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A Lincoln High teacher gets all his students to pass the AP Calculus exam
- wkdown 10y agoThe "how" is quite lacking.
- dang 10y agoOk, we took 'how' out of the title above.
- x1798DE 10y agoI must say, this kind of thing is what keeps me coming to HN. It's very refreshing to see actual anti clickbait policies on link aggregators.
- dang 10y agoSomeone's got to do it. Plus it's an amusing challenge and something about which the community is as unanimous as it gets.
- Cyph0n 10y agoActually it's /u/dang who keeps me coming back. The guy is a moderating machine! Keep up the awesome work man :)
- dang 10y agoIn the face of praise like that I won't even hold the reddit URI against you. Thanks!
- jobu 10y agoSeems pretty clear to me: Yom says he keeps getting asked if there's some secret recipe for getting students to perform at their highest potential. "This may sound corny, but you really have to love them," Yom says. "You build this trust, and at that point, whatever you ask them to do, they'll go the extra mile. The recipe is love." Basically it comes down to soft skills. If people think you care about them they will care about what you want and think and help you achieve things together.
- ktRolster 10y agoWhich would explain why new 'systems' like common whatever, pushed from the top down, aren't the best way to improve schools. Which is like forcing programmers into a forced Agile system....it's better to focus on improving the skills of the programmers. The guy in Stand and Deliver was similar.
- fisherjeff 10y agoI don't see any reason why the two should be mutually exclusive
- ktRolster 10y agoIt's more like an ordering: improving teacher skill should come before forcing them into a system.
- uxp 10y agoCommon core is _what_ they should be teaching. Soft skills is _how_ they should be teaching. I'm fine if you want to hate on the Common Core like so many, but these points are so completely unrelated this argument doesn't make any sense. We aren't min/maxing teachers like we would with our character in an MMORPG, these are human people.
- ktRolster 10y agoltr: no one is hating on common core.
- acbart 10y agoCommon Core, in theory, isn't a problem - unifying standards across schools has a lot of benefits (easier to design reusable curriculums, perform scientific inquiries, develop software). The problem is when it gets conflated with high-stakes testing, which is a terrible thing.
- vermontdevil 10y agoSee Stand and Deliver. I'm sure similar technique - teacher focused on the students and found ways to motivate them.
- CarolineW 10y agoReferenced in the linked article.
- vermontdevil 10y agoI know. I'm replying to the OP's question: "how".
- ejcx 10y agoThis article is strange. Unless something has changed recently, AP exams do not have a concept of pass or fail. You get a score and colleges can choose to give you college credit based on the score. I got a 1 on the AP Calculus exam but colleges wanted a 3 or a 4 or a 5 depending on their requirements to give me credit for college calc. So I have no idea what it means to have everybody 'pass'. I have no doubt he's probably an exceptional teacher. That AP Calculus test was really really hard when I took it a decade ago, but the metrics don't make any sense to me
- pilom 10y agoMost colleges give credits for 3 and above on AP exams so many people think of a 3 as "passing".
- hammock 10y agoSource? All the schools I looked at required a 4 or 5.
- swang 10y agoIt depends on your school. 3 is considered passing grade by the collegeboard, but some schools only accept 4+. For example UCI [0] allows 3 for credit, but USC [1] only accepts 4 or above, which I guess is progress since in high school one of the factors (besides the price) was that USC wouldn't accept any AP credits at all. [0] https://apstudent.collegeboard.org/creditandplacement/credit-policy-detail?diCode=4859&orgId=3887&name=University%20of%20California%3A%20Irvine&address=Irvine%2C%20CA https://apstudent.collegeboard.org/creditandplacement/credit... [1] https://apstudent.collegeboard.org/creditandplacement/credit-policy-detail?diCode=4852&orgId=3341&name=University%20of%20Southern%20California&address=Los%20Angeles%2C%20CA https://apstudent.collegeboard.org/creditandplacement/credit...
