OT: Skool tout

[poorgradstudent]

School rankings are always goofy. It’s like college or pro sports rankings, except schools don’t actually play games against each other and rankings can shift a lot depending what you put a premium on. Five teams could take the same data and come up with five quite different sets of rankings.

As for flu’s comment on “wasting resources”, I don’t think it costs the district that much more to have 200 vs. 50 students all take the same AP test. The material covered in AP vs. non-AP Calculus isn’t that different, although in AP you might try to cram a couple topics into the last week or so if the class is behind schedule while non-AP might focus more on mastering what is possible and leaving it at that. I could be wrong about costs associated with pushing middle of the road students to take AP tests.

I’m a pretty firm believer that for the vast majority of students, the difference between a good vs. “great” school is pretty small. There’s a huge downside to going to a bad school. Of course, as I’ve stressed before, I have a friend who teaches at Lincoln, and I would imagine if you took her students and traded them with San Marcos students, their scores wouldn’t shift drastically. That doesn’t mean I want my kids going to Lincoln; there are obvious social issues and potential distractions of attending a school with a large number of under motivated pupils.

Anyways, good for San Marcos. Clearly they are at least doing some things right.

[Coronita]

[quote=outtamojo][quote=ocrenter]I agree with flu. something’s off.

I’ve always been an advocate that San Marcos High is up and coming and I am happy to see the improvement.

But I really wonder about the number.

How in the world do they get 100% of the kids to take the AP test. someone has been tweeking their policies to maximize their ranking.[/quote]

100% participation? Hard to imagine ANY high school without a few stoners lol. That school ranked #8 in La Jolla has a 100% participation rate also, but with a 32% pass rate. I think if they SMHS were to do some culling the pass rate would be higher, but then again, shouldn’t your public schools make every possible attempt to at least expose the less gifted/disadvantaged kids to the higher echelons of academia? Keep in mind SMHS is 41% economically disadvantaged.
For comparison, that school in Fremont ranked #13 has about 4% econ disadvantaged, 85% participation, 88% pass rate(AP).[/quote]

If you’re talking about Mission San Jose in Fremont… You don’t realize that’s a heavily tailored, high achieving school, and an an outlier of general Fremont… I talked so many times about that school on piggington, because asian parents fight to get into that school district, just like Cupertino…In fact, so much there were lawsuits filed by parents when the district tried to rechange the district lines.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_San_Jose_High_School

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fremont_Unified_School_District#High_schools

n 2000, the Fremont Unified School District announced plans to redraw the school boundary lines, prompting concerned parents to file a number of lawsuits against the school, as well as threaten to break off and form its own school district. The plan would route students from high-scoring elementary schools (such as Weibel Elementary School) to a lower-scoring high school (Irvington High School). At the center of the controversy were claims by the parents that the plan was racially driven, as the student body of both Weibel and other schools in the attendant area were over 80% Asian.[5]

The school district claimed that although they were trying to balance the schools in the city more, the underlying reason was because Mission San Jose High School was becoming extremely overcrowded, and students would have to be moved to a different high school.

In the fall of 2000, a lawsuit was filed against the school district, as well as the five school district board members and superintendent Sharon Jones. Filed in the U.S. District Court in San Jose, the parents claimed that their children’s education was at stake because they would be enrolled at a less competitive, lower scoring school. They felt that the boundary line changes were made based on the racial stereotype that Asian students have higher academic performance, and that the school district is trying to improve low test scores at Irvington High School by routing these Asian students over. At the time, Weibel held the third highest API score for all California elementary schools. Lawyer Erika Yew stated that, “We believe the district attempts to artificially and quickly inflate the performance of the district by moving the Weibel students to Irvington High School.” She insisted that the district was trying to maintain a racial and socio-economical balance within the district, which is a violation of the equal protection clause in the 14th Amendment.[6]

[outtamojo]

[quote=flu][quote=outtamojo][quote=ocrenter]I agree with flu. something’s off.

I’ve always been an advocate that San Marcos High is up and coming and I am happy to see the improvement.

