Restoring rigor in high schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know where your kids go to school but my kids work much harder than I ever did. And they know much more than I ever did. There needs to be more chill and less stress

This! I just dont see this “dumbing down of education”. I know I am in a bubble, but in my bubble, kids aren’t walking out with all A’s if they are not academically gifted. Kids who take 12+ APs and have A’s only on their transcript are quite rare at our well rated public school. I mean nobody is taking physics c and finding it easy. I think you could look at rigor and grades from a high performing school and have a pretty good idea of where the student stands. And my kids in STEM classes are learning far far more than I did back in the day. One example - I took Calc AB in high school senior year. My kid finished calc BC junior year (like many of his peers). I ended up eventually getting a math PhD (from a very selective school). And I will tell you my kids know more coming out high school in math than I did.

That may be, but they can't read or write.

They can read and write very well. I agree with the HS has gotten more advanced view. Mine have to cover more material and more advanced material then I did. In public HS. There is clearly a wide divergence is HS quality and rigor out here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In order to restore rigor, we need to return to pencil and paper. Laptops make it too easy to cheat, too distracting to focus and too hard to learn.

Too hard to learn? Too distracting??? I know a lot of parents have kids with adhd on this site but because some students can’t focus and are cheating are ridiculous reasons to eliminate laptops.

What the heck is so magical about a pencil and paper?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The “truely gifted”? Sure, whatever, OP.

gifted usually means 95th%ile or above on certain standardized tests. In some test-in high schools that would be 10-20% of the class, it is not a high bar.
regardless, it used to be that only 1-2 kids out of 500 had 4.0UW. It was easier to separate out true top students.

Who determined that? Standardized tests are not that difficult. You can bet there aren’t any really gifted students in the high schools. They graduated at 12 and moved on.

With the most difficult classes you know the students do very well academically. Some will be better than others so there will be a range of grades and there will be quite a few As because these kids are motivated.

The mainstream classes are for the less academically inclined and the slackers. There will be an even wider range of abilities and grades but there will students who have done A level work. You don’t need to be “gifted” to earn As in school.

[Anonymous]

The main reason for grade inflation is parents hectoring the administration and teachers to improve their individual kid's grades. This was happening so much that it became a MOCO wide policy to just cave in ahead of time and make everyone possible, an A student.

Its the parents, who caused it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In order to reform education system, standardized test may be reinstated, but it barely touch the root issue.

High schools should stop GPA inflation, should provide rigorous grading and rigorous courses. Stop giving 20% of the class 4.0 GPAs. It's just insane. Straight As should be reserved for the truely gifted.

ECs should be done out of true passion. No gaming the system. Colleges should not consider high school research in admissions so that only kids with true passion will pursue it, not fake it.

High school counselors should verify a student's ECs before they send out the app.

High schools should encourage kids taking courses of highest rigor available to their schools, be it stem or humanities. Colleges should put a lot more weight on course rigor in admissions.

Be honest.

Have integrity.

But your whole concept of “integrity” here is that it works against the goal of racial equity.

+1.

Just look at SAT scores. The wide disparity between Black SAT scores and those of whites proves the SAT test is still very racist, and should be abolished.

Why is it racist for only some ethnicities and not others? And does a mixed child with only one black parent do 50% better? The racist argument is so dumb. With that line of reasoning, they should only have black teachers.

No it’s not! It’s true.

Just Google it. The SAT is biased towards whites.

Is that why Asians outperform whites before and after every SAT dumbing down revision to allow more white kids to score higher by lowering the ceiling? White DEI.

2025 SAT Suite Annual Report

Page 4
average SAT scores
Asian 1229 (599 V, 630 M)
White 1077 (550 V, 527 M)

Not. Even. Close.
This is why holistic BS exists. Nobody cared about this EC garbage when whites were getting in with 15-20~30% admittance rates to elite schools and they made up 90% of each class.

It was dumbed down to help URMs; the dumbing down makes it more amenable to prep. The demographic that preps the most (Asian) benefits the most from the test being made easier.

This conspiracy theory would make a lot of sense if we didn’t know that all that’s occurred is the gap has widened between black and white/asian scores. If their intention is to dumb down, they’re really failing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In order to reform education system, standardized test may be reinstated, but it barely touch the root issue.

High schools should stop GPA inflation, should provide rigorous grading and rigorous courses. Stop giving 20% of the class 4.0 GPAs. It's just insane. Straight As should be reserved for the truely gifted.

