Opportunity Hoarding

[MandaJo]

@Dangerosa

We definitely agree. Additionally, I think that some of the dropout rate I talked about is related to not having those kids push themselves. They get bored. They aren’t engaged. They start to act out because they are bored. And if they are a white middle or upper class kid - they get assessed and maybe put on ADHD medication - and if they aren’t, they are far less likely to be diagnosed as anything other than trouble.

Absolutely. They are also more likely to be blown off or even assumed to be lying when they come to an administrator with trouble–an upper middle class white professional parent calls and says their kid has mono, or their grandmother died, or the house got robbed, and a whole machine starts rolling to make sure that kid isn’t derailed. A poor kid’s parents probably don’t know to call, and when the kid shows back up to school with their mumbled reason, it’s taken much less seriously.

And gating based off of ability to purchase a book is abhorrent. So is gating a class by making it so homework intensive that you can’t hold a job - which a lot of lower income kids need to do.

I have about a billion rants about English teachers requiring kids to buy books. And I do understand that there are schools where you just have to, because your admin won’t pay for books (because they don’t see why the kids can’t buy them). But even when I’ve had to do that, I’ve gone out of my way to teach out-of-copyright, widely available books and had extra copies to give away. I can see the temptation to teach modern lit–so much of it is wonderful–but requiring a trade paperback anywhere outside of an exclusive prep school is just the epitome of privilege. And it’s the sort of thing you don’t realize is gatekeeping: kids don’t come talk to you and tell you they can’t afford the book, they just fail and fail, and then drop the class. And spread the word so their friends don’t try next year.

And the gratuitous homework thing is awful. It’s a great way for teachers to CYA: assign insane amounts of work, and then it’s not your fault when people don’t do well on your tests, because they didn’t do the homework. And assigning that much homework gets interpreted as a sign of how tough the course is and how impossible it is to pass, so your low pass rate looks positively heroic.

I do think its better to catch these kids earlier than when they’d be taking AP coursework - making sure they aren’t gated way back when they are sorted into first grade reading groups.

This is ideal, but too many people use it as an excuse not to help the kids who have already been denied opportunity. You have no idea how many meetings I’ve sat in listening to teachers basically say it’s hopeless unless middle school picks up their game.

(In some ways I miss a “gentleman’s C” - you want to take an AP course, take it. You won’t fail it unless you refuse to do the work. But show up, do the work - get a C - or even a D. You won’t have failed. The course will apply to graduation. You’ll have the credit at least as a reward for having taken the risk and TRIED. Maybe you won’t pass the AP test, but the class itself will show up on your records)

This is how my class works–both now and when I was in an urban comprehensive. Except it was more like “pretty much do the work, more or less, most of the time”. And you know what? The easier I made my grades, the more I worked to keep kids in the class, the more my scores went up–tons more 3s, but more 5s, too. And I can show this to people, lay out the numbers, show that all kids are learning more in a more flexible and forgiving environment, and they shake their head. Worse, they get smug because they don’t “give anything away”.

@Dangerosa

In my experience, it can - but its very hard to find qualified volunteer tutors.

As I said, we live basically next to the 3M campus. 3M supports Engineers who would like to give volunteer hours to the school to tutor math. We can’t get them. 3M will give them the time, but there isn’t enough interest among the engineers. The ones that do show, get frustrated.

We’ve also had Americorp tutors - but they really vary in quality. Most of them are only math literate through Algebra themselves and some of them can’t write a college quality paper.

Then there is the problem with hours. A privileged kid whose Mom has a college degree but doesn’t work - Mom is at their beck and call - my daughter is still at rehearsal - when she gets home, I’m here if she needs homework help. If she needed the school’s tutors, she’d miss rehearsal for drama. And while academics are important - also important to future college success is being a well rounded person.

This, and more than this. Kids don’t just need academic support. They need someone behind them that believes that the course is worthwhile, not a parent who thinks a kid is making excuses about “homework” to get out of chores. They need someone who never doubts for a second that they are capable of doing the work, not someone who is going to take the first “C” as proof they are in over their heads and recommend they bail. They need someone who will tell them to cut their hours at work because the kid themselves doesn’t realize what a toll those hours are taking on their ability to perform. They need someone who will call the school and talk to the teacher when they get in over their head, to see if they can’t get a days grace period for a major assignment.