But I really wonder about the number.

How in the world do they get 100% of the kids to take the AP test. someone has been tweeking their policies to maximize their ranking.[/quote]

100% participation? Hard to imagine ANY high school without a few stoners lol. That school ranked #8 in La Jolla has a 100% participation rate also, but with a 32% pass rate. I think if they SMHS were to do some culling the pass rate would be higher, but then again, shouldn’t your public schools make every possible attempt to at least expose the less gifted/disadvantaged kids to the higher echelons of academia?[/quote]

No it shouldn’t because AP is not a prerequisite for getting into college. It’s more like a “GATE” program than a required curriculum….At least that was when I went through the public education system.

In our AP classes..People that took AP classes passed with 3 or better near 90%… And it was simple why. The teacher of AP clases basically flunked everyone first (ok gave everyone a C based on the teaching program), and if you did a 4 or better would go back and retroactively update your grade based on how you did on your exam…That way, the first two weeks of class, people who couldn’t make the cut opted not to do the AP class.

But folks that didn’t take AP didn’t mean they didn’t get into college…

AP classes are just that….. “Advanced Placement”…

A school that reports 100% participation in an “Advanced Placement” is just ridiculous… Because not everyone is “advanced”…

and it’s funny that U.S. News and World Report forgot about this key concept..[/quote]

I guess you and Flu both agree that AP classes should not be taught to everyone but I think it is better to find out how gifted you are while school is free than flame out in college. I know of more than a few high school classmates who never took AP classes, got into places like Berkely and Yale on what must have been, ahem, ethnic quota fulfillment, and then flunked out after 1 year. Which is more of a waste?

[Coronita]

[quote=poorgradstudent]School rankings are always goofy. It’s like college or pro sports rankings, except schools don’t actually play games against each other and rankings can shift a lot depending what you put a premium on. Five teams could take the same data and come up with five quite different sets of rankings.

As for flu’s comment on “wasting resources”, I don’t think it costs the district that much more to have 200 vs. 50 students all take the same AP test. The material covered in AP vs. non-AP Calculus isn’t that different, although in AP you might try to cram a couple topics into the last week or so if the class is behind schedule while non-AP might focus more on mastering what is possible and leaving it at that. I could be wrong about costs associated with pushing middle of the road students to take AP tests.

I’m a pretty firm believer that for the vast majority of students, the difference between a good vs. “great” school is pretty small. There’s a huge downside to going to a bad school. Of course, as I’ve stressed before, I have a friend who teaches at Lincoln, and I would imagine if you took her students and traded them with San Marcos students, their scores wouldn’t shift drastically. That doesn’t mean I want my kids going to Lincoln; there are obvious social issues and potential distractions of attending a school with a large number of under motivated pupils.

Anyways, good for San Marcos. Clearly they are at least doing some things right.[/quote]

Again, I’m not trying to ditch SMHS as not being a good schoo. It definitely is a good school. I’m just curious about these reports and rankings and how they come to be. Just funny imho…

Anyway, I really don’t care because like I said before.
You can belong the the best schools and best school districts, but if your kid is a moron, it really doesn’t matter…And vice versus…

Have fun folks. I really don’t care…

[Coronita]

[quote=outtamojo]
I guess you and Flu both agree that AP classes should not be taught to everyone but I think it is better to find out how gifted you are while school is free than flame out in college. I know of more than a few high school classmates who never took AP classes, got into places like Berkely and Yale on what must have been, ahem, ethnic quota fulfillment, and then flunked out after 1 year. Which is more of a waste?[/quote]

Being gifted in you doesn’t mean shit. Being driven an passionate that matters makes a huge different. People that I knew that were gifted and breezed through HS and got into Harvard/MIT subsequently flunked out because they were lazy. People that weren’t the rock stars but worked for it did well and ended up working for Goldman (ok maybe, that’s not such a good thing 🙂

But let’s talk about ethnic quotas, since you mentioned it.. It’s my favorite topic… Which ethicity were you referring to here when you said

[quote] “I know of more than a few high school classmates who never took AP classes, got into places like Berkely and Yale on what must have been, ahem, ethnic quota fulfillment, and then flunked out after 1 year. Which is more of a waste”?
[/quote]

I hope you’re not going to say “asian” quota/affirmative action …… I worked some time in the admissions office at an ivy league school at some point or another as as student member. I can tell you, asians were lucky if there wasn’t any reverse-quotas (IE limit in number of asians that could attend). But that was during my time…Maybe things are different these days…

I kid you not when I said, my kid’s going to have a different last name when it’s her turn to apply to college.

