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Old 02-25-2015, 02:44 PM
 
Location: Southlake. Don't judge me.
2,885 posts, read 4,623,749 times
Reputation: 3775

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Quote:
Originally Posted by rantanamo View Post
There are plenty of kids in the area taking more than 3 AP classes. 20 years ago every class I had was IB and AP if it wasn't offered in IB. And that was at Garland High, not even considered attendable on this board.
Hey, I think many of us give Garland HS its props. The ISD as a whole may get some criticism, true.
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Old 02-25-2015, 04:12 PM
 
55 posts, read 72,324 times
Reputation: 66
To the OP, you know the *best* way to do well on tests is to really study for it. Then it does not matter how others do, or how much accommodation they get. That's really the best tip any child should get.
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Old 02-25-2015, 08:55 PM
 
511 posts, read 834,087 times
Reputation: 483
Quote:
Originally Posted by 4Movingeast View Post
This thread got (unintentionally) pretty funny
Not unintentionally.
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Old 02-25-2015, 08:56 PM
 
Location: Colleyville
1,206 posts, read 1,520,674 times
Reputation: 1182
Quote:
Originally Posted by MobiusStrip View Post
Not unintentionally.
Oh I meant on OP's part!
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Old 02-27-2015, 11:35 PM
 
269 posts, read 858,697 times
Reputation: 282
I think that the OP's point is this -- there are a large number of students at her child's school whose past academic performance, without any accommodations or extended time, has allowed them to perform well enough to be allowed to take the maximum number of AP classes that this school allows. They are obviously exceptionally talented students and nobody ever suspected a learning difference, but now suddenly in eleventh grade, these students have extended time and her child doesn't think it is fair.

Not sure whether the OP knows what is actually going on here, but it is likely this: The students have probably been advised to take the ACT rather than the SAT because it is easier to prep the heck out of the test and master the material that is likely to show up. But the problem with the ACT is time pressure. To get extended time on the ACT you must be receiving similar accommodations at school. A student's diagnostic testing showing a need for accommodations must be no more than a year old at the time the student registers for the ACT. (The condition that warrants accommodation can be older, but you have to re-document in the one year time frame.)

Many families learn all this upon meeting with a test prep consultant some time after the practice PSAT in the tenth grade. The typical private school college testing regime includes a first shot at the ACT/SAT in the spring of junior year with additional attempts, if needed, in the summer/fall of senior year. Thus students following this strategy will obtain the necessary diagnostic testing to allow accommodation sometime in the spring semester of tenth grade. Then, voila, the student has accommodations at school for the first time in eleventh grade even though none were ever needed before. More importantly, though, the student is now entitled to extended time on the ACT. It is an expensive, but often effective, way to game the system both at school but also on college testing.
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Old 03-02-2015, 06:48 AM
 
5,683 posts, read 4,095,751 times
Reputation: 7401
Tamara and Veuevegirl, you're misreading the OP. She didn't say that these kids are suddenly taking APs. She said that they are suddenly getting extra time.

With that said, if I ever find myself pondering these sorts of things, I'm making major life changes.

Also, I think the effect of private schools having a "better" base of students, thus creating the illusion of more success, generalizes to the college level as well. Harvard grads probably, on average, have more success than UT grads. However, they also attract higher quality applicants. I'm not sure that the same applicant would do better if he went to Harvard rather than UT.
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Old 03-02-2015, 07:04 AM
 
58 posts, read 99,455 times
Reputation: 54
Here's a tip you can pass along to your daughter...

"You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks"
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Old 03-02-2015, 09:00 AM
 
Location: North Dallas via Philly .. and DC
290 posts, read 385,532 times
Reputation: 172
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wittgenstein's Ghost View Post
Tamara and Veuevegirl, you're misreading the OP. She didn't say that these kids are suddenly taking APs. She said that they are suddenly getting extra time.

With that said, if I ever find myself pondering these sorts of things, I'm making major life changes.

Also, I think the effect of private schools having a "better" base of students, thus creating the illusion of more success, generalizes to the college level as well. Harvard grads probably, on average, have more success than UT grads. However, they also attract higher quality applicants. I'm not sure that the same applicant would do better if he went to Harvard rather than UT.
My child was outraged that people all of a sudden in 11th grade were taking 3 AP courses and getting extra time in all of them FOR THE FIRST TIME in 10 years.

