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AP Class/Exam WWYD?


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I'll going to be somewhat vague because I'm not sure I want to "out" my student or the provider.

My student is currently in an AP class, the bulk of which occurred during the first semester.  I have said student signed up for another class, same provider but different teacher, that meets during the second semester.  The topics are related, and my original thinking was that taking the second class would help reinforce the first so that he was ready for both AP exams in May.

Student is currently getting a high grade in the class, however in my estimation is in NO WAY prepared for the AP exam.  I understand that additional studying will happen before May, but I am watching the current situation and thinking that in order to get a 4/5 on the exam this will be all the student can study until May.  Student has grown to hate the topic.  Originally I thought that the problem was with the student who has a tendency to assume that if he has heard something once he does not need to study it again.  I assumed that he needed to try harder and pay closer attention.  Then I started doing the work alongside him to see if I could get a grasp on what the problem is.  Holy heck.  Hours and hours of time are being spent on each assignment - maybe this is normal, maybe he/I are just not that smart, whatever - it seems insane and soul killing.  It also feels like no learning is taking place, just a constant hustle to stay afloat and hopefully pass the exam.

At one point, on one assignment, student had no clue.  Both of student's parents spent multiple hours with the textbook and had no clue.  Parents advised student to ask teacher, during office hours, how to approach the problem.  Not what the answer was.  Not to do the problem for the student.  Just for some context about how to go about finding the answer.  Teacher told student that he needed to figure it out on his own.  

Parent reached out to teacher who took many weeks to reply.  Fine, holidays.  Parent said "student does not in any way seem ready for AP exam, am concerned about student's ability to be successful".  Teacher replied that student is doing fine in class and that he has no suggestions.

At this point I'm unclear about how to proceed.  I think its a given that I cancel part 2, right?  Do I have him finish part 1 and not take the exam?  Finish part one and study constantly until May and hope for the best?  Student is a very hard worker, and very smart, although not genius level smart.  He has taken other college level courses and understands that they entail more work - but this seems like more work without more benefit.  Additionally, I am frustrated by the responses from teacher.  I do not want my student to be spoon-fed the information, but teacher's response seems dismissive and rude.  

I'm mad that I led us down this AP path.  But a lot of work has been put into this class and I don't really want to walk away from that.  WWYD?

 

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Are the two parts connected?  A different teacher might be a better fit, so I wouldn’t necessarily cancel the second class. 

If this were my child, I would continue with the prep for the exam. You’ve already paid for it and you don’t have to report the score or send it until you want credit from the school he goes to. If this is an experienced teacher who has had good results from students, it may all come out alright in the end. I can’t imagine any AP exam that would require constant studying for the next few months.  Why do you think that? Have you given him a practice m/c ? ( And, no, he doesn’t have to get 100 to do well—there is somewhere online where you can put in different combos of m/c and essays to see what scores you get— the practice books have scoring, too)

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I found many of the online classes (including AP) to be extremely time-consuming with little pay-off.  (There was one time when a student posed a question and the teacher told them to use google.). 

Since your child is not getting much out of the class, I would drop it and self-study the material.  If it is not too late to sign up as an AP teacher, I would do that so you would have access to some online multiple choice questions and guidance on the topics your child still needs to master.

Good luck!

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51 minutes ago, freesia said:

Are the two parts connected?  A different teacher might be a better fit, so I wouldn’t necessarily cancel the second class. 

If this were my child, I would continue with the prep for the exam. You’ve already paid for it and you don’t have to report the score or send it until you want credit from the school he goes to. If this is an experienced teacher who has had good results from students, it may all come out alright in the end. I can’t imagine any AP exam that would require constant studying for the next few months.  Why do you think that? Have you given him a practice m/c ? ( And, no, he doesn’t have to get 100 to do well—there is somewhere online where you can put in different combos of m/c and essays to see what scores you get— the practice books have scoring, too)

 

The two parts are connected insofar as they are the same topic from two different perspectives.

I'm happy to eat the cost of the exam, I just don't know what is the right decision.  I do not care if the AP exam leads to any college credits, I got sucked in by a desire to "show rigor" and the idea that student would like the topic.  I think that it is going to require constant studying because currently the homework is past FR questions and they are taking hours.  To me the fact that so much time has already been invested with so little understanding means that a LOT of additional time will be required and it will all be in service to passing the exam.  I do not know the material so while I can drill/coach/test prep with him its not like it will be some amazing tour of the topic.  It will only be test prep, which seems a bit ridiculous.  I have not given him a full practice exam, I will do that.

 

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59 minutes ago, freesia said:

 A different teacher might be a better fit, so I wouldn’t necessarily cancel the second class. 