[outtamojo]

[quote=flu][quote=poorgradstudent]School rankings are always goofy. It’s like college or pro sports rankings, except schools don’t actually play games against each other and rankings can shift a lot depending what you put a premium on. Five teams could take the same data and come up with five quite different sets of rankings.

As for flu’s comment on “wasting resources”, I don’t think it costs the district that much more to have 200 vs. 50 students all take the same AP test. The material covered in AP vs. non-AP Calculus isn’t that different, although in AP you might try to cram a couple topics into the last week or so if the class is behind schedule while non-AP might focus more on mastering what is possible and leaving it at that. I could be wrong about costs associated with pushing middle of the road students to take AP tests.

I’m a pretty firm believer that for the vast majority of students, the difference between a good vs. “great” school is pretty small. There’s a huge downside to going to a bad school. Of course, as I’ve stressed before, I have a friend who teaches at Lincoln, and I would imagine if you took her students and traded them with San Marcos students, their scores wouldn’t shift drastically. That doesn’t mean I want my kids going to Lincoln; there are obvious social issues and potential distractions of attending a school with a large number of under motivated pupils.

Anyways, good for San Marcos. Clearly they are at least doing some things right.[/quote]

Again, I’m not trying to ditch SMHS as not being a good schoo. It definitely is a good school. I’m just curious about these reports and rankings and how they come to be. Just funny imho…

Anyway, I really don’t care because like I said before.
You can belong the the best schools and best school districts, but if your kid is a moron, it really doesn’t matter…And vice versus…

Have fun folks. I really don’t care…[/quote]

Hey, schools, prostitutes, stocks, RE- all better topics than politics : )

[Coronita]

[quote=outtamojo]
Hey, schools, prostitutes, stocks, RE- all better topics than politics : )[/quote]

From now on, if I don’t have an answer, I think, I’m just going to ask…..

What would Ron Paul do? 🙂

[outtamojo]

Two of ’em were African-American, 1 Hispanic. Their SATs were barely over 1K.

[Coronita]

Well in on honesty, imho “race” base performance these days is more of a myth than truth imho…
Imho, it has a lot more to do with social-economic environment/background than actual “race/ethnicity” in this modern world.

You take a bunch of upper-middle class educated people and stick them in one school district, doesn’t really matter what ethnicity they are. Chances are they all want the same thing (probably) and probably perform more or less the same…Maybe that’s what’s going on…Bahh, i don’t care… (for the last time)…

[bearishgurl]

[quote=flu][quote=outtamojo][quote=ocrenter]I agree with flu. something’s off.

I’ve always been an advocate that San Marcos High is up and coming and I am happy to see the improvement.

But I really wonder about the number.

How in the world do they get 100% of the kids to take the AP test. someone has been tweeking their policies to maximize their ranking.[/quote]

100% participation? Hard to imagine ANY high school without a few stoners lol. That school ranked #8 in La Jolla has a 100% participation rate also, but with a 32% pass rate. I think if they SMHS were to do some culling the pass rate would be higher, but then again, shouldn’t your public schools make every possible attempt to at least expose the less gifted/disadvantaged kids to the higher echelons of academia?[/quote]

No it shouldn’t because AP is not a prerequisite for getting into college. It’s more like a “GATE” program than a required curriculum….At least that was when I went through the public education system.

In our AP classes..People that took AP classes passed with 3 or better near 90%… And it was simple why. The teacher of AP clases basically flunked everyone first (ok gave everyone a C based on the teaching program), and if you did a 4 or better would go back and retroactively update your grade based on how you did on your exam…That way, the first two weeks of class, people who couldn’t make the cut opted not to do the AP class.