[Okrahoma]

@monstro

[QUOTE=HurricaneDitka]
Would it be doing a favor or a disservice to a C+ average student by admitting them to Harvard and telling them “it’s sink or swim”?

Do you think C+ students who graduate from Harvard wind up on Skid Row or something? I’m curious what you think happens to a typical C+ student who manages to gain entry into an elite institution.
[/QUOTE]

Those who graduate - should do well. But (and that’s assuming that Harvard has the reputation it has because of the superior/harder level of education and not just the name) the average C+ students’ graduation rates at Harvard would probably be abysmal.

[Dangerosa]

@MandaJo

This is ideal, but too many people use it as an excuse not to help the kids who have already been denied opportunity. You have no idea how many meetings I’ve sat in listening to teachers basically say it’s hopeless unless middle school picks up their game.

Yep, this is what happened with my son. And we nearly lost him. Trade school will be a good choice for him though and not every kid needs to go to college. But there were times I didn’t know if a kid - who in 2nd and 3rd grade was a 90th percentile plus kid - was going to graduate from high school. And its always really annoying to me - he has a very “I’m adopted” name - but when we show up in front of teachers - their attitude does a one eighty. This isn’t a minority kid with poor parents - this is a kid with white parents who are both college educated. (Teacher meetings are one place I make sure to carry an expensive purse and wear expensive jewelry and am always well groomed - because bias exist. I completely get why someone who is poor wants one power outfit - it makes a difference).

By the time it got straightened out, my smart son had figured out easy classes were easy and that was where his friends were. Why in the hell would he want challenging coursework!

This is how my class works–both now and when I was in an urban comprehensive. Except it was more like “pretty much do the work, more or less, most of the time”. And you know what? The easier I made my grades, the more I worked to keep kids in the class, the more my scores went up–tons more 3s, but more 5s, too. And I can show this to people, lay out the numbers, show that all kids are learning more in a more flexible and forgiving environment, and they shake their head. Worse, they get smug because they don’t “give anything away”.

From what my kid’s teachers have told me, they are no longer allowed the discretion. I’m not sure if its a school principal thing, a district thing, or a state thing - but they HAVE to fail a kid who doesn’t get 60%, 85% of the grade MUST be summative work (i.e. tests or papers). That doesn’t leave a lot of room in a course where the material is dense and challenging for the Gentleman’s C. And since most of these kids will need every credit to stay on track and graduate - there isn’t a lot of room for failing and having to retake a required course. Game theory is that you are much better off taking easy courses you can pass, and for sure graduating in four years, than risking failing a requirement and not graduating.

But the current situation is way better than the previous one, where our principal had decided 10% of their grade would be on their ability to take CORNELL notes. Only Cornell format - if your kid mindmapped better, no go. My daughter has ADHD - and apparently its pretty severe. She retains information like a sponge, she can synthesize it without a problem, she can handle abstractions, but she can’t both write and listen. We have the Bs from that coursework to prove it. 100% on tests - 0% on Cornell notes.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@MandaJo

There’s more detail in the link, but here’s the most directquote:

Not in my experience. There aren’t hordes of terribly unprepared kids fighting to get in.

Dangerosa, options are always good, and I’m glad your district has so many. What I am arguing about is stopping kids from trying to push themselves. Gate-keeping advanced courses–explicitly or practically–leads to terrible injustice.

So is it gatekeeping that is keeping these black kids with good math PSAT scores from taking AP math? Because if the gatekeeping is keeping out kids that are good at math, ten it sounds like there is a problem with the gatekeeping regardles of whether or not gatekeeping is a good idea.

[MandaJo]

@Damuri_Ajashi

So is it gatekeeping that is keeping these black kids with good math PSAT scores from taking AP math? Because if the gatekeeping is keeping out kids that are good at math, ten it sounds like there is a problem with the gatekeeping regardles of whether or not gatekeeping is a good idea.

My argument is that gatekeeping inherently ends up disadvantaging underprivileged kids.

[Urbanredneck]

Well here is another take, maybe some families just need to start with a different set of expectations which might seem lower but they are at least obtainable. The hope then is that those kids produce kids someday who will go on even higher.