 

 

I guess also I'm concerned because this is the teacher everyone likes.  If the other teacher is worse...

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54 minutes ago, alewife said:

I found many of the online classes (including AP) to be extremely time-consuming with little pay-off.  (There was one time when a student posed a question and the teacher told them to use google.). 

Since your child is not getting much out of the class, I would drop it and self-study the material.  If it is not too late to sign up as an AP teacher, I would do that so you would have access to some online multiple choice questions and guidance on the topics your child still needs to master.

Good luck!

 

I'm really very frustrated with myself and "the system".  I am naturally a box checking person and I felt like I was doing the student a disservice to not include the APs.  But my own insecurity means that we are giving up valuable time (with which we could be experiencing real depth and joy) to play the College Board game, which may or may not help anyway.  I have found some online classes to provide real benefit in terms of skills, discussion, time management, feedback, etc.  I'm flabbergasted that a teacher when asked appropriately for help would not try to encourage the student in the direction of learning.  Isn't that the goal?  For the student to learn?

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Wow, it sounds like you've ended up in a tough class. I find myself wondering whether the class isn't doing overkill with the assignments and trying to achieve more mastery than is expected on the exam? You can lose quite a few points on both the multiple choice and free response and still come out just fine. What percentage you can miss varies depending on the exam, but none of them require anything close to perfection/mastery.

I agree with the advice of taking a look at a prep book (maybe a Princeton Review prep book for the exam? Barron's can sometimes be on the harder side for many AP exams). Maybe a diagnostic test there would give a better sense whether your student is retaining any of the material. If your student is lost, maybe go over one or two of the chapters in the prep book to see if any of the material makes sense. My DS likes the style of the PR prep book chapters for refreshing the information and finds the explanations very clear.

It might also help to read a little online about the particular exam you are preparing for. Some exams (some of the history ones maybe) are considered bigger time sucks than others. Some exams are considered to be "lighter" in terms of total time commitment to pass (maybe like the econ ones (people say those can be single semester to cover) and human geography) and tend to be recommended as good "starter" tests for younger students.

I don't know if any of this is helpful. I hope you guys find that your student learned more than you think when you take a look at an actual exam. Maybe the class expectations are a little off? Best of luck!

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48 minutes ago, UmmIbrahim said:

Wow, it sounds like you've ended up in a tough class. I find myself wondering whether the class isn't doing overkill with the assignments and trying to achieve more mastery than is expected on the exam? You can lose quite a few points on both the multiple choice and free response and still come out just fine. What percentage you can miss varies depending on the exam, but none of them require anything close to perfection/mastery.

I agree with the advice of taking a look at a prep book (maybe a Princeton Review prep book for the exam? Barron's can sometimes be on the harder side for many AP exams). Maybe a diagnostic test there would give a better sense whether your student is retaining any of the material. If your student is lost, maybe go over one or two of the chapters in the prep book to see if any of the material makes sense. My DS likes the style of the PR prep book chapters for refreshing the information and finds the explanations very clear.

It might also help to read a little online about the particular exam you are preparing for. Some exams (some of the history ones maybe) are considered bigger time sucks than others. Some exams are considered to be "lighter" in terms of total time commitment to pass (maybe like the econ ones (people say those can be single semester to cover) and human geography) and tend to be recommended as good "starter" tests for younger students.

I don't know if any of this is helpful. I hope you guys find that your student learned more than you think when you take a look at an actual exam. Maybe the class expectations are a little off? Best of luck!

 

I think that the teacher is expecting more than the exam figuring that they will be over prepared.  However in our case it is backfiring and feeling like we are trying to nail jello to a tree.  

Thanks for the info comparing the books.  Sounds like a diagnostic test is the way to go.  

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1 hour ago, ScoutTN said:

Whatever you do about the exam, let the provider know how the teacher responded to the apppeal for help. 

We have used three online providers and I would be utterly shocked to get that kind of response from any of the teachers my students have had. 

 

The teacher is the provider.  😬

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If the provider is not a credit granting school, then you might want to consider having your son take the AP exam and then if he gets a bad score, simply dropping the AP designation from the course name on your transcript (and call it something like "Advanced [Course Name]" instead).  

19 hours ago, Caraway said:

Hours and hours of time are being spent on each assignment - maybe this is normal, maybe he/I are just not that smart, whatever - it seems insane and soul killing.

If it is the AP course I think it is, then my son's experience (at the local public high school) is that he was able to do all of the work in class (except reading the textbook), not do any outside studying for the exam, and still get a 4.  The teacher used a flipped classroom model, so they did all of the problems in class where they would have support.  It worked amazingly well.

ETA: I should mention that I credit the teacher's methods for how well my son did on the exam.  From what I understand, the previous year the teacher had done it the regular way, having the students do the problems at home, and the exam scores were a disaster.