- teach 10y agoJust a nitpick: as others have mentioned, the College Board has no concept of a "passing" grade. Just numeric 1-5. It is colleges and teachers that consider a 3 or better "passing".
- srtjstjsj 10y agohttps://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/02/10/this-teenager-is-one-of-12-students-in-the-world-who-aced-the-ap-calculus-exam/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/02/1... > Nearly 2.5 million students took a total of almost 4.5 million AP tests overall last year. Of the test-takers, just 322 obtained every point possible on an AP test, and perfect scores were logged on 21 of the 36 AP exams. Here’s the breakdown of those perfect scores: 67 in Computer Science A 55 in Spanish Language and Culture 54 in Microeconomics 36 in German Language and Culture 22 in Macroeconomics 16 in Studio Art: Drawing Portfolio 12 in Calculus AB 11 in Calculus BC 11 in Physics C: Mechanics 7 in Japanese Language and Culture 7 in Studio Art: 2-D Design Portfolio 4 in Chemistry 4 in Psychology 4 in Italian Language and Culture 3 in U.S. Government and Politics 2 in French Language and Culture 2 in Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism 2 in Statistics 2 in U.S. History 2 in Studio Art: 3-D Design Portfolio 1 in Latin ----- Surprisingly low numbers, considering how many hundreds of students ace their calculus tests in college.
- dsugarman 10y agoWhat constitutes a perfect score? Is it no longer a 1-5 grade or is this talking about the underlying score before normalizing to a 5 point scale or were there only 322 5s?
- fortenforge 10y agoThis is talking about scores before normalizing.
- Frompo 10y agoProbably reflect the differing priorities of the people constructing the two different tests.
- jasonjei 10y agoI took AP Latin: Vergil in high school. That was one of the hardest classes I've ever had to take because the grammar is so complex (I'm also not surprised Japanese has few perfect scores). I know I didn't get a passing score. I'm surprised however that Chinese has no perfect scores. I remember some students that had moved from Taiwan or China would take AP Chinese to get free college credits. The grammar of Chinese is so simple compared to Latin or Japanese. And from what I recall, AP Chinese tested Mandarin at a 2nd grade level, and didn't test much or any of the chengyu (成語: Chinese proverbs) of which are difficult because of the shear number to remember. Perhaps graders could tell they were native speakers, and thus raised the bar? (I took 3rd-year Chinese as a filler class "language requirement" in college and the professor expected high-school level of Chinese while she expected chicken scratch from others for the same grade.) AP Computer Science seems likely to have a good number of perfect scores. I remember a test reviewer telling me that they often overlooked syntactical errors (unbalanced parentheses) and would allow API calls to incorrectly labeled API functions. (I don't disagree, because CS is more about understanding data structures than it is knowing how to put code on paper without an IDE or reference.)
- jakub_g 10y agoSide note, FYI some embedded ad redirects me to the scammy "fix your Android" thing full of alerts and vibrating the phone. This has been a nightmare on Android recently, happens more and more even on high profile websites. Time to reconsider Firefox Mobile and put and adblocker I think...
- stephengillie 10y agoWhitelisting JavaScript is an okay solution for those not willing to switch from Chrome just yet.
- dredmorbius 10y agoIME Chrome is unusable for all but closely vetted sites. Firefox has problems, mostly performance. But adblock and reader mode help greatly.
- samstave 10y agoThere was a movie about this in the 80s
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- CarolineW 10y agoReferenced in the actual article: Yom loved the movie "Stand and Deliver," about legendary Garfield High calculus teacher Jaime Escalante's success with so-called unteachable students.
- kristopolous 10y agoStand and Deliver? Different person, different school.
- SolderMonkey 10y agodifferent person, different school, different time, but similar situation: dedicated individuals inspire students to believe circumstances better than where they grow up, and strive for them oh, and similar communities. I could have gone to Garfield, the high school from Stand and Deliver, but opted for Lincoln, when I grew up in this area
- kristopolous 10y agoSame subject too!!
