Assuming he's competing against only other applicants who apply at the same time, they will all be in the same boat, and will only know their scores, not their Commended/NMSF status. Presumably, the college only cares about the score: consider two applicants, who are otherwise exactly identical, but from different states. One has a 200 PSAT, the other 201. If the student with the 200 happened to be a semifinalist, and the 201 wasn't, the school couldn't hold that against the higher-scoring student. Since the "commended" numbers are the same, no matter what state you are in, it seems like you shouldn't need to put it down -- they will know everyone's PSAT scores, and what the "commended" range is. So, I'd just put down the score, and not worry about it.

"Homework" as in assignments to be turned in, graded, and part of your final grade? Or, "homework" as in "any academic activity outside of class"?

And I have to strongly agree with your disagreement. Literature students need to be reading outside their classroom, English/History students need to be writing essays outside the classroom, Math students need to be working problem sets outside the classroom, Foreign language students need to be memorizing vocabulary and paradigms outside the classroom, etc. etc. If all work had to be done in the classroom, you couldn't get half of what needs to be done in high school accomplished. Moreover, the vital life lessons of independence, planning and internal discipline aren't taught, which are probably bigger problems in the long run.

I must confess that I did not watch the whole hour long video (yet). I do love, though, what he said in the beginning, which is that he (erroneously) originally thought that one of the most important things about teaching a class was choosing the right textbook. I think that's a lesson a lot of us could take take to heart, especially those of us who are "curriculum junkies", or always looking for a silver bullet by selecting a different textbook.

Some families feel strongly that TVs should not be in bedrooms. Other families don't. However, I would be more concerned that you don't want TVs in bedrooms, but your dc know they can go behind your back to their uncle in order to break your family rules.

I would also humbly point out that screen time before bed time is a prominent cause of all kinds of sleep problems.

Studying his biography isn't too important, but the history of the War of the Roses might be, if you are reading some of the history plays.

Certainly, we all suffer from the Lake Wobegon problem, where every school I've ever heard of is somehow above average in some way. I guess my problem is I'm not sure what's objective anymore. GPA sure isn't. With all the focus on "teaching to the test", I'm not sure SAT/ACT scores are that indicative of the overall strength of a school. In this thread, we just learned that number of AP classes offered doesn't mean much. I think it is possible to learn a lot about a school by asking direct questions of current students, but you need to ask carefully directed questions. Not just "is your school good", or "do you like your teacher", but "what are you reading in English Lit"? "How much reading is there in English Lit", or "How often does your Spanish teach speak in English", "How much writing do you get to do?"

I think your radar is spot on here. Ultimately, the proof of education is in the pudding. It is easy to get caught up in the trap of testing and numbers, but in the end we're talking about people here. If you really want to know how well someone is being educated, the best way is to simply talk with them. We get a lot of chances to interact with local high school kids, via babysitting, club sports, church, etc., and just a couple of casual questions about schoolwork, favorite books read in school, most interesting class, college plans, etc. reveal a lot more than a test score. Of course, that kind of subjective information takes a lot more work to come by.

I'm not quite sure what you are getting at here? BC Calculus has the highest "pass" rate (3 or higher) of any of the popular tests, at 80%, though three times as many students took English Language than BC Calc. Even though 18,000 high schools offered at least one AP test, that doesn't mean that all 18,000 offered BC Calc. You can't say that 3 kids per school passed BC calc. It would be interesting to see how many kids enrolled in any given AP class actually sat for the exam.

There's a movement to have public schools offer a lot of AP classes now, but having the classes doesn't prove much in terms of rigor. I'd want to know how many kids are passing the AP exams, and with which grades. If all the kids are getting 1's on their AP exams, it doesn't say much for the AP classes. If they are all getting 5's, that says something else.

I think there's an interesting question here beyond the immediate Latin question, and that is how much input a high school age student should have in choosing their own curriculum. Also, most colleges would prefer to see an applicant go deeper in one or maybe two languages, rather than take a year or two in many. The ability to test out of a language requirement in college is a nice bonus.

Apparently, the test in question is the FCAT, a test mandated in Florida. Here's a sample math question from the 10th grade (!) test: And, they get to use calculators.