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If you go to the College Board and sign up to be an official AP teacher, you will have access to old exams and graded exams so you can see what a 4 or 5 response looks like.  That will give a better idea of how prepared your student is.  You can also use the materials there to self-study if you decide to the drop the class.  

Have you fished for some feedback from other students in the class?  

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I've been disappointed in AP course status, even test status.  (from our experience, anyway)  That said, I do not know much about how the testing is recorded.  Do you have a choice on whether or not to send the test score to colleges?  So, if he does poorly, can you just choose not to send it?  What does your ds think?  Does he want to take it?

Some subjects you can study on your own.  My ds was able to obtain the syllabus of AP European History, for example, brushed up on his own and did well on the test.  (He didn't take the course, just the test.)  My dd took an AP Chemistry course and took the test along with everyone else in the class.  I don't know if anyone in the class got a decent score.  (That seems to say something about the teacher!)  In any event, it didn't hurt her from getting into the college of her choice.

So, I guess if it's something he's interested in doing, why not give the test a try.  If it's a class he can study up on on his own, he could always do that.  Or, he could just take the test and see what happens.  AP courses and scores have not been a make or break for my kids.

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That response from the teacher is - to me - the worst bit of the whole thing. It's deeply insufficient to tell a struggling student to just figure it out. That's horrible teaching.

Everything else... it's so hard to evaluate. The teacher's overall methods might work well for most kids, just not yours. Since you also don't have a great grasp on this specific subject, it's possible that the teacher is right and he is more prepared than you think. Honestly, if it's an exam with a lot of FRQ's or DBQ's, then I think it's possible that you'll have trouble fully evaluating those on a practice exam, even with the answers in the book. Can you find an outside someone with some experience to help you look at it once he takes a practice exam? Preferably an adult and a teacher... But even just a student who did well on it recently could be okay to give you a sense.

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It sounded like AP macro/micro. If you are referring to those, they are not at all the same, IMO. I'd stick with the 2nd class & stop prepping the first. Obviously, whatever the prof did 1st semester didn't work for your kid, plus now your kid hates the topic. FRQs shouldn't take hours, IMO, if you have a good base. I'd drop the idea of taking the AP exam & spend my time elsewhere.

I don't remember if you said what grade your student is in? If he has some colleges he's looking at, you can see if they accept CLEP for that subject. If so, it might be worth your time to have him prep for the CLEP (IMO, often easier to prep for than the AP exam) to still get "credit". But, I'd likely just let him drop 1st semester's topic & move onto the 2nd class.

Also, stay involved to make sure this class isn't confusing like the first one was. It is possible your kid is finally showing a learning disability that he was able to cover for up until now.

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4 hours ago, RootAnn said:

It sounded like AP macro/micro. If you are referring to those, they are not at all the same, IMO. I'd stick with the 2nd class & stop prepping the first.

 

If it is AP macro/micro, DS15 who was sick (outdoor allergies) during the AP exam week last year found Jacob Clifford YouTube videos very helpful. He played the video, went through past year FRQs solutions, played the video again, and somehow survived with a 4 (micro) and 5 (macro). That was one evening/night of prep for each exam as he had AP statistics exam in between, so three consecutive days of AP exams. He did both courses over summer in 2018 so he needed the “crash course” style of review.

FRQ link for macro https://apstudents.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-macroeconomics/assessment

FRQ link for micro https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-microeconomics/exam

Jacob Clifford Macroeconomics - Everything you need to know (29:58 mins) https://youtu.be/MKO1icFVtDc

Jacob Clifford Microeconomics - Everything you need to know (28:55 mins) https://youtu.be/1UxA6JzoT-4

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On 1/9/2020 at 2:10 PM, Arcadia said:

 

If it is AP macro/micro, DS15 who was sick (outdoor allergies) during the AP exam week last year found Jacob Clifford YouTube videos very helpful. He played the video, went through past year FRQs solutions, played the video again, and somehow survived with a 4 (micro) and 5 (macro). That was one evening/night of prep for each exam as he had AP statistics exam in between, so three consecutive days of AP exams. He did both courses over summer in 2018 so he needed the “crash course” style of review.

FRQ link for macro https://apstudents.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-macroeconomics/assessment

FRQ link for micro https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-microeconomics/exam

Jacob Clifford Macroeconomics - Everything you need to know (29:58 mins) https://youtu.be/MKO1icFVtDc

Jacob Clifford Microeconomics - Everything you need to know (28:55 mins) https://youtu.be/1UxA6JzoT-4

My ds enjoyed these as well and used them (along with the $10 packet) to CLEP out of macro and microeconomics.

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