Reply to How many freshman take AP Gov or History?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I teach AP Social Studies courses, including AP Govt. Several years ago, the Collegeboard put out a statement that they do not recommend that 9th grade students take AP courses. However, I hate to admit this, but when my kid goes to HS next year I will insist that he enroll in and many APs offered at each grade level, which including 9th. He is a smart but not overly diligent student and I think it’s good to be in the advanced courses whenever possible. Better cohort, better teachers, GPA boost, better curriculum, etc.[/quote]

That was many years ago, before College Board remembered that they like money, and started inventing lots of new APs for 9th 
grade and non-university-level courses.

https://blog.collegeboard.org/popular-ap-courses-grade

What's your plan if your non-overly-diligent student can't keep up with the curriculum and gets a B or C in the AP class instead of an A in honors? [/quote]

My neighbors hired a tutors for their 9th grader who couldn’t keep up in APUSH and honors Alg 2.  Odd to me the parents that push their kids into advanced classes they can’t handle.    [/quote]

Having a tutor does not necessarily mean that the content is too hard.  Sometimes the teaching style is not a match for the student, or they just need personal attention that they can't get in a 2500 person school with 31 students in class. [/quote]

Yes it does, unless you are dealing with a LD.  Honors and AP by their very nature are meant to be quicker or more in depth(likely both) and require more independent work to master the material.  If you constantly need a tutor you are outside of your current capability.  It doesn’t mean that will be true for every subject or forever, but it does mean that for right now.[/quote]

I’ll bite. My child had a tutor for algebra. He was fully capable of handling the material, but there was no textbook, no links to materials on the class page, and the teacher did not give homework. So how was he supposed to practice independently outside of class, and how were we supposed to support him in doing so when we had a pretty bare understanding of what was being covered in class? Maybe some kids can learn algebra and do well with just 40-minute class increments, but it doesn’t mean they can’t handle the material if they need or want additional practice outside of that and meet that through tutoring. [/quote]

This. This is why I can make a living as a very expensive tutor for both private and public school students.  There is an amazing quantity of crap teachers - on many occasions I have encountered teachers actively teaching wrong answers to students!  Only once has such a teacher been actively removed from the classroom (but not fired). Or there are teachers who cannot explain the why of material or offer alternate valid explanations.

Add to that the growing movement of schools who have thrown away textbooks and who promote group classwork without any teacher guidance or summary as a superior form of “instruction” because “data show” that kids who “struggle” with the material learn better.  Somehow schools have come to believe that NOT teaching and hoping the kids come up with a derivation or solution on their own is a superior form of teaching.

And then, particularly in public school another layer is the refusal to identify and accommodate learners with learning disabilities or other neurological differences like ADHD. I regularly encounter - in my HS students - kids whose parents have previously raised concerns with the school and asked for assessment, 504s or IEPs, and have been (illegally) turned down or given subpar incomplete assessment.  Often, these kids are extremely bright and have been able to compensate until demands become overwhelming in HS.  One of my student’s parents broke down in tears when her child was identified as dyslexic in 11th grade. She had asked the school for years about her daughter’s learning struggles and was constantly told that her daughter was fine and just of average intelligence and was working to the best of her ability.

I know there are a group of you who believe that these kids with learning disabilities or ADHD don’t deserve to be in advanced classes because they somehow drag down the class, but I’d ask you to think about what we as a society lose when we don’t give bright neurodivergent kids access to higher level instruction.  They are, IME, equally as smart as neurotypical kids and often have out-of-the-box ways of thinking about things that benefit all in the classroom.

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