http://adsoofmelk.wordpress.com/2008/09/28/algebra-and-ap-no-not-for-everyone/

Um. How do I be diplomatic?

Jay’s full of it.

The fact of the matter is that when a third of your class simply fails to comprehend the fundamental concepts of the course, you have little other choice but to water down the curriculum. Currently, I am about three to four weeks behind in my classes because I am still trying to get some of those students to understand what is meant by “the author’s point.”

No, I’m not kidding.

I have certainly heard of a number of schools meeting the “algebra in eighth grade” requirement by teaching HALF the algebra one curriculum in eighth grade (meaning, of course, that they then teach LESS algebra in ninth grade than they used to, and more slowly … tell me again why this is called acceleration? ).

I ran into this issue with calculus my senior year in high school. I’d always done well in math and scored a 700 on the SAT-M my junior year. But no matter how much effort I put into trying to learn calculus, I simply didn’t get it. I tried getting help from my teacher, several tutors, a bunch of different study guides, but it was all in vain. My teacher gave me a C the first semester out of pity because he could see I was working my tail off & he didn’t want to jeopardize my college admissons chances by failing me. I then dropped the class 2nd semester.

My freshman year at college, I enrolled in a calculus class that happened to use the same textbook as my high school one. But this time around, the subject finally “clicked” for me. I went on to get an A in that one and an A- in the subsequent course (which covered material I hadn’t ever seen before). The material wasn’t any easier- I was simply not ready for it at age 17 but was at 18. I’m convinced that the difference was cognitive maturity.

Your point about this paradoxically hurting minority kids is well taken. It’s the same as those folks who want to do away with GT screening because it “labels” kids. But with no screening/testing there are a lot of underrepresented kids who, well, remain underrepresented/undetected and are denied services.

The longer story is that my son’s HS made a sudden change and instead of allowing 10th graders to self-select AP Euro or regular history (50% chose AP Euro) now all 10th graders must take AP Human Geography. So I have been corresponding in email with Jay regarding his Chester Finn article which appears to confirm our experience.

Jay refused to budge. Said that as long as the AP exam is required, teachers *never* water down the curriculum. Would not admit that Human Geography was a “soft” course. Since it is a College Level Course then it must Be Real Hard And Rigorous! Told me flat out that Finn doesn’t know anything, as all he did was go to a focus group. Jay on the other hand, has been studying AP for 20 years all over the country and knows best.

Would be real nice if this Loveless report could open Jay up to more reflective thinking on the Challenge Index, but somehow…. I doubt it.

I think Jay takes any negative comments about the AP drive as elitist, racist, etc. The way the Loveless data got through his knee-jerk reaction is that he points out that the kids who are hurt by this algebra push are likely to be minority kids.

Whoa! How is this different from AP for all? Which you fully support and claim only leads to higher expectations and never slows down the class?

Smart people have sent you thoughtful comments about that as well and you have simply dismissed them.

Want to revisit viewpoints such as Chester Finn’s comments from your June 8th column?

“the push to get more high school kids into AP classes — which they attribute to administrators seeking to boost their schools’ Mathews ratings! — is loading their classrooms with kids who really don’t belong there and aren’t up to the work and don’t much want to be there. Plus it’s cheapening the currency as the big enrollment bulges occur in what these teachers characterized as the easy AP courses (e.g. psychology, human geography), not such traditional toughies as calculus, physics and European history.”

If Chester Finn is wrong here, then Loveless’s conclusions are wrong as well.