interested in the class. Throughout the next six years in his life, he'll be making critical decisions about his future, but when he encounters that particular topic that gave him so much trouble in high school, he will sidestep it without even thinking about it. He's no good at it, his memories of it are painful, and he's closed the book on it.

Now suppose, in another parallel universe, the same kid gets another teacher for the same topic. The teacher plays fair, doesn't throw curve balls, and sticks to the curriculum. The kid does his work, studies for tests, and performs well. His grades make it clear that he has a knack for this stuff, and when the opportunity to continue with this material presents itself again, he is willing. Three years later, he decides to major in that topic.

Now here's my (run-on) question: is the fact that a kid's whole future rests on the uninformed decisions and assumptions he makes at the age of 17 enough reason to make an attempt to develop some kind of uniform standards for teaching methodologies for core courses in high school?

-- CarolynJohnston - 23 Apr 2006

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Teaching methodologies won't fix a bad, mean, or misguided teacher. I am reading an autobiography of the pianist and composer Paderewski and he was told by a few of his teachers at the conservatory that he would never be a pianist. In fact one said he would be perfect for the trombone.

This doesn't mean that one should not try for quality controls in all subject and teachers. It also doesn't mean that parents and schools should strive to protect kids from all failures. In many ways, I think that life is way too easy for my son. The number 2 item on the list of three things I wanted for my son was to learn the value of hard work. I'm not sure I am succeeding very much on that one yet.

At the first college I went to, I decided to change from a Physics major to another, more competitive field. My Physics professor told me that success often depends more on effort that any innate skill. Actually, at the time, I thought he was trying to tell me something about my chances - that I would be one that required A LOT of effort.

-- SteveH - 23 Apr 2006

My first, gut reaction to your question is, "no." Students and teachers are as variable as any other humans. There are students who would do capably in a class in which being able to "understand the main points for the test and do the assigned problems" is all that is necessary for a fine grade. But. There are other students who have the capacity to do more, and who really have the ability to distinguish themselves. They (and we) may not realize that they fit this category of student. A science teacher who can ask questions such as "invent life" is challenging his (or her) students.

I had a very sweet woman as a chemistry instructor in high school. The students knew what would be on the exam, and everything was straightforward and above board. I don't think that the class learned as much as we might have, though, because it was too predictable. Too boring.

Those university students tackling the serious sciences during my time at university faced the surprise of exams in which no one could answer all of the questions on an exam; indeed, I seem to remember one exam in which the class average was 17. They had all been well prepared for further study by their earlier schools, but they had to learn to function in a setting in which the zenith of performance was out of their reach, or at least out of reach for 999 out of 1,000. There is nothing wrong with that.

I think that we often want our children to be "the best" at too many things. Is this driven by the college admissions process? Why do high schools often arrange levels of instruction so that a middling student can claim that he is an "A" student in a mid-level course? Do such arrangements serve as an incentive to further effort in a field, or rather, as I suspect, do they serve to signal to a student that it's time to stop studying, and to segue to a different extracurricular activity?

Perhaps there is a difference between the pedestrian and the exceptional? An attempt to establish "uniform standards for teaching methodologies for core courses in high school" would backfire, I think. I have known some exceptional teachers, and those who really got their students to go further academically had a spark which is not susceptible to bureaucratic definition.

-- KtmGuest - 23 Apr 2006

The sort of teacher who asks questions on the final such as "here's some nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen. Invent life."

Discovery teaching at its finest.

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Apr 2006

Our entire experience of middle school this year is one of constant effort followed by Cs, Ds, and Fs. In pretty much every subject. Christopher's report card came this week. He has a C in 'Reading.' This is a kid who taught himself to read, and who was one of the tiny handful of kids to score a 4 on the TONYSS in 5th grade. I haven't tested him on the ITBS, but when I do I'm fairly confident he's going to be way up in the 80s or 90s.

A C in reading.

The only subject Christopher is managing an 'A' in is social studies, which is his natural area of interest.

In a way, we have the opposite of the scenario you describe, which is that Christopher's natural talent is being 'overly reinforced.'

He's in danger of concluding that the only thing he can do in life is social studies. Given that it's entirely possible social studies will involve more applied math in the future, that's not good.

If this were an inner city school, every single child would be lost now. IMS can get away with punitive & inexplicable grading because, once again, parents will keep their kids standing.

I tend to think there's always a silver lining.....I assume that the silver lining here is that these kids are developing toughness and a healthy skepticism of authority.

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Apr 2006

However, that's not what I'm paying these people for.

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Apr 2006

When I decided to leave film studies to become a writer, the chairman of my department wrote me a letter saying he'd never liked my writing and was taking his name off my dissertation.

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Apr 2006

Here's a sample of Dudley's writing (Dudley Andrew was chair of the film department at Iowa; he's at Yale now):

In writing now about contemporary theory, I find it far more useful and honest to treat key concepts rather than key personalities and to build an overall view of film based on positions taken in relation to those concepts, specifically to perception, representation, signification, narrative structure, adaptation, evaluation, identification, figuration, and interpretation.

Concepts in Film Theory
page 3

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Apr 2006

My Physics professor told me that success often depends more on effort that any innate skill. Actually, at the time, I thought he was trying to tell me something about my chances - that I would be one that required A LOT of effort.

I love it!

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Apr 2006

I have a simple answer to this question, which is Teach to Mastery. In high school, I would like to see Christopher take his courses on the Keller Method, which I used in two courses in college, one at Wellesley and one at Dartmouth. I still remember content from both courses.

To me, questions of 'Why do we pressure our kids' and 'Why do we expect our kids to be the best at everything' are philosophical questions that should be asked by individual parents, not by the people I'm paying to teach my child - AND TO MOTIVATE HIM TO DO HIS BEST.

After lo these many years of education, I'm no fan of professors who gives tests on which the highest grade is a 17. That sort of test, IMO, is about the professor's ego needs, not the students.

Colleges now charge $40,000 a year to 'educate' students.

If I'm going to spend $40,000 a year - and I hope I'm not going to spend $40,000 a year - I expect professors to make sure their students can handle very advanced material.

Christopher can be 'pedestrian' for free. We all can.

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Apr 2006

It's time to take a second look at the 'grade inflation' meme. We don't have grade inflation; I'm fairly confident we have grade deflation, which I speculate is done to mask poor curriculum and teaching.

Bad grades = rigor.

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Apr 2006

More Keller

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Apr 2006

This looks like a constructivist extension of the Keller method (have only glanced at the page)

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Apr 2006

no grade inflation in the burbs

Grade Deflation in Irvington

grade deflation in the suburbs, part 2

grade deflation in the suburbs, part 3

I had to do it.

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Apr 2006

I've been meaning to write a post about this forever, but since I haven't gotten to it, here's the link:

Keller method at law school

This is an Australian law professor who taught his course using the Keller method.

The other professors were so furious he didn't do it again (IIRC).

But it worked.

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Apr 2006

That's the way it seems to go with no-nonsense instructional approaches that work.

People get furious and club it to death.

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Apr 2006

The Bonnie Dossen article Ken left the link to mentions the Joplin method, which sounds similar to Wickelgren's plan for fluid achievement grouping in math.

Apparently, the Joplin method worked quite well; at least that's what the slim body of research shows.

Has anyone ever heard of it?

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Apr 2006

I think you're missing the advantages of giving the really killer tests (not to middle schoolers, but certainly college, and I would say perhaps even high schoolers).

For one, the allow the stars to shine. Like it or not, in a given high school, there are going to be one or two, students destined for Harvard or MIT, unless the school is very very good. Then the question is, how does one equitably and fairly find him or her? If everyone is bunched up in the high 90s, since they've "mastered" the material, then the differences among the top will literally be whether or not someone bungled a couple routine calculation on a test. And that's nonsense. (And this is one reason why top colleges end up looking at extracurriculars so much, which I also think is foolish, but they have no choice: the top student and number 10 all have the same GPA).

Which brings me to my second reason (somewhat idiosyncratic to me, I think): high mean tests are much MORE stressful expereices. Again, the reason is that a small mistake means you're out, not near the top, whereas if the mean is low, arithmetic mistakes aren't going to doom your grade.

-- ChrisV - 23 Apr 2006

I think you're missing the advantages of giving the really killer tests

I may be, but I'm married to a high-profile college professor & I've socialized with famous professors all my adult life....and I'm just not interested in any of these people administering 'killer' tests to my kid.

I'm especially not interested in paying $40,000 for the privilege.

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Apr 2006

I realize in my comment there's an implicit assumption that grading is a competitive process. That's certainly not true for middle school, and one reason I DON'T believe in giving low-mean tests at that level. But it is true of higher levels, and we do a disservice by pretending otherwise. And the only way to find the top students is to make it where the almost-top students get a lower grade.

-- ChrisV - 23 Apr 2006

I don't think anyone has to 'allow' stars to shine ....

But also, having been close with academic stars (I was very close to some major, major scientists at NAAR) 'shining' isn't exactly what they're about.

They're ferociously focused on what they do. That's what they care about, that's what they think about....some of them are barely tuned in to the rest of the world.

They're competitive; that's true.

But they are profoundly engaged in their work. Some of them - the ones I particularly loved - have almost no 'ego' in the conventional sense at all.

Temple is often like that. She calls it being 'project loyal.' The project - the work - is what matters.

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Apr 2006

ChrisV^?,

Are you talking about using killer tests to make it easier for admissions people to select the cream of the crop? If so, how do you adjust for the fact that there's no correlation between the test levels at different schools? You can't except by relying on standardised test such as the the SAT, ACT, GRE and so on.

Or are you (by extension) talking about rigour in the lectures? Like Feynman's live CalTech^? lectures? Those were incredible, and the top few really stood out - but those weren't tests.

I'm inclined to agree that for the most part schools (middle schools etc.) hope you'll think "RIGOUR!" when they send home silly assignments and grades. It's nothing of the kind, and most of these teachers couldn't pass the simplest tests.

-- VerghisKoshi - 23 Apr 2006

It's been many years since colleges selected on the basis of high school grades. Ed worked on the history/social science frameworks & the subject matter projects in CA nearly 20 years ago, and no one was using grades then.

They don't use extracurriculars all that intensely, either, or didn't then.

They look at SATs & AP courses.

That's the simple answer. Without a national curriculum & national standards, there's no way to know what grades mean.

AP courses also serve the same function.

I know what you're saying, but I disagree that high schools should do the winnowing-out; I don't want to see undergraduate programs doing a lot of winnowing out, either.

I don't trust these people to be the gatekeepers.

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Apr 2006

Our friend who's working on the World Trade Center buildings filled Ed in on his philosophy.

He went to Harvard, and taught at RISD.

He said (I think I've got this right) that he's against gatekeeping at all levels up to graduate level.

He felt that undergraduate education should be 'focused like a laser' (not his words) on giving students a superb education.

At the graduate level, he said, in architecture and design, the gatekeeping function should check in. His field is so competitive that it's incredibly hard for anyone to make a living in it, and he believes that a professor isn't doing grad students a favor by obscuring this.

I have to say, though....I tend to think we should leave it to the market to do the winnowing.

I've mentioned before that I didn't take a single course on writing, because I knew I'd be winnowed. Seriously. I wanted desperately to be a writer, and I was just too vulnerable. (That was me; not all future writers are like that.)

I had to self-teach, and take my licks in the real world.

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Apr 2006

If you're doing proper mastery learning, differentiation comes because the high performers can move at a faster clip than the lower groups. They can cover more material. Further diferentiation can be achieved by including some difficult questions in exams that test just how flexible the students' knowledge has become.

-- KDeRosa - 23 Apr 2006

OK, that was succinct!

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Apr 2006

THANK YOU!

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Apr 2006

If so, how do you adjust for the fact that there's no correlation between the test levels at different schools? You can't except by relying on standardised test such as the the SAT, ACT, GRE and so on.

You're right, and I would rely on external exams if I had my way. But I doubt that's what's going to happen, so we're studk with what we have: trying to make teacher-based assessment as logical and consistent as possible.

-- ChrisV - 23 Apr 2006

I've so had it with the middle school I can't even think clearly.

YES YES YES!

That's it exactly.

If you have teaching to mastery, the kids who excel in a particular topic, or are more ambitious, harder-working - whatever it is will naturally separate themselves out from the crowd.

They do it themselves, through their own efforts and learning.

They don't have some petty tyrant - I believe the term Susan used was PRINCIPAL GOD - doing everything in his power to kick them off the track.

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Apr 2006

Do I sound the teensiest bit bitter?

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Apr 2006

I have to get a better attitude.

It's Sunday, and what I REALLY need to do is get serious about religion - by which I mean get serious about the kind of 'spiritual practice' that focuses on improving myself, not other people.

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Apr 2006

Chris

Colleges all rely on SATs, ACTs, etc.

They really do.

Seriously, it's been at least 20 years since high school GPA has been meaningful.

(They also weight high school GPAs based on what they know about the school's grading. In theory a school with grade deflation should have that evened out.)

Carolyn is talking, though, about the effect of harsh and/or arbitrary grading on the student himself.

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Apr 2006

He's against gatekeeping at all levels up to graduate level.

But that's not possible in a world of finite resources. At some point, somehow there has to be winnowing, because they're are only a few slots at those top schools that virtually everyone wants. If you don't gatekeep, then the mob at the gate will crush the fence down (OK, terrible analogy, sorry). But if you don't select out someone, what exactly are you going to do? Have a lottery?

-- ChrisV - 23 Apr 2006

Seriously, it's been at least 20 years since high school GPA has been meaningful.

In absolute numbers, maybe yes. In terms of class rank within a school, not a chance. Maybe at NYU, I don't actually know about it. But at a lot of schools, it absoultely matters. I won a fairly prestigious undergraduate scholarship, and if you weren't the absolute tops of your class, you weren't getting chosen, SATs or no (not that those didn't have to be high as well).

-- ChrisV - 23 Apr 2006

Getting winnowed out of Harvard is on thing, getting winnowed out of the profession is another.

-- KDeRosa - 23 Apr 2006

I haven't tested him on the ITBS, but when I do I'm fairly confident he's going to be way up in the 80s or 90s.

One of the tiny handful of kids to score a 4 on the TONYSS in 5th grade.

If I may be a little bold, I think these quotes suggest that you may actually agree with what I am saying at some level. Why does it bolster you're point that Christopher did so well on the TONYSS? It's precisely because it isn't common. You know you're son is an exceptional reader, and that's information a generic "acceptable = A" grade cannot convey. Getting a 4 when getting a 4 is hard is a real achievement, and thus both informationally more important and (to me, I suppose) actually more significant.

Similarly, suppose the ITBS was graded in a way that everyone over a certain level, at, oh, maybe the 75th percentile, gets an A. But that very fact cheats Christopher! He would do better than that, and you know he would do exceptionally well. Only discriminating standards do the trick. (Additionally, it's been a LONG time since I took the ITBS, but I would suspect it, like most standardized tests like the SAT, is structured in a way that the mean is what we would consider very low. That's the only way to distinguish at multiple levels.)

-- ChrisV - 23 Apr 2006

Temple is often like that. She calls it being 'project loyal.' The project - the work - is what matters.

Yes! This is how it is when you love the subject. It makes you honest because you truly want to be an expert.

I was thinking last night about Ken's Terminator Essay. Clearly, leading the kids to believe that they're great in high school physics is no particular favor if they are poorly prepared for engineering school. I'm not asking for kids to be coddled, or bored (referencing the sweet little old chemistry lady story).

However, cruel and arbitrary grading can have a huge effect on the futures of kids at this age, and again in college.

Getting winnowed out of Harvard is on thing, getting winnowed out of the profession is another.

Couldn't have put it better myself.

-- CarolynJohnston - 23 Apr 2006

"But at a lot of schools, [GPA] absoultely matters. I won a fairly prestigious undergraduate scholarship, and if you weren't the absolute tops of your class, you weren't getting chosen, SATs or no (not that those didn't have to be high as well)."

'Fraid this doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Here in sunny California, our last governor, the flexible Gray Davis, decreed that if you were in the top 10% of your graduating high school class you'd get a seat in the state university system (I think UC, but not sure).

So you could go to a crappy high school and shine, take the seat that would otherwise have gone to somebody with a lower GPA from a serious high school, and then wind up failing and dropping out. This is exactly what's happening here.

Make sense to you? I doubt it.

In your example, taking SAT scores into account makes sense, but it's degraded by the weighting they give the GPA.

-- VerghisKoshi - 23 Apr 2006

"...trying to make teacher-based assessment as logical and consistent as possible."

Not going to happen. How can it?

-- VerghisKoshi - 23 Apr 2006

I think that at some point of your schooling you need to have adverse circumstances. I think you need to run up against problems that you can't solve almost automatically, and thus have to learn how to study. And you also need to learn that even if you don't understand something immediately, you can still learn it. It'll just take longer.

I went through this second year at uni, and wish I had done so earlier. Several reasons: 1. Uni costs a fair bit more money than high school. If I had failed that year (which I came close to), it would have cost another $4,000 for fees, plus living expenses, books, etc, for another year. The cost is far higher in the US. 2. Hopefully kids get more support at school, making it more difficult for them to drop out. Plus their parents can do a much more effective job of yelling at children who are legally under their control. 3. You may as well get the painful bits of life over with early.

