Reply to S/O Building a Rigorous HS Experience Outside the Magnets

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "S/O Building a Rigorous HS Experience Outside the Magnets"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The problem is that schools aren't set up for a small group of students to take an alternative path.

A few years ago, our school allowed (by petition) for students to skip honors bio and go straight to AP bio.  Same for Chem, I think, but that was less popular.

They did this for a couple of years, and then the AP-arm's race took over and every kid aspiring to a top university tried to join this path (because if they didn't, they thought they would be 'behind' their peers on college applications).

Such a practice worked fine for a small group of kids who could succeed without the prereq.  But when lots of kids wanted to do it, it simultanously created a lot of kids not doing well and also watered down the experience for the kids who wanted to the more rigorous experience.  (It's fine and dandy to say teachers shouldn't slow things down to accommodate less prepared kids, but it doesn't really work that way.)

After a couple of years of allowing this, the school ultimately went back to enforcing the prerequisite strictly. Over the last 5 years, I've never heard of a kid successfully skipping the honors prereq.

If schools can figure out an objective way to really assess kids for skipping prereqs (maybe a placement test), a more rigorous pathway would really open.  But so far, they've never done this effectively-- at least at our school.

The way this has worked out REALLY well in my opinion is on the physics track.  AP Physics 1 is a great and more rigorous alternative to honors physics.  It would be great if bio and chem had a similar class--much more rigorous than the honors version, but not skipping straight to the advanced AP version of the science class.  [/quote]

Who keeps telling this lie about AP Physics 1.  Unless you’re in a magnet  program, AP Physics 1 is not more rigorous.   And because half the kids haven’t gotten to Pre-Cal it’s impossible for it to be.  It’s Algebra based.  Both AP Physics 1 and AP Pre-Cal should be stopped since most colleges are not giving credit for either.  This is how we get 9th graders trying to take AP classes.  And while some scientist do think Physics should be taken first, this course is not more rigorous as kids Algebra skills are not deep enough for it to be.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics