orichalcum: (Default)
posted by [personal profile] orichalcum at 02:29pm on 15/10/2007 under
So, the NYC public school system is using a new pilot system in which high school students who get a 5 on an AP Exam will win $1000, $750 for a 4, and $500 for a 3. They're starting it out in several low-income, dominantly minority schools, but plan to expand it if it proves successful.

I'm curious as to people's reactions, because I have really mixed feelings about this (and not just because, gee, $11,500 would have been nice when I was 17. Heck, I wouldn't sneer at it now.) Incentives that push students to take more challenging courses and stretch themselves are really good things. It's hard to convince teenagers that yes, being prepared for college and getting into as good a college a possible for you really does matter in the rest of your life, whereas cash is easily understood. Some of the proponents argue that this might enable students to spend time studying rather than working an afterschool job.

That said, it's a big gamble for those students. What essay you happen to get on an AP Exam can make a tremendous difference in your score, and all the cramming in the world sometimes doesn't matter. Also, to a certain degree you're rewarding test-taking skills, not hard work and intelligence. Lots of folks are much better at dealing with the stress and intensity of a 3-hour exam than others, and paying you for that when there are already other rewards associated with it seems like adding insult to injury.

As with any high-stakes gamble, it seems like it would also encourage cheating of various sorts. My high school teacher, who was terrific, was one of the teachers who wrote the A.P. U..S. History exam every year. She never told us what was going to be on it, of course, yet somehow, we were always especially well prepared for the essay questions that year. Our class consistently scored higher than the other A.P. U.S. History class. Maybe that's because we were in the top track and better students, but maybe not. I had to take my A.P. Biology exam late and on a typewriter because I had gotten strep throat and sliced my finger open two days before the exam. I took it in a small office room, alone. I could easily have cheated, although I didn't.

So, what do you think? Would you have taken more A.P.s or studied harder if you were getting money for it? Is this a slippery slope?
Music:: Cash for the Merchandise
Mood:: 'tired' tired
location: home
orichalcum: (Pompeii)
posted by [personal profile] orichalcum at 09:59am on 11/04/2007 under
First, and unrelatedly, wow is it snowing here, in that wet snow kinda way. Apparently, this storm will hit the NE tomorrow, so be warned; tomorrow will be very icky for many of you. Apparently, it might snow during the Quest game; I'm sure that will be fun.

What I'm actually writing about is some mixed feelings I've been having after reading a couple of NYTimes articles about various of the different small, charter-type public schools that have sprung up in NYC in the past few years under the Bloomberg administration. These high schools are often focused on one particular area and serve as magnets for students particularly interested in that subject, as well as students who wind up there randomly due to the lottery.

So, I have no particular problem with the "math and science" schools, or even the "law and justice" schools. But a Food and Finance High School where nearly all the classes are centered around culinary and restaurant management skills? A Sports Professions High School? The High School for Hospitality Management? A Fashion Industries High School? These seem awfully, well, vocational to me. And maybe I'm wrong, and there are lots of 14-year-olds who know that they want to be a chef or a fashion designer or a baseball manager when they grow up. But...I feel like the point of high school is to give everyone the same general foundation, so that, when they're adults and actually have slightly more of a clue, they can pursue a wide variety of career paths. Theoretically, everyone has several years of math and world and U.S history and English and biology and chemistry and so forth.

I worry that by sending some students to the "Math and Science" high school and others to the Sports Professions High School, we are creating even more of a default class system in the public schools than tracking by academic achievement did. Will elite liberal arts colleges treat students from the High School for Hospitality Management in the same way as students from the High School for Law, Advocacy, and Community Justice?

This isn't an area where I have a strong opinion, and so I'm curious to hear from others, particularly people who either did go to magnet schools or who knew very early what career they wanted to pursue. (To be fair, I wanted to be an archaeologist since I was 9, and have only deviated a few degrees from that in the subsequent decades.)
location: Evanston
Music:: Science Genius Girl
Mood:: 'busy' busy

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