Often in the real world you'll encounter situations where you need to work hard, where you get handled problems that aren't clearly defined, and no one knows how to solve, and it's good to know in your bones that hard work might help and there are options other than hiding your head under a pillow.

-- TracyW - 24 Apr 2006

"And you also need to learn that even if you don't understand something immediately, you can still learn it. It'll just take longer."

I understand what you're saying, and in general I agree. But there's hard, and then there's Kafkaesque. In the latter hard work won't help, and you run the risk of having the kid shut down.

-- VerghisKoshi - 24 Apr 2006

Often in the real world you'll encounter situations where no amount of hard work will help you, where you get handed problems that are impossible to solve but which for political reason s you have to try to solve anyway, and in which you know you are headed for a train wreck that you can't possibly avoid. It's good at such times to accept that you can't possibly win, and the only option is taking the direct hit and hoping you'll have better luck next time.

-- CarolynJohnston - 24 Apr 2006

Do I sound like a pessimist?

-- CarolynJohnston - 24 Apr 2006

"But there's hard, and then there's Kafkaesque."

I agree. Things are plenty hard enough now with poor curricula and poor teachers. I don't think we have to contrive anything else.

If the curriculum is proper and rigorous, if there are choices for the students, and if the teachers know what they are doing, then that should be plenty of challenge. (more so if any of these conditions are not met) Most of my college engineering courses had plenty of challenge. If you wanted more, then there were things like the Solar Car project one could work on. Curricula can and should be a gatekeeper, not bad teachers or teaching.

For high school, there are plenty of AP courses to overwhelm even the best students. Add to that the need to pad one's extra-curricular activities to prepare for college. This, however, reminds me of schools that have mandatory volunteer work requirements. I don't like it one bit.

In middle school, there has to be a careful balance between expecting more from the student and giving him/her as much encouragement as possible. This starts in the lower grades by really teaching the kids something. You can't go from rubrics, portfolios, and fuzzy spiraling in the lower grades to high school-like expectations and grade deflation in middle school. The other extreme is what our middle school does. It continues the fuzzy K-5 expectations and learning all the way to 8th grade. There is shock when the kids enter high school. Sink or swim.

I generally think this is all about common sense - a proper curriculum, clearly-defined expectations, and well-prepared teachers. You don't need any more or less.

-- SteveH - 24 Apr 2006

"Do I sound like a pessimist?"

No, this is a part of life. But to survive this you need a solid grounding in what good work is, what real requirements are, and so on. Then you can look at the political crap and not be devastated by it, because you know that you know your stuff, and the political crap is just political crap.

"Curricula can and should be a gatekeeper, not bad teachers or teaching."

Absolutely!

-- VerghisKoshi - 24 Apr 2006

My engineering degree courses had plenty of challenge.

My high school courses didn't. For me.

I did work hard in my last couple of years at high school, but it was mostly a case of memorising stuff and learning how to write essays. Physics and Maths were easy then, I had no problems conceptually.

Extra-curricular activites were fun. But the only ones that were challenging were speech therapy and fencing, and I already knew I have difficulties with motion and need to work hard at them. It was learning that I sometimes need to work hard at intellectual stuff that was the problem. (I think that my experience with struggling with "ch" and "th" and eventually get them did help in developing resilence, and had a lot to do with why I didn't actually bomb out. But we can't rely on every kid who is good at schoolwork having had a disability that made another part of life hard).

And part of resilience is knowing that just because you've failed in that case that doesn't mean that you're hopeless and may as well give up on your career right now.

-- TracyW - 24 Apr 2006

And part of resilience is knowing that just because you've failed in that case that doesn't mean that you're hopeless and may as well give up on your career right now.

This is a very good point, but a very hard thing to learn or teach. And young people perceive that they have a huge range of possibilities in front of them; why spend any time at all on something that gives you pain, when the road seems so wide?

This is a good time to quote Dan Katz: the problem with life is that a 19-year-old is making most of the important decisions for you.

-- CarolynJohnston - 24 Apr 2006

"But there's hard, and then there's Kafkaesque."

One of the big problems with this is that kids are terrible at telling the difference between the two.

Parent: "Clean up your room."

Kid: "I can't."

After years of that, when a kid comes home saying that his class is "too hard", the parent is biased away from sympathy. If the parent doesn't have very strong knowledge about how to teach appropriately for the skill level of the kid, this is a rational result. After all, we pay teachers to be SMEs (subject-matter experts) in education, so we should listen to them.