But folks that didn’t take AP didn’t mean they didn’t get into college…

AP classes are just that….. “Advanced Placement”…

A school that reports 100% participation in an “Advanced Placement” is just ridiculous… Because not everyone is “advanced”…

and it’s funny that U.S. News and World Report forgot about this key concept..[/quote]

AP classes can be both a blessing and a curse. If a student tries an AP class they think they can do and then realizes they’re going to get a “D” in it after the first ten days, it is in the student’s best interest to drop the AP class and take the subject in a regular “college prep” A-G class.

An AP class only gives the student one extra point for each grade level (A=5 pts, B=4 pts and so on) as opposed to A=4 pts in a “mainstream” A-G HS class. If the kid is going to get a C or D in the AP class but can easily get an A or B in a mainstream class, then they will likely have a higher GPA (for college entrance purposes) by staying the course with the HS’s regular college-prep curriculum. In other words, why should a student agonize over all that extra work if it won’t actually improve their GPA? Don’t these students have enough to do for college entrance what with having to show participation for at least one season in a sport and 1-2 committees/clubs as well as perform 200 hrs community service, create a “senior portfolio” and take and pass the CAHSEE (HS exit exam)?

There’s hardly enough time in a day to accomplish all these things (except the sr portfolio) in the two years that COUNT for college admittance purposes (grades 10-11). May is a particularly brutal month in this regard :={

[ocrenter]

[quote=flu][quote=outtamojo]
Hey, schools, prostitutes, stocks, RE- all better topics than politics : )[/quote]

From now on, if I don’t have an answer, I think, I’m just going to ask…..

What would Ron Paul do? :)[/quote]

RP would make sure the school form AP caucuses, students will be voted into the various caucuses to take the AP test. as the AP caucuses are representative of the whole student body, essentially 100% of the school have participated in the AP process.

But here’s also the twist. Students voted in to take AP English will be switched to take AP Spanish and so on, just so it would be more democratic.

[Coronita]

[quote=ocrenter][quote=flu][quote=outtamojo]
Hey, schools, prostitutes, stocks, RE- all better topics than politics : )[/quote]

From now on, if I don’t have an answer, I think, I’m just going to ask…..

What would Ron Paul do? :)[/quote]

RP would make sure the school form AP caucuses, students will be voted into the various caucuses to take the AP test. as the AP caucuses are representative of the whole student body, essentially 100% of the school have participated in the AP process.

But here’s also the twist. Students voted in to take AP English will be switched to take AP Spanish and so on, just so it would be more democratic.[/quote]

ROLFLAO…

Ok, now that I have completely butchered this thread. I’m really leaving… Sorry folks for the temporary hijack… I’ve just realized, I don’t have a life. So FLU signing off for today….

[an]

[quote=poorgradstudent]The material covered in AP vs. non-AP Calculus isn’t that different, although in AP you might try to cram a couple topics into the last week or so if the class is behind schedule while non-AP might focus more on mastering what is possible and leaving it at that. [/quote]
It might be different now, but when I went to HS, 9th grade honor English covers the EXACT same material as regular 12th grade English. I was lazy in 12th grade and didn’t want to take AP English so i coasted with regular English. Turns out, I have the exact same teacher and reading the exactly the same book I did in 9th grade. So, needless to say, it was a super easy A, but back then, there was a HUGE differences between honor vs regular.

[an]

dup.

[Anonymous]

[quote=flu]I kid you not when I said, my kid’s going to have a different last name when it’s her turn to apply to college.[/quote]

My wife’s maiden-name has an ñ in it.

As much as I don’t agree with affirmative action and quotas, I admit I will be tempted to work her name into my kids’ college applications.

Affirmative action not practiced in the UC System?

My wife has worked with professors there, and she knows some that that admit outright that they look for these “clues.”

(And, no, my wife does not actually work for the UC System or any state agency. Sorry haters.)

[Author]

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