- josinalvo 10y agoI am not sure if such clean-looking, new-looking classes are standard in the US, but it gives me a tad of skepticism... Is this school in an affluent neighborhood?
- kristopolous 10y agoLincoln heights? Not really. Average household income is $30,579 and 5.5% have college degrees. I guess that's better than some
- kepano 10y agoI used to live in the neighborhood (Lincoln Heights). It's a lower income, primarily latino neighborhood of Los Angeles. I've never visited Lincoln High School but it's a public school. http://maps.latimes.com/neighborhoods/neighborhood/lincoln-heights/ http://maps.latimes.com/neighborhoods/neighborhood/lincoln-h...
- SolderMonkey 10y agowent to this school '06-10 and had to pleasure to get to know this teacher when he started there. Not much of an affluent neighborhood, lots of gang violence, but still lots of good people come out of it because of leaders like this teacher caveat; this is a magnet program of about 200 students within the overall two thousand and some
- dba7dba 10y agoIt's not the standard. LAUSD just went through a massive building/remodeling of facilities last few years. Not all schools got it but ones that were remodeled look nice. But that is after decades worth of students who went through LAUSD sitting in ghetto classrooms. After about a decade the same classes will start looking dingy and few more decades will pass before another wave of remodeling.
- quantumsnaggler 10y agoBut how did you come up?
- roflchoppa 10y agowhy do we fall Bruce?
- dang 10y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11697262 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11697262 and marked it off-topic.
- ben_jones 10y agoIt's been awhile but the AP exam for me was nothing but rote memorization. You memorize how to solve n types (10? 15? 20?) of problems and then you grind through the test a) identify what type of problem it is b) apply algorithm to solve. Furthermore the AP exam environment, IMO, varied by the school giving it. I could have easily stored formulas in my calculator (for the calculator section), I could have easily colluded with classmates, and if my teachers wanted to, they could've easily given me the answers. It was a bit of a joke really. Multiple phones went off during the exam, no penalties were given (which I agree is the right approach, but it does say something about the exam itself). The prestige of the AP program and the experience of taking a number of AP courses has contributed to my declining respect for our higher education system really.
- SolderMonkey 10y agoIn the framework of 'a) identify what type of problem it is b) apply algorithm to solve', how many freshman college classes (what the AP classes try to emulate) don't work within that framework? While I believe our primary and higher education systems could use a lot of work, I think the AP program is at least respectable as a stepping stone into higher education, especially for communities where higher education isn't a norm or accessible.
- witty_username 10y ago> I could have easily stored formulas in my calculator (for the calculator section) You are allowed to do that. Proctors won't clear calculator memory. > I could have easily colluded with classmates, and if my teachers wanted to, they could've easily given me the answers. Proctors and/or students will likely notice that.
- lbenes 10y agoI’ve traveled to Europe and Asia and it’s saddening to see what a difference they place on the value of Education/teacher compared to us. NC is ranked 48th in the country and willing to give away almost a billion dollars in federal funding over the right to bully transgender individuals.[1][2] Then we have Texas spending 64-million on a high school stadium.[3] How did we get into this mess where our culture values sports over education? How can we get out of it? [1] http://bigstory.ap.org/article/19cce15048484abcac18c836f8c0b241/north-carolina-governor-leads-lawsuit-over-lgbt-rights http://bigstory.ap.org/article/19cce15048484abcac18c836f8c0b... [2] http://abc11.com/education/survey-calls-nc-the-worst-state-for-teachers/329440/ http://abc11.com/education/survey-calls-nc-the-worst-state-f... [3] http://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2016/05/11/a-texas-high-schools-planned-63-million-football-stadium-thats-an-800-lbs-gorilla/#42731cd33b37 http://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2016/05/11/a-texas-hi...
- cbd1984 10y agoMaybe if you went to more than two places in the US you'd get a different picture.