Historically, there's been a presumption of competence of our kids' teachers. I don't know that presumption is warranted anymore. It's certainly rebuttable, and all too frequently rebutted.

As to what we should do about this sad state of affairs? Support school choice, whether through charter schools, "choicing in" to regular public schools, or vouchers. There must be effective signalling back to the schools when their results are insufficient, and money is the only signal that works consistently.

-- DougSundseth - 24 Apr 2006

But that's not possible in a world of finite resources. At some point, somehow there has to be winnowing, because they're are only a few slots at those top schools that virtually everyone wants. If you don't gatekeep, then the mob at the gate will crush the fence down (OK, terrible analogy, sorry). But if you don't select out someone, what exactly are you going to do? Have a lottery?

I'm not quite following.

Obviously winnowing out occurs.

What I don't understand is why I would pay $40,000 to a college to do the winnowing out the world can do for free.

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Apr 2006

Chris

I won a fairly prestigious undergraduate scholarship, and if you weren't the absolute tops of your class, you weren't getting chosen, SATs or no

how was your school ranked?

colleges weight grades, class rank, etc.

The girl who was babysitting for us got a full ride to....one of the SUNY schools, I think. I don't know that her class rank was super-high (could have been, but I don't know)

I've heard of a number of kids getting offered huge merit scholarships from Irvington High School

They can't all have top ranking....

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Apr 2006

"There must be effective signalling back to the schools when their results are insufficient, and money is the only signal that works consistently."

Exactly.

-- VerghisKoshi - 24 Apr 2006

What I don't understand is why I would pay $40,000 to a college to do the winnowing out the world can do for free.

Oh, I understand that. But life itself is doing the winnowing, as I see it. All I am saying is that if there are only so many slots available in a given program, then somehow they have to be allocated, and the best way to identify the exceptional is to give tests where the exceptional is distinguished from (as one of my professors put it before a midterm) the "merely brilliant". As I said, I'm sure the ITBS has a few of those; the SAT certainly does. Some questions are tailored to distinguish the great from the good.

Or, to put it differently, I took a grad class this past semester, and scored mid-70s on the final. That was an A-, easily in the top quartile of the class I believe (I think the mean was around 50). The other undergrad in the class, a truly brilliant friend of mine, scored low 90s. She's going to the #1 grad program in the country next year; I'm going to a top #10. And that's what we deserve (she's smarter and works harder than me). But if you gave a test where we both scored in the 90s (what "A/A-" means usually), then that really isn't much of a distinction. (And that was the proudest academic achievement of my life, that exam. The idea that somehow a good grade on an exam should be in the high 90s is just crazy, to me.)

Incidentally, I also worked harder in that class than I have ever worked before. When you know that the test is going to be very very hard, and challenging for even the best student, then you end up working harder. (And, like I said, this isn't what you do for middle schoolers for sure.)

-- ChrisV - 24 Apr 2006

how was your school ranked?

I don't quite know what you mean here. Do you mean how is my undergrad college ranked? It's one of the top 5 publics in the country. I'll put it this way: the scholarship was enough to induce me to turn down Harvard, to which I was accepted.

Or do you mean how did my high school rank us? It was pretty standard, 4.0 scale, with advanced classes given a .5 bump and AP classes a 1 point bump (so an A was a 5.0, etc.). I was number one, based entirely on a weighting issue. (And that's part of what I'm talking about: the difference between students ends up being all about scheduling and weights, because at least three of us, and I believe more, all had "perfect" 4.0s unweighted.)

-- ChrisV - 24 Apr 2006

ok, back to this thread

I am SO ready for summer.....

let's see..... your high school....

Can't tell if I'm being clear

Colleges 'weight' GPAs from high schools according to how hard the high school is, what the demographics are, what the GPA distribution is, etc. In other words, colleges don't take high school GPAs at face value.

So.....if you're from a school with 27 valedictorians (Joanne Jacobs reported something like this) colleges don't give valedictorian status at the school the same weight they give it at a school where only one person is valedictorian.

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Apr 2006

Getting winnowed out of Harvard is on thing, getting winnowed out of the profession is another.

oh god.....it's endless

during my phone call with the math chair I said that math isn't Christopher's prime interest or talent, but he needs to know math

she said, 'he needs to know it to graduate high school'

it's endless

I'm talking about college; she's raising the possibility he might not pass Regents

it's extraordinary, really

same thing with the English teacher

she spoke to me gently & delicately, the apparent message being that, sure, Christopher is none too bright, but I shouldn't worry so much, because he'll get it, the wheels are spinning etc.

