GDS just dropped AP testing

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:GDS parent here. We scrambled (like dozens of other parents) got zero help from CC office and found that one of the Moco public schools allows AP testing for moco residents who go to school elsewhere.

Zero help from GDS. Had to make 20 calls to schools around the area. CCO didn’t lift a finger. Didn’t call schools for us. They did nothing.

I’ve written several at the school and have been grin-f*cked back by email from them. The GDS way.

I have come to despise this school after 3 kids here. Last one is done soon. It has markedly worsened in the last 5 years. Back when Kevin Barr was around, things ran better.

Now every administrator has a POV, an agenda and Russell is scared to engage any of them for fear of being labeled a racist by them.

Every consequential decision is driven by administrators who are sitting in their seats for the first time in their careers.

When a former DEI head at another school is named your a division principal and has zero school managerial experience, what do you expect will happen?

Like many hires across our society and many companies and organizations in 2020-2021, many many mistakes and over corrections were made in our collective zeal to do the right thing. Now the tide will go out and we will find out the toll this well meaning over correction took.

Feel free to hate on me.

Zero more donations to this school once my last kid is out in a year.

GDS parents. Unless your kid loves Tufts, Middlebury, Bates, Wesleyan, Bowdoin or Skidmore (and their New England small college ilk) this school is not set up for your kid. GDS is increasingly focused on catering to these small New England colleges and performs for them.

+1. My kid is at another co-ed big3. The CCO is no better.

[Anonymous]

Good thing that public was there to bail you out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ehh. Not a big deal

No worry. Students can register to take the SSAT at GDS in December. This is a high school admissions test still used by competitive schools that like such a data point for admissions, and therefore good for transferring out. GDS is probably a subcontracted SSAT test site just for the $$$.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys are trying really hard to make APs seem meaningless. Just admit the school has a problem that can be easily fixed. YOU don't have to have your kid take them, but that doesn't mean no one should have this option.

Again, no one is saying kids shouldn't take the exams. Schools such as GDS still allow their students to sit for the exams. The issue is whether or not the schools should designate these classes as AP, which requires more bureaucratic red tape than most people think.

This is a bit misleading. Any student can sign up to take an AP exam. The big problem with GDS is that it has decided not to administer any AP exams, so dozens of GDS students are scrambling on their own to find a public or private HS that has extra spaces to allow a GDS student to take AP exams alongside their own students. Most HSs do not have the space for this. It's a poor policy decision. I get the reasons for designing a course that deviates from the AP curriculum, but practically speaking a good number of GDS students want to take AP exams because they are applying to colleges outside the US, because they want advanced standing, and because high AP scores can corroborate evidence of high academic achievement--which is hard to do otherwise since GDS no longer publishes average SAT scores, and has never published average GPAs or class ranks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys are trying really hard to make APs seem meaningless. Just admit the school has a problem that can be easily fixed. YOU don't have to have your kid take them, but that doesn't mean no one should have this option.

Again, no one is saying kids shouldn't take the exams. Schools such as GDS still allow their students to sit for the exams. The issue is whether or not the schools should designate these classes as AP, which requires more bureaucratic red tape than most people think.

This is a bit misleading. Any student can sign up to take an AP exam. The big problem with GDS is that it has decided not to administer any AP exams, so dozens of GDS students are scrambling on their own to find a public or private HS that has extra spaces to allow a GDS student to take AP exams alongside their own students. Most HSs do not have the space for this. It's a poor policy decision. I get the reasons for designing a course that deviates from the AP curriculum, but practically speaking a good number of GDS students want to take AP exams because they are applying to colleges outside the US, because they want advanced standing, and because high AP scores can corroborate evidence of high academic achievement--which is hard to do otherwise since GDS no longer publishes average SAT scores, and has never published average GPAs or class ranks.

That's exactly the purpose. No average SAT, GPA, ranking, no AP classes, not admin AP test so the connected families and big donors kids can get ahead.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys are trying really hard to make APs seem meaningless. Just admit the school has a problem that can be easily fixed. YOU don't have to have your kid take them, but that doesn't mean no one should have this option.

Again, no one is saying kids shouldn't take the exams. Schools such as GDS still allow their students to sit for the exams. The issue is whether or not the schools should designate these classes as AP, which requires more bureaucratic red tape than most people think.

This is a bit misleading. Any student can sign up to take an AP exam. The big problem with GDS is that it has decided not to administer any AP exams, so dozens of GDS students are scrambling on their own to find a public or private HS that has extra spaces to allow a GDS student to take AP exams alongside their own students. Most HSs do not have the space for this. It's a poor policy decision. I get the reasons for designing a course that deviates from the AP curriculum, but practically speaking a good number of GDS students want to take AP exams because they are applying to colleges outside the US, because they want advanced standing, and because high AP scores can corroborate evidence of high academic achievement--which is hard to do otherwise since GDS no longer publishes average SAT scores, and has never published average GPAs or class ranks.

That's exactly the purpose. No average SAT, GPA, ranking, no AP classes, not admin AP test so the connected families and big donors kids can get ahead.

Do you really think this is why? Wouldn't it be more for equity (URM) purposes? (some of whom of course are the connected/donor families but many whom are not).

[Anonymous]

More power for the teachers to push FW their favorite students, all based in subjective feedback, from the teachers themselves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys are trying really hard to make APs seem meaningless. Just admit the school has a problem that can be easily fixed. YOU don't have to have your kid take them, but that doesn't mean no one should have this option.