ECs should be done out of true passion. No gaming the system. Colleges should not consider high school research in admissions so that only kids with true passion will pursue it, not fake it.

High school counselors should verify a student's ECs before they send out the app.

High schools should encourage kids taking courses of highest rigor available to their schools, be it stem or humanities. Colleges should put a lot more weight on course rigor in admissions.

Be honest.

Have integrity.

But your whole concept of “integrity” here is that it works against the goal of racial equity.

+1.

Just look at SAT scores. The wide disparity between Black SAT scores and those of whites proves the SAT test is still very racist, and should be abolished.

It's not the test. It's the wealth and resource gap.

Khan academy SAT prep is free.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In order to reform education system, standardized test may be reinstated, but it barely touch the root issue.

High schools should stop GPA inflation, should provide rigorous grading and rigorous courses. Stop giving 20% of the class 4.0 GPAs. It's just insane. Straight As should be reserved for the truely gifted.

ECs should be done out of true passion. No gaming the system. Colleges should not consider high school research in admissions so that only kids with true passion will pursue it, not fake it.

High school counselors should verify a student's ECs before they send out the app.

High schools should encourage kids taking courses of highest rigor available to their schools, be it stem or humanities. Colleges should put a lot more weight on course rigor in admissions.

Be honest.

Have integrity.

But your whole concept of “integrity” here is that it works against the goal of racial equity.

+1.

Just look at SAT scores. The wide disparity between Black SAT scores and those of whites proves the SAT test is still very racist, and should be abolished.

It's not the test. It's the wealth and resource gap.

Khan academy SAT prep is free.

And yet there still is a massive association between test score and wealth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know where your kids go to school but my kids work much harder than I ever did. And they know much more than I ever did. There needs to be more chill and less stress

100% this. I was salutatorian and had all As when I graduated in the early 1990s. What my children are learning in school and the level of effort they have to put in runs circles around my education. And they are more stressed than I ever was.

Yes, this is a problem that started in the mid-80s and continues to this day. Graduated in the late 70s, had my kids late in life. Even with APs they didn’t do the level of work I had at a small school system. Calculus (MV) was the capstone math class for kids targeted for college and we did much more in our science classes. School offered robust vo-tech opportunities for students that wanted to pursue work in the trades.

Need to get back to instructional basics, demand and reward rigor and have multiple paths forward. Opportunity for all not equal outcomes for all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know where your kids go to school but my kids work much harder than I ever did. And they know much more than I ever did. There needs to be more chill and less stress

100% this. I was salutatorian and had all As when I graduated in the early 1990s. What my children are learning in school and the level of effort they have to put in runs circles around my education. And they are more stressed than I ever was.

Yes, this is a problem that started in the mid-80s and continues to this day. Graduated in the late 70s, had my kids late in life. Even with APs they didn’t do the level of work I had at a small school system. Calculus (MV) was the capstone math class for kids targeted for college and we did much more in our science classes. School offered robust vo-tech opportunities for students that wanted to pursue work in the trades.

Need to get back to instructional basics, demand and reward rigor and have multiple paths forward. Opportunity for all not equal outcomes for all.

You completely bulldozed their comment. Most kids today are working harder than when we were growing up.

[Anonymous]

To improve the education system you need more money. Nobody wants to pay higher taxes. Reform won’t happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know where your kids go to school but my kids work much harder than I ever did. And they know much more than I ever did. There needs to be more chill and less stress

100% this. I was salutatorian and had all As when I graduated in the early 1990s. What my children are learning in school and the level of effort they have to put in runs circles around my education. And they are more stressed than I ever was.

Yes, this is a problem that started in the mid-80s and continues to this day. Graduated in the late 70s, had my kids late in life. Even with APs they didn’t do the level of work I had at a small school system. Calculus (MV) was the capstone math class for kids targeted for college and we did much more in our science classes. School offered robust vo-tech opportunities for students that wanted to pursue work in the trades.

Need to get back to instructional basics, demand and reward rigor and have multiple paths forward. Opportunity for all not equal outcomes for all.

You completely bulldozed their comment. Most kids today are working harder than when we were growing up.

DP. But working harder doesn’t mean they are learning more.

I teach AP classes. Yes, the students are always working hard; however, it takes much longer to for students to complete tasks than it used to.

Students today often lack resilience. When an assignment gets burdensome or challenging, they tend to shut down. I coax far more than I did 20 years ago.