That statement led me to believe she was saying just what she said .. in 11th grade they were suddenly taking 3 AP courses AND getting extra time. Misunderstood, maybe, but I think she and her daughter need to be more concerned about themselves instead of what other students are doing/getting. Is the OP's daughter suffering bc the other students are getting extra time? Does she need extra time? -- Just my opinion.
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Old 03-02-2015, 10:07 AM
 
Location: Dallas, TX
2,346 posts, read 6,897,188 times
Reputation: 2324
To put the AP stuff into perspective, here's a direct quote from Greenhill's school profile:

Quote:
"Students are limited to a maximum of three AP courses each year, typically taken
in eleventh and twelfth grades. It is rare for a student to take an AP course in
ninth or tenth grade. "
So, in a school like this, 3 APs would be a big deal, and you would be "suddenly" taking them in 11th grade.

--

The OP seems to be assuming that the testing accomodations are phony, rather than legitimate. (Legit accomodations take us down another path.) Given that these kids were in no need of accomodations before, that may well be a correct interpretation. If we take that to be the case, as described by SMS_Parent, then we have a situation where some students are :


1) maxing out their AP quota (thereby providing a public image of maximum rigor), while
2) gaming the system with extra time (thereby privately reducing the difficulty of the class relative to classmates).
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Old 03-02-2015, 01:52 PM
 
19,501 posts, read 17,739,722 times
Reputation: 17035
Scattershooting:

And early apologies and a rambling warning I took a back pain med a while ago.......

1. Some people place WAY too much emphasis on an Ivy League education. To my way of thinking rising college kids should identify their area of study interest as best they can and then accept the offer from the best program that accepts them. Examples: if a kid wants to be a petroleum engineer why in the world would he/she attend Harvard, Brown or Yale when the best program on earth is at Texas A&M? Why would anyone acting rationally who wants to be a civil engineer attend Harvard when UT has the #3 program? Etc.

2. Both my kids went the private school route, by the time private school kids graduate they know most classmates in surprising detail.

3. A key advantage of better private schooling over publics is the educational attainment of faculty and the private school's willingness to employ bonafide experts as faculty over people with teaching certificates. For some examples both of my kids had the same 3rd grade teacher who was a retired electrical engineer, with some help at home, by the time each kiddo was done with 3rd grade they were able to tackle simple multi-variable algebra including fractions. Further along the way each had Ph.D math and physics instructors. At Jesuit one of my son's math instructors was also a professor at SMU. I understand these things happen at publics too but at nothing like the rate at the North Dallas Privates.

Everyone goes to college.....of my son's graduating class one kid went off to play pro hockey, another to the Army's linguistics center, I'm pretty sure that kid has his degree now as well and one kid went into the family business directly. All of these kids had specific plans and everyone else went straight to college.

Lots of private school kids have early, clear and rational plans to attend professional schools, study engineering, computer science, hard science, pursue an MBA or similar etc.

I've posted the academic successes of my son's buddy group from Jesuit and a couple of kids from Cistercian before and it looks like I'm lying so I'll boil it down to this to me the least impressive of the bunch is prepping for the CPA exam.

The above is even more apparent with girls, especially between Hockaday, Ursuline and Greenhill; these schools teach girls they are the intellectual equals of boys and they should not shy away from math and the hard sciences.

One recent Hockaday graduating class has four currently in medical school, another starting medical school next year and one young lady who is pursuing a Ph.D in bio-chemistry her plan is attend medical school later. The parents of one of these kids are our neighbors. These kids are the same age as our son who is also in medical school as well so this kind of thing is very topical around here.

5% (6/120) of that Hockaday class, assuming about 120 Hockadaisy grads that year, will become docs.
Among the entire population .03% (318,000,000/970,000, that number includes inactive and retired docs BTW) of people become docs.

So that Hockaday class will have produced ~17 times more docs than simple proportionality would imply. That's an extremely long way of saying that it isn't just that these kids are smart or connected. They show up capable and motivated, with parents who really, Really, REALLY care and they are educated up, prodded and pushed to succeed.

4. So far as extra time on tests:

For most people who don't really need it getting extra time on high stress tests is probably a mistake. Fiddling around over material one does not know well won't help much if at all.

One of my son's friends has an MD diagnosed and significant learning disability. Long story short this kid will be an MD himself in a few years. He took the MCAT with regular time constraints. He later found out he could petition for extra time, he did, he took the test again with the extra time and did quite a lot worse. I understand that's anecdotal and fully unscientific but it's fairly convincing to me because I know the kid well.

So far as coaching up ACT test scores......there is definitely something to it. In my opinion a middling kid who might make a 19/20 or so can fairly easily raise that score to a 22/23/24 maybe. But a kid higher up the food chain is not going to easily bump a 30 to say a 32.
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