This is IMS. The message is:

Your children are average, C students. Get over it!

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Apr 2006

More evasion of accountability.

We've got the principal telling us IMS can't possibly do what European schools do; it's a different population.

We've got the school board reporting that practically every child in Irvington is 'meeting state standards.' The huge drop in 4s from 4th grade to 8th grade goes unmentioned.

If you decide that the kids are all C students, you can be proud that they're meeting state standards, I guess.

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Apr 2006

Chris

Similarly, suppose the ITBS was graded in a way that everyone over a certain level, at, oh, maybe the 75th percentile, gets an A. But that very fact cheats Christopher!

I think I know what you're saying.

Strangely enough, this actually isn't a 'thing' for me....which I attribute to genetics. (I'm referring to Webb's book on the Scots-Irish. He has a passage in which he talks about the Scots-Irish being so independent-minded and individualistic that they aren't prone to envy. That was a 'shock of recognition' moment for me. I'm the least envious person I know.)

This is a personality-quirk area, so it doesn't really bear on your point. I feel very uncomfortable having more than other people, being smarter, richer, thinner - it doesn't feel good. I can't explain it any better than that, and I'm as competitive as anyone else; I like to win!

Consciously, at least, I would be perfectly happy for everyone to get As.

What's bugging me is that Christopher is getting Bs and Cs.

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Apr 2006

our last governor, the flexible Gray Davis,

tee hee

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Apr 2006

Apparently that's what's happened in TX.

They went to a strict top-10%-of-every-high-school-get-in plan, as their form of affirmative action.

Instantly the kids in difficult high schools were getting rejected like crazy.

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Apr 2006

remember - someone left an interesting comment about gifted kids tending to fall apart when confronted with problems they couldn't immediately see how to solve

I was SO fascinated by that, because of my friend's gifted child who is intensely perfectionistic

with him, it's nothing to do with ego or competition or having-too-easy-a-time-of-it.....if I understand what she was telling me, he was this little guy with a Great Big Brain who HAD to master material....so when he confronted material that stumped him he was frightened and upset (something like that)

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Apr 2006

let's see..... your high school....

Oh, OK, now I see. The weighting process generally meant that there weren't ties at the top. I was the only #1 (number 2 was my brother, who didn't give a whit about the difference).

Demographics . . . the dropout rate was probably 30-40%. It was high. The top students tended to do reasonably well, in terms of college, but it certainly was no prep school.

We've got the principal telling us IMS can't possibly do what European schools do; it's a different population.

That's crap. E.D. Hirsch dismantled that argument in The Schools We Need ; I can't believe administrators peddle that. Especially about Irvington, which seems to be exactly the kind of place where the demographic determinists think achievement should be highest.

OK, now I really need to get back to work on that senior thesis . . .

-- ChrisV - 24 Apr 2006

I understand what you're saying, and in general I agree. But there's hard, and then there's Kafkaesque. In the latter hard work won't help, and you run the risk of having the kid shut down.

Kafkaesque is bad.

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Apr 2006

Protestant work ethic has served me well.....

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Apr 2006

Chris

I was the only #1 (number 2 was my brother, who didn't give a whit about the difference).

Demographics . . . the dropout rate was probably 30-40%. It was high. The top students tended to do reasonably well, in terms of college, but it certainly was no prep school.

Unfortunately, I'm still a complete novice on statistics, but I think what this would mean is that class rank would be important in your case (no idea know how to factor in the 30% drop-out rate) whereas it wouldn't be in a school with 27 valedictorians.

I think.

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Apr 2006

All I am saying is that if there are only so many slots available in a given program

oh!

we're talking about two different things

I'm talking about colleges doing winnowing on behalf of graduate programs they have nothing to do with

yes, obviously, at every stage of the game there is a selection process

what I'm saying is YOU WORRY ABOUT YOU! LET THE MED SCHOOL/LAW SCHOOL/ENGINEERING SCHOOL WORRY ABOUT WHO THEY ADMIT & DON'T ADMIT!

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Apr 2006

as to Protestant work ethic....I love it

actually, Midwestern Protestant work ethic is a fine thing

Midwestern Protestant work ethic basically trains kids in being 'project loyal' and dogged as he**

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Apr 2006

Curricula can and should be a gatekeeper, not bad teachers or teaching.

You guys are amazing.