- Spooky23 10y agoTravel to New York. We spend a fortune on students and teachers. Outcomes vary, and usually have more to do with home situation than money.
- jayess 10y agoSpending != quality.
- cbd1984 10y agoMaybe if you went to more than two places in the US you'd get a different picture.
- dsajames 10y agoReally? Just just woke up day and had a desire to bully trans people? What, they were bored? It's self righteous people like you who widen the divide. This issue wasn't even talked about a year ago and suddenly they're bullying? Maybe if more people were pragmatic to new laws affect everyone else instead of reflexively only considering a miniscule few you would see that there isn't any more bullying going on there than before or in most other places for that matter.
- bpeebles 10y agoTrans* people have been bullied pretty much forever. The tide is finally shifting to be able to force places like schools to change their polices to help reduce/end the bullying. It's clearly the correct thing to do.
- dang 10y ago> self righteous people like you Personal attacks and name-calling aren't allowed on HN. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11697585 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11697585 and marked it off-topic.
- protomyth 10y agoIn the 1987, I took the afternoons of my senior year and went to the local community college since we got 3 credits a semester free and paid only $15/credit after that. Students are still doing that here (now its considered dual HS / College credit). AP classes just don't make sense in that context, and I would imagine if a student in a podunk high school on the reservation in the 80's could do that, it must be more common at decent high schools.
- brandonmenc 10y agoI went to a Catholic all-boys high school and many of us walked to the Catholic college a few blocks away to earn college credits. I'd say the top quarter of my graduating class started college as Sophomores or better. From the other end, the Catholic grade school across the street sent some of their 7th and 8th graders to take classes with us at the high school. This was in the mid-90s.
- quantumsequoia 10y agoIs this that unusual? I'm sure there are many teachers out there whose entire classes passed. I'm pretty sure in high school, my entire class passed. It was unusual for people to fail APs. (My high school only admitted the top 2% scorers on an admission test, so it was biased towards high exam scorers.)
- bobbark 10y agoStuy?
- dba7dba 10y agoYes this is very unusual. Considering the socioeconomic background of the area.
- Trill-I-Am 10y agoWhat was the socioeconomic make-up of your community?
- all5AP 10y agoYeah, I'll second that. I know at my high school (a private one) the AP Chem class had all 5s for 10+ years.
- solipsism 10y agoAll 5s on the AP Chem test for 10+ years? Absolutely not possibly. If it happened there would be many news stories about it.
- epmatsw 10y agoI think you underestimate some private schools. At least at mine, high level APs would have only 10ish specially approved students with a professor who'd taught the class forever. Our calc BC professor had supposedly only had 3 non-5s in his decade or two of teaching the course. Besides that, if a professor suspected you wouldn't pass, you would just be asked to not take the exam. Don't think I ever heard of someone actually failing one.
- rajacombinator 10y agoAP Calc is kinda trivial, anyone taking it should pass ...
- chillacy 10y agoLast year, 42% didn't: http://www.totalregistration.net/AP-Exam-Registration-Service/2015-AP-Exam-Score-Distributions.php http://www.totalregistration.net/AP-Exam-Registration-Servic...
- rajacombinator 10y agoWow that is surprising.
- chillacy 10y agoIf you're surprised by this, then your mental model of the world isn't correct. Might be time to re-calibrate your expectations if you (like I admittedly did) went to school in a nice neighborhood where 90%+ get a 5 in calc AB.
- ramblerman 10y agoThis is snobbish at best. Apart from the fact that there are various social and economic barriers it also isn't easy for everyone. Perhaps you are biased from being surrounded by developers but It's akin to me (a non farmer) making a blanket statement like "Surely it isn't so hard to grow a tomato. Why are all these people in Africa starving?"
- gonzo 10y agoMy son attends LASA in Austin. His calc teacher has a 97% rate for his students scoring a 4 or 5 over 15 years. This includes a few students who didn't take the test. (My son got a '5' on the BC calc AP.)