I also receive 3-4 times the extension requests than I used to because there’s often an excuse why work can’t get done: I’m too busy, I have sports, I wasn’t in a good mood.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know where your kids go to school but my kids work much harder than I ever did. And they know much more than I ever did. There needs to be more chill and less stress

100% this. I was salutatorian and had all As when I graduated in the early 1990s. What my children are learning in school and the level of effort they have to put in runs circles around my education. And they are more stressed than I ever was.

Yes, this is a problem that started in the mid-80s and continues to this day. Graduated in the late 70s, had my kids late in life. Even with APs they didn’t do the level of work I had at a small school system. Calculus (MV) was the capstone math class for kids targeted for college and we did much more in our science classes. School offered robust vo-tech opportunities for students that wanted to pursue work in the trades.

Need to get back to instructional basics, demand and reward rigor and have multiple paths forward. Opportunity for all not equal outcomes for all.

You completely bulldozed their comment. Most kids today are working harder than when we were growing up.

DP. But working harder doesn’t mean they are learning more.

I teach AP classes. Yes, the students are always working hard; however, it takes much longer to for students to complete tasks than it used to.

Students today often lack resilience. When an assignment gets burdensome or challenging, they tend to shut down. I coax far more than I did 20 years ago.

I also receive 3-4 times the extension requests than I used to because there’s often an excuse why work can’t get done: I’m too busy, I have sports, I wasn’t in a good mood.

They always have-they're kids and we aren't in war for christ's sake.
If you are seriously dealing with this issue, it sounds more like an indictment of your ability to teach.
I went to an extremely stressful competitive high school that is known for being one of the most rigorous in the country...but that was three decades ago; my children currently run laps around me, have many more responsibilities and things they have to do in order to get into college and are now learning content I didn't learn until my second year of college. They go to a pretty average public school. Maybe put yourself in the perspective of a kid today, who needs to compete at a high level in order to get into even a decent school, while in my time, Harvard was boasting an acceptance rate 4x its current.

You are suffering from recency bias.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know where your kids go to school but my kids work much harder than I ever did. And they know much more than I ever did. There needs to be more chill and less stress

100% this. I was salutatorian and had all As when I graduated in the early 1990s. What my children are learning in school and the level of effort they have to put in runs circles around my education. And they are more stressed than I ever was.

Yes, this is a problem that started in the mid-80s and continues to this day. Graduated in the late 70s, had my kids late in life. Even with APs they didn’t do the level of work I had at a small school system. Calculus (MV) was the capstone math class for kids targeted for college and we did much more in our science classes. School offered robust vo-tech opportunities for students that wanted to pursue work in the trades.

Need to get back to instructional basics, demand and reward rigor and have multiple paths forward. Opportunity for all not equal outcomes for all.

You completely bulldozed their comment. Most kids today are working harder than when we were growing up.

DP. But working harder doesn’t mean they are learning more.

I teach AP classes. Yes, the students are always working hard; however, it takes much longer to for students to complete tasks than it used to.

Students today often lack resilience. When an assignment gets burdensome or challenging, they tend to shut down. I coax far more than I did 20 years ago.

I also receive 3-4 times the extension requests than I used to because there’s often an excuse why work can’t get done: I’m too busy, I have sports, I wasn’t in a good mood.

That honestly makes a lot of sense. If we are overburdening our students and they're constantly working, they will eventually perform worse and will not be able to turn things in. Have you considered that there is no proof that homework is actually beneficial to one's education? It makes sense In lower ages where we treat school as a way to form discipline, but there is no reason we have to work a high schooler to death to provide them a good education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know where your kids go to school but my kids work much harder than I ever did. And they know much more than I ever did. There needs to be more chill and less stress

100% this. I was salutatorian and had all As when I graduated in the early 1990s. What my children are learning in school and the level of effort they have to put in runs circles around my education. And they are more stressed than I ever was.

Yes, this is a problem that started in the mid-80s and continues to this day. Graduated in the late 70s, had my kids late in life. Even with APs they didn’t do the level of work I had at a small school system. Calculus (MV) was the capstone math class for kids targeted for college and we did much more in our science classes. School offered robust vo-tech opportunities for students that wanted to pursue work in the trades.

Need to get back to instructional basics, demand and reward rigor and have multiple paths forward. Opportunity for all not equal outcomes for all.

You completely bulldozed their comment. Most kids today are working harder than when we were growing up.

DP. But working harder doesn’t mean they are learning more.