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Apr 2006

ChrisV^?,

Looks like we're still not quite on the same page, so perhaps I wasn't clear. Let me see if I understand your position - feel free to tell me if I don't.

I think you're saying that exams should be designed to accurately rank people according to their ability. Assuming for the moment that A is brighter than B, who in turn is brighter than C, etc., the test should rank them in precisely that order. Correct?

More, even the differences in grades should accurately capture the differences in their abilities and/or knowledge. Correct?

But what if the test is badly designed, if the question makes no sense, or is so far beyond the abilities of anyone in the class? Will it then help in ranking them? Clearly it won't, and the test won't have served its purpose. Right?

So now we have to qualify the idea of a hard test being good. It's no longer OK to say "the harder the better"; beyond a certain point the difficulty of the test becomes self-defeating. For example, suppose I ask a grad student in CS to prove that P = NP, that would qualify as silly.

More, if the test is stupid, if the questions don't make sense, it again becomes self-defeating. Not only that, it destroys the confidence of kids who take it. Correct?

So, assuming I've understood you, I don't think I can agree with your position as expressed; but I think that your actual position is close to what I said about Feynman's CalTech^? lectures.

-- VerghisKoshi - 25 Apr 2006

And part of resilience is knowing that just because you've failed in that case that doesn't mean that you're hopeless and may as well give up on your career right now.

When I think about it, I am amazed at how many young people do.

I did so myself at 16 when I decided I wanted direct entry into engineering school, which required a very good result on the Bursary exams (end of high school). I arranged my next year around the Goal. Did it too.

That year I also did quite a bit of tutoring in maths, one way and another, and was amazed at how dedicated most of my students were to tackling a subject they hated. (I wish I'd been reading KTM at that time though).

And a fair number of people I know have tackled other problems as teenagers. One of my mates at uni, studying physics, had had a bad physics teacher in his last year at high school, and said he had spent most of the year repeating to himself "Physics is cool. Don't let this idiot put you off".

Very few people keep going through a continual gale of negativity - I can see exactly how Chris is being demoralised by his school - but I think that many older teenagers can manage some suffering, if they see value in the final goal - though I wouldn't put anyone through what my physics mate coped with for a whole year.

-- TracyW - 25 Apr 2006

"...though I wouldn't put anyone through what my physics mate coped with for a whole year."

But you've got all that smashing Australian wine just next door, that must help.

-- VerghisKoshi - 25 Apr 2006

VerghisKoshi^?

Yep, I agree 100%, and that's what I mean about challenging tests. Certainly if they are ludicrously difficult, or the teaching is terrible, then tests aren't accurate. That'll be my last word on this, since I think we all actually agree for the most part, and I just wasn't perfectly clear before.

-- ChrisV - 25 Apr 2006

I've got it now!

Verghis is a wine connoisseur. Red or white?

-- CarolynJohnston - 25 Apr 2006

Dunno about the "wine freak" bit, but reds. Australian Shiraz and Grenache, Rhones, California Cabernet and Syrah, Spanish Priorats. Tend to prefer blends, but not religiously.

-- VerghisKoshi - 25 Apr 2006

Wine freak? Who said anything about wine freak?

-- CarolynJohnston - 25 Apr 2006

Here's a sample of Dudley's writing...

Gee, Catherine, he really did you a FAVOR!

-- BrendaM - 25 Apr 2006

Very few people keep going through a continual gale of negativity

you guys are such good writers -

yes, I've seen the same persistence in teens, etc.....I'm sure I had it

gales of negativity, no

But teens are young, healthy, strong as oxen, and they think they're never going to die

If a child's been raised well, and is in good shape when he reaches the teen years (or perhaps a bit later), the sky's the limit!

(Let's hope!)

-- CatherineJohnson - 25 Apr 2006

Brenda - lol!

oh gosh, don't get me started

actually DO get me started

let's see if I can unearth the latest issue of Irvington Insight from my desk here....

um....

I'm afraid SLIPPAGE may occur if I actually try to find that thing NOW

BUT I WILL!

-- CatherineJohnson - 25 Apr 2006

"...though I wouldn't put anyone through what my physics mate coped with for a whole year."

But you've got all that smashing Australian wine just next door, that must help.

Kiwi young men at university drink beer.

Generally homemade beer because it's cheap. (It also tastes foul).

We are not talking connoisseurs here.

-- TracyW - 25 Apr 2006

WebLogForm
Title:	a hypothetical situation
TopicType:	WebLog
SubjectArea:	HighSchoolMath
LogDate:	200604222247

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