I know this sounds bad but one shouldnt expect to come right out of poverty and move into the upper classes. Often there is generational growth where maybe the grandparents graduated high school. Then the next generation goes to college. Then the next shoots even higher for say an Ivy league college and the money that can come from that?

That’s how my family worked. Grandpa was an immigrant who was educated till about the 8th grade. Then my parents only had a bit of college but did reasonably well. Then my generation, we all went to college and have done better. Our kids now have even high aspirations.

So maybe we can get a kid out of poverty and at least into a working class job thru trade schools. Then their kids can hopefully move onto something even higher.

[MandaJo]

@Urbanredneck

Well here is another take, maybe some families just need to start with a different set of expectations which might seem lower but they are at least obtainable. The hope then is that those kids produce kids someday who will go on even higher.

[/QUOTE]

One, the sort of barriers we are talking about don’t just keep kids out of Harvard: they keep kids out of community colleges and regional universities, too. It’s not just the most advanced parts of education that suffer from gate-keeping. Generational poverty exists after all. Saying “my family did it. Why can’t they?” ignores that your family may have had opportunities that other families don’t.

Two, this country has always had immigrant and first generation children who went on to do amazing things. Many of the most impressive advances of the last 200 years came from such individuals. We should be fertilizing the soil to lead to more of those advancements, not finding ways to block it.

[Dangerosa]

We also aren’t just talking about gating the poor kids. We are talking about gating the middle class kids who don’t look like the kids who “should” take AP course work - usually Hispanic and African American kids. I know in my diverse district, the parents of color with college degrees have to stay on top of it to make sure their kids are on a college path - that they get three or four years of a Foreign Language and Math and Science - instead of being encouraged to take study hall and electives.

If there is an AP class where the kids might get college credit, a college prep class and a “graduate from high school class” - kids being discouraged from the college prep class is still gating - those kids are being told they aren’t expected to go to college - even community college. They’ll need remedial work for trade school or community college- and that costs tuition dollars and time.

And thats where you get into the economic advantages of having access to the advanced placement work. Most high end schools don’t take AP credits at all - you start on the same footing - so for those kids, it is a way to get in - to have shown challenging coursework - but not sufficient. The kids who really benefit from the AP programs (and the other advanced placement work, like PSEO) are the ones whose parents will struggle to pay for college and send them to a state school. Having even a semester of college credits completed saves time and money - it leaves a middle class kid with fewer loans and a head start. If you gate that, so that its middle class kids who can take advantage of it - but kids who might have divorced parents, or be brown, or have to work after school to buy their own shoes and clothes, or need their own transportation are discouraged or unable to even attempt the coursework, that isn’t fair. With college really really expensive, middle class families need the break - but lower middle class and poor families ALSO need the break - it isn’t like a Pell Grant will get you through four years at a State College.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@MandaJo

My argument is that gatekeeping inherently ends up disadvantaging underprivileged kids.

AP Classes Are a Scam

What do you think about this article?

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@MandaJo

One, the sort of barriers we are talking about don’t just keep kids out of Harvard: they keep kids out of community colleges and regional universities, too. It’s not just the most advanced parts of education that suffer from gate-keeping. Generational poverty exists after all. Saying “my family did it. Why can’t they?” ignores that your family may have had opportunities that other families don’t.

Two, this country has always had immigrant and first generation children who went on to do amazing things. Many of the most impressive advances of the last 200 years came from such individuals. We should be fertilizing the soil to lead to more of those advancements, not finding ways to block it.
[/QUOTE]

To the extent that a family experiences multiple generations of abject poverty, I suspect that a toxic culture, teen pregnancy, drug use or health problems are a much bigger factor than AP test gatekeeping.

And there is really no excuse for so much generational poverty the way we have in some communities. Sure there might be glass ceilings but the poor are not powerless to pull themselves out of generational poverty in this country. There is a issue of culture in some impoverished communities.

[MandaJo]

@Damuri_Ajashi

AP Classes Are a Scam - The Atlantic

What do you think about this article?

I think a lot of things, but it’s going to be tomorrow before I have time to respond point-by-point.