I teach AP classes. Yes, the students are always working hard; however, it takes much longer to for students to complete tasks than it used to.

Students today often lack resilience. When an assignment gets burdensome or challenging, they tend to shut down. I coax far more than I did 20 years ago.

I also receive 3-4 times the extension requests than I used to because there’s often an excuse why work can’t get done: I’m too busy, I have sports, I wasn’t in a good mood.

They always have-they're kids and we aren't in war for christ's sake.
If you are seriously dealing with this issue, it sounds more like an indictment of your ability to teach.
I went to an extremely stressful competitive high school that is known for being one of the most rigorous in the country...but that was three decades ago; my children currently run laps around me, have many more responsibilities and things they have to do in order to get into college and are now learning content I didn't learn until my second year of college. They go to a pretty average public school. Maybe put yourself in the perspective of a kid today, who needs to compete at a high level in order to get into even a decent school, while in my time, Harvard was boasting an acceptance rate 4x its current.

You are suffering from recency bias.

+1, I've noticed that teachers have deeply inflated egos about their own abilities, and sometimes have nearly inane understandings or expectations of children, driven by their own adoration for themself. From the teacher subreddit:

I had two of my first graders last week refuse to use the bathroom out of fear. One wet himself, didn't have a change, and said he couldn't borrow a change of clothes from us because he's not allowed to wear clothes that don't belong to him. That one had his grandma drop him off and express some concern that we shouldn't use hand sanitizer because they might eat it. Huh?? The other child needed to go poop at 10am and said he needed his mom and that the toilets were too big. I said he was big enough and even offered to have him go to the kinder bathroom. He refused and said he would just hold it all day. Oh, and they don't know all their letter sounds. Not even close. Also, they lay on the ground a lot. Sigh.

These are all things I remember seeing and experiencing with other students throughout elementary school. If you don't want to deal with irresponsible, hectic children, don't work at an elementary school!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know where your kids go to school but my kids work much harder than I ever did. And they know much more than I ever did. There needs to be more chill and less stress

100% this. I was salutatorian and had all As when I graduated in the early 1990s. What my children are learning in school and the level of effort they have to put in runs circles around my education. And they are more stressed than I ever was.

Yes, this is a problem that started in the mid-80s and continues to this day. Graduated in the late 70s, had my kids late in life. Even with APs they didn’t do the level of work I had at a small school system. Calculus (MV) was the capstone math class for kids targeted for college and we did much more in our science classes. School offered robust vo-tech opportunities for students that wanted to pursue work in the trades.

Need to get back to instructional basics, demand and reward rigor and have multiple paths forward. Opportunity for all not equal outcomes for all.

You completely bulldozed their comment. Most kids today are working harder than when we were growing up.

DP. But working harder doesn’t mean they are learning more.

I teach AP classes. Yes, the students are always working hard; however, it takes much longer to for students to complete tasks than it used to.

Students today often lack resilience. When an assignment gets burdensome or challenging, they tend to shut down. I coax far more than I did 20 years ago.

I also receive 3-4 times the extension requests than I used to because there’s often an excuse why work can’t get done: I’m too busy, I have sports, I wasn’t in a good mood.

They always have-they're kids and we aren't in war for christ's sake.
If you are seriously dealing with this issue, it sounds more like an indictment of your ability to teach.
I went to an extremely stressful competitive high school that is known for being one of the most rigorous in the country...but that was three decades ago; my children currently run laps around me, have many more responsibilities and things they have to do in order to get into college and are now learning content I didn't learn until my second year of college. They go to a pretty average public school. Maybe put yourself in the perspective of a kid today, who needs to compete at a high level in order to get into even a decent school, while in my time, Harvard was boasting an acceptance rate 4x its current.

You are suffering from recency bias.

… and now a personal attack on a teacher. This is always where I exit a thread.

I’m that strong teacher. You know, the one with the reputation among parents: “Make sure your child gets Mrs. X!” But I say one thing you don’t like, and you say it’s an “indictment on [my] ability to teach.” What a ridiculous statement. And as you resorted to personal attack, you’ve proven to be someone who can’t reasonably debate.

I was also taking all-AP classes in high school. I played on two varsity teams and I held down a part-time job. I know what it’s like to be a strong, busy student. I also work with about 130 of them a day. I suspect my sample size is a bit larger a than yours, especially as it spans two decades.

Your personal anecdote doesn’t change my opinion. I’ve been at this a long time.