While it is refreshing to see a school board member take on the testing culture with this kind of publicity stunt, it is depressing to see so little analysis or thought placed in the result. From the article, it seems like his major complaint is the content of the tests. But, I would challenge himto come up with a relatively short test, multiple choice (so it can be graded quickly and cheaply), that would determine whether any given applicant would be worthy of college admission. I can't think of a single "good" question for such a test. I'd love to be able to ask him what he would consider a valid question for this test. I just looked at the test in question, and the questions all seem very easy to me, they all seem like things high school students should know. I wouldn't consider this FCAT test to be one for college admission, rather for high school graduation, but those should be very different things. I'd much rather see an essay component -- defend an original position, compare two contrasting opinions, then just a simple test. Life is not a multiple choice test.

I hear conflicting evidence on this subject all the time. I suspect that was is really going on is there is a much greater difference between the high end of the spectrum of graduating seniors end and the low end than there used to be. At the high end, the "bright" kids are doing so much more work than I ever did. Graduating with ten or more AP classes, taking AP classes as high school freshman(!), participating in many extracurricular activities, not just sports, but all kinds of honor societies, etc. etc. etc. Maybe these kids at the top aren't learning much more, who can tell? But they certainly are doing much more. But for whatever reason (and I don't want to speculate about why in this post), the lower (and maybe the middle?) kids seem to slide by, getting passed on from grade to grade without learning the minimum amount of what they should.

Forgive my confusion, but what activities do you consider "teaching" that aren't presenting new materials or tutoring to verify that the students understand what was presented? I wouldn't expect every single one of the hundreds of thousands of teachers (homeschooling parents included) to be superb lecturers, but because of newer technology, I certainly do expect superb lectures to be available at a very modest cost.

It is a small thing, but I wouldn't call it "Theater Appreciation". Anything "Appreciation" sounds fluffy to me. I might call it "Theater", or "Literature of Theater" or "Intro to Theater", or something like that.

It is actually a very interesting approach to education. Ignore the particular benefits or philosophy of the Khan Academy lectures for the moment. The idea is that instead of having the teacher deliver a canned lecture during class, and students doing homework at home, the situation is reversed. The kids can watch the canned lecture online at home, and do their problem sets in class, asking for help from the teacher when they get stuck or don't understand something, when they are actually working on the problems.

The VW van is actually a Dodge Grand Caravan with a VW nameplate on it, so the build quality, handling, (and even the build country!) are completely different from the VW cars. For this reason alone, I would not buy one new, rather I'd buy the original Dodge/Chrysler model, and not pay extra for the VW badge.

This happens all the time. Just one link

Note that Rush didn't attack the student at all. He attacked the college for not being upfront about the utility of the degree. Now, I think both sides are missing data, and thus talking past each other. I'd like to see hard numbers, by year, of the fate of undergraduate classics majors. Perhaps a classics major is no worse off than any other degree, but the poor economy has sunk all boats?

If this English teacher teaches six classes, and 30+ kids per class, and assigned weekly essays, that would mean she would need to grade 200+ essays a week. If she spent just two minutes grading each one (which doesn't seem like nearly enough time), that totals almost seven hours a week just grading essays. I can see why good public school teachers burn out quickly. I bet the real reason for in-class essays is to give the teacher time to catch up on grading and other prep work. And, of course, you are correct: you can't learn to write without writing frequently.

There are a couple of sites out there like this. We like http://www.librarything.com, but there is also http://www.goodreads.com . With both of these sites, you can tell them which the books you have read, and it will make recommendations. Library thing has both automatically generated recommendations (which can be hit or miss), and human-generated read alikes. I find it very handy to have a list of all the books each dc has read. Frequently, another parent will ask for a book recommendation, and I won't be able to think of one, but by going back to the list of books each child has read, I'll remember some favorite.

What kind of time commitment are we talking about here? An hour a day? One a week? If I were short on time, I don't know that I'd read Caesar in translation. His primary value is that he writes in very clear Latin, and is fun to translate. Plutarch is a very good choice, as so much English literature, especially Shakespeare is derived from his works. Sadly, there's no good English translation of Plutarch. Which translation are you going to use? Finally, I might add some Seneca, he is a lot of fun to read, and eminently quotable.

I just wanted to say that I love this approach. It is too easy to think only about the latest and greatest photoshop and digital skills which will be fleeting as technology keeps changing. Having a good eye, thinking about composition, and creative seeing are skills which will last a lifetime and transcend technologies.