@Damuri_Ajashi

To the extent that a family experiences multiple generations of abject poverty, I suspect that a toxic culture, teen pregnancy, drug use or health problems are a much bigger factor than AP test gatekeeping.

And there is really no excuse for so much generational poverty the way we have in some communities. Sure there might be glass ceilings but the poor are not powerless to pull themselves out of generational poverty in this country. There is a issue of culture in some impoverished communities.

One, “culture” is a pretty nebulous way to blame people for their own situation.

But even within that paradigm , there are kid who are ready, willing, and eager to rise above that “culture” and are prevented because people decide–when he’s six or ten or fourteen–that he’s not the type to make it out, he doesn’t fit their image of a kid that can handle rigorous academics. His “culture” doesn’t allow that. Do you really doubt that this happens?

[bump]

@monstro

And surely a C+ student with a transcript full of advanced courses is not in the same position as a C+ student with remedial classes. A C+ student who tests in the 99th percentile is different from a C+ student who tests in the 50th.

Do they not still give an extra grade point for taking AP/accelerated courses? Way back a quarter century ago when I was in high school, if a student took what was called an “AC” (for accelerated) course, or one of the specific AP courses, we got an extra grade point tacked on, unless we failed. So if we made a D, it counted like a C in a regular class, a B counted like an A, and an A was like a super-A, worth 5 grade points.

That always seemed like a good way to distinguish the relative difficulty of the classes to me, because it didn’t incentivize taking a creampuff schedule to get a higher GPA, unlike my university’s Honors program which basically just had harder courses for the same grade points, required a higher GPA to enroll in, and if you took enough, you got to put 'Honors" on your diploma. Which it turns out, no employers give two shits about versus your GPA. So the smart move was to take the regular difficulty courses and make As rather than take the tough ones and make Bs or Cs. Adding that extra grade point removes that incentive/penalty.

Now if you’re STILL a C+ student (i.e. GPA in the 1.5 to 2.4 range) in a slate of advanced classes, that might indicate that you probably ought not be there, as you’re probably getting Ds in a lot of them. However, if you’re making C+ grades in the advanced courses and you have that extra grade point, you’re ok, in that you’re getting the equivalent of a B in a normal course.

[MandaJo]

But it does punish kids for taking courses like Band or newspaper, because those max out at a 4.0. A kid who takes a no credit class–like study hall–ends up with a higher GPA than a kid that is also in band.

Selective colleges generally disregard weights, because there are so many different systems. But what I think Dangerosa is talking about is just setting the absolute pass rate at a pretty low % mastery of the subject matter. This isn’t about kids wanting an A–it’s about kids fearing to take a class because if they don’t pass, they don’t graduate. I tend to feel that if a kid has learned as much as they would have learned in a regular class–which may be very far south of what the advanced class covers–they should pass. But I have worked with lots of people who would fail a kid like that.

Mind you, I’ve worked with people that would fail a kid in the grading cycle where that kid watched her 13 year old brother hang himself to death and call it fair, because the kid failed all the tests for the unit.

[MandaJo]

Another thing that happens is that kids drop the course when they fail the first six weeks, even though a weak performance is to be expected if the course is an academic risk. Those kids often–but not always–improve and catch up. But if graduation is on the line, they can’t risk it.

[Dangerosa]

@MandaJo

But it does punish kids for taking courses like Band or newspaper, because those max out at a 4.0. A kid who takes a no credit class–like study hall–ends up with a higher GPA than a kid that is also in band.

Selective colleges generally disregard weights, because there are so many different systems. But what I think Dangerosa is talking about is just setting the absolute pass rate at a pretty low % mastery of the subject matter. This isn’t about kids wanting an A–it’s about kids fearing to take a class because if they don’t pass, they don’t graduate. I tend to feel that if a kid has learned as much as they would have learned in a regular class–which may be very far south of what the advanced class covers–they should pass. But I have worked with lots of people who would fail a kid like that.

Mind you, I’ve worked with people that would fail a kid in the grading cycle where that kid watched her 13 year old brother hang himself to death and call it fair, because the kid failed all the tests for the unit.

Selective colleges tend to look at an entire transcript though - as well as essays, letters of recommendation, your extracurricular activities (including volunteer work), any awards you have.