Again, no one is saying kids shouldn't take the exams. Schools such as GDS still allow their students to sit for the exams. The issue is whether or not the schools should designate these classes as AP, which requires more bureaucratic red tape than most people think.

This is a bit misleading. Any student can sign up to take an AP exam. The big problem with GDS is that it has decided not to administer any AP exams, so dozens of GDS students are scrambling on their own to find a public or private HS that has extra spaces to allow a GDS student to take AP exams alongside their own students. Most HSs do not have the space for this. It's a poor policy decision. I get the reasons for designing a course that deviates from the AP curriculum, but practically speaking a good number of GDS students want to take AP exams because they are applying to colleges outside the US, because they want advanced standing, and because high AP scores can corroborate evidence of high academic achievement--which is hard to do otherwise since GDS no longer publishes average SAT scores, and has never published average GPAs or class ranks.

psst: this was another misleader from all the schools: there is not one single AP curriculum. Kids at different schools with different teachers taking the same AP test, will have had different, sometimes very different, classes. They just don't want to pay for the AP name, which is fine, but it has nothing to do with the Calc curriculum or the literature curriculum, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys are trying really hard to make APs seem meaningless. Just admit the school has a problem that can be easily fixed. YOU don't have to have your kid take them, but that doesn't mean no one should have this option.

Again, no one is saying kids shouldn't take the exams. Schools such as GDS still allow their students to sit for the exams. The issue is whether or not the schools should designate these classes as AP, which requires more bureaucratic red tape than most people think.

This is a bit misleading. Any student can sign up to take an AP exam. The big problem with GDS is that it has decided not to administer any AP exams, so dozens of GDS students are scrambling on their own to find a public or private HS that has extra spaces to allow a GDS student to take AP exams alongside their own students. Most HSs do not have the space for this. It's a poor policy decision. I get the reasons for designing a course that deviates from the AP curriculum, but practically speaking a good number of GDS students want to take AP exams because they are applying to colleges outside the US, because they want advanced standing, and because high AP scores can corroborate evidence of high academic achievement--which is hard to do otherwise since GDS no longer publishes average SAT scores, and has never published average GPAs or class ranks.

That's exactly the purpose. No average SAT, GPA, ranking, no AP classes, not admin AP test so the connected families and big donors kids can get ahead.

Do you really think this is why? Wouldn't it be more for equity (URM) purposes? (some of whom of course are the connected/donor families but many whom are not).

What equity argument would this be? Families that are less well off should absolutely be encouraged to take advantage of AP scores so that their kids can graduate earlier. Unless the argument is that GDS’s Black and Hispanic kids don’t test well on APs as they’re Asian and White students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Name the school where your kids from the Big 5 or wherever are actually attending that gives college credit for AP exams. Like real deal credit. Back in the day you could use it graduate early etc which I did. Then colleges caught on and are not interested in losing tuition. I understand you can use AP exams to demonstrate how smart your are in math or a language to get you into a higher level class but that is not the same thing as an actual “college credit.”

Does Princeton count? My kid received actual, bona fide college credit for AP Calc and Physics C.

Not like anyone is graduating early, and they don’t accept many…but yes these are credit courses.

Helpful. Didn’t know Princeton was still doing this and surprised they are. Luckily, we are all going to Princeton.

For the Ivy schools, only Harvard and Dartmouth award no credit. For the rest, it is a very limited number of APs, but tend to be clustered in the Math/Stem and languages.

That’s incorrect for Dartmouth. It offers credit for APs, however it won’t reduce the total number of credits required for graduation. That means that students can skip some intro level courses their freshman year.

“Dartmouth offers Credit on Entrance = Prematriculation credit recognized for achievement on a test* that may be equivalent to a course, however starting with students entering in fall 2014 it does not reduce the number of credits (35) required for graduation. (*Examples of tests include Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB), A-Levels, SATs and local placement tests.)”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Name the school where your kids from the Big 5 or wherever are actually attending that gives college credit for AP exams. Like real deal credit. Back in the day you could use it graduate early etc which I did. Then colleges caught on and are not interested in losing tuition. I understand you can use AP exams to demonstrate how smart your are in math or a language to get you into a higher level class but that is not the same thing as an actual “college credit.”

Does Princeton count? My kid received actual, bona fide college credit for AP Calc and Physics C.

Not like anyone is graduating early, and they don’t accept many…but yes these are credit courses.

My kid received a bunch of credits at Columbia University for AP courses. My son at USC also found the AP credits very helpful. I think GDS is making a mistake. Parents should push back

[Anonymous]

GDS parent. My youngest child is getting caught up in this AP mess. My older kids (incl one at an Ivy) were able to use their 5's on APs to skip intro classes in their engineering programs.
Aside from MoCo publics, has anyone had any luck finding a place for their kid to test? I'm in VA and my local public just turned me down.
The other privates also have, except for one that will administer it without accommodations (extra time).

[Anonymous]

You can register to take the tests elsewhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can register to take the tests elsewhere.

Technically, yes. The problem is that you need to find a school that will allow you to take it. That school's AP coordinator has to register your child. I haven't found a school yet. Some schools have strung me along for weeks but ultimately said no.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can register to take the tests elsewhere.

Technically, yes. The problem is that you need to find a school that will allow you to take it. That school's AP coordinator has to register your child. I haven't found a school yet. Some schools have strung me along for weeks but ultimately said no.

You should let college counseling know, if you haven’t already. It’s ridiculous that they left people to call around and be told no. If they won’t offer them on site anymore they should at the very least be arranging for other options, not just sending a College Board link that is useless because no school is required to allow non-students test.