A kid who has a 4.0, whose Senior year coursework is “Fundamentals of English,” “Algebra II” “Senior Social Studies” “Studio Arts” “Foods” and “Study Hall” is not going to be looked on with the same eye as a kid whose unweighted 3.5 is AP English, BC Calc, AP Microeconomics/PoliSci, French IV, Physics, and Band.

My daughter’s selective target school said “don’t worry about an unweighted 3.5 if you have two or more AP courses per year on your transcript.” Now, the school is merely selective, not highly selective.

And here is where I think the clincher is on an AP course - your AP test score and your course grade are only related as much as the grading system of the individual teacher. When applying for AP credit - its the score that matters, not the grade. Let kids take the risk - maybe they’ll only get a 1 or 2 on the AP test and it won’t count for college credit - but they’ll have been exposed to the material without the risk of failing. And maybe they’ll get a 3 or better, which is good enough at most state schools for college credit.

[Dangerosa]

@MandaJo

Another thing that happens is that kids drop the course when they fail the first six weeks, even though a weak performance is to be expected if the course is an academic risk. Those kids often–but not always–improve and catch up. But if graduation is on the line, they can’t risk it.

Our kids have TEN DAYS. You can drop or switch a course in the first TEN DAYS - if you are failing the course after ten days, and can’t improve and catch up, too bad, so sad.

Talk about discouraging taking a risk. If you get up the nerve to register, you only have ten days to determine if you’ll make it through.

[Dangerosa]

Oh, and as long as I’m on a rant.

Its the honors kids who are still taking band and choir in high school. One of my daughter’s best friends would within spitting distance of being valedictorian of her class. Except she took band - from a band director that gave a band full of honors students a total of THREE As every trimester.

And then he wonders why they all drop band? They drop band because its dragging down their GPAs - its an unweighted course where its nearly impossible to get better than a B. And these kids are competing to be in the top 10% of the class - because that’s where the scholarship/grant money is if you are a white middle class kid - and as a white middle class kid, your parents are looking to you to get scholarship money, because college is expensive.

[MandaJo]

@Dangerosa

And here is where I think the clincher is on an AP course - your AP test score and your course grade are only related as much as the grading system of the individual teacher. When applying for AP credit - its the score that matters, not the grade. Let kids take the risk - maybe they’ll only get a 1 or 2 on the AP test and it won’t count for college credit - but they’ll have been exposed to the material without the risk of failing. And maybe they’ll get a 3 or better, which is good enough at most state schools for college credit.

It also gives objective value to what a kid has achieved. This is part of the reason our school is so AP focused: if a kid has taken 12 AP exams and passed 9 before his senior year and a 1400 on his SAT, it prevents any question that his grades are mostly a by-product of being in an urban district. Colleges assume that poor kids from poor schools lack skills: numbers, they believe.

[MandaJo]

@Dangerosa

Our kids have TEN DAYS. You can drop or switch a course in the first TEN DAYS - if you are failing the course after ten days, and can’t improve and catch up, too bad, so sad.

Talk about discouraging taking a risk. If you get up the nerve to register, you only have ten days to determine if you’ll make it through.

How rigid are they? I’ve seen that, but it’s generally flexible if you have a parent willing to call. And we know which kids have parents willing, able, and savvy enough to call . . .

[bump]

@Dangerosa

Oh, and as long as I’m on a rant.

Its the honors kids who are still taking band and choir in high school. One of my daughter’s best friends would within spitting distance of being valedictorian of her class. Except she took band - from a band director that gave a band full of honors students a total of THREE As every trimester.

And then he wonders why they all drop band? They drop band because its dragging down their GPAs - its an unweighted course where its nearly impossible to get better than a B. And these kids are competing to be in the top 10% of the class - because that’s where the scholarship/grant money is if you are a white middle class kid - and as a white middle class kid, your parents are looking to you to get scholarship money, because college is expensive.

Reading between the lines, it sounds like grade inflation might be an issue here; how many kids realistically have GPAs 4.0 or above? In my graduating class, I think there were maybe 2 guys out of 110 who had 4.0 or higher, and maybe another 3-4 in the 3.8-4.0 range. Hell, a 3.2 put you in the top 25% of our graduating class. I get the distinct impression that isn’t the case at the larger schools.