C/P: Interesting article about college standards and student behavior

[matrips]

A large university near us un-enrolled many incoming freshman from their registered math classes this year, and others classes as well to get them to 12 credits (because of the intense new math course), and enrolled them in a new math program they developed.  They had been finding so many kids unprepared for college level math even though they had supposedly had it in high school.  So it’s an accelerated and intense math course with lots of support and tutoring, so kids could learn math properly and the way the university expected.  When you master what you need, you may move on.  The goal is to get all students ready for Calculus 1 within 2 semesters.  (Calc 1 at the college level).  It’s received good reviews so far, even though at first people were upset about it.  And this school does a math placement exam for all students as well, but I think students were able to place out if they had certain AP scores.  
 

(I’m sure this math program was directed at engineering and comp sci type students who needed higher levels of math, and not other majors. The school’s goal is to keep students in school, in their major, by preemptively providing help, and keeping them on pace to graduate in 4 years.)

Edited October 5, 2022 by matrips

[Heartstrings]

9 hours ago, Murphy101 said:

think it’s a horrible thing to introduce any of it before age 15 as a primary mode of education imo. 

I have family in a good school district and the kids are on iPads or chrome books in kindergarten.  They are expected to log so many minutes in different apps during the week. The  Reflex Math app is doing the heavy lifting in math instruction.  It’s crazy.  

[Heartstrings]

1 hour ago, matrips said:

They had been finding so many kids unprepared for college level math even though they had supposedly had it in high school.  So it’s an accelerated and intense math course with lots of support and tutoring, so kids could learn math properly and the way the university expected.

That sounds like a great program.  I do wonder at what point these complaints from colleges trickle down to k-12, or do they? I wonder if private school students are doing better than public school kids in this regard? 

[whitestavern]

A copy of the students’ letter:
 

https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:492b3cfe-fac5-3dac-b756-409b9a2237a5#pageNum=4

[EKS]

11 hours ago, Frances said:

I’m not sure I agree. Let’s say for example there are 100 students in the class and 10 of them have scores of 90 and above and then the rest of the scores are clustered around 50-70. Under the scenario I described, 5 students would get an A and 20 would get a B, but of those Bs, 5 would have scored 90% or better and the remaining 15 would have scored around 70%. Arbitrarily saying x % of students will get a certain grade regardless of the distribution of scores or actual percentages makes no sense and is just plan stupid, in my opinion.

I said "and the professor insists on doing the 5%-can-get-As thing."  Your example has a high cluster, but the professor is still insisting that only 5% can get As.  If the scores aren't at least somewhat normally distributed, it doesn't make sense to make to make decisions about them as though they are.

That said, what is so special about 90%?  

[EKS]

10 hours ago, Frances said:

My son also took a CC math class during high school that used Pearsons or another one of the major vendors. The problems used ridiculously complicated numbers, rather than focusing on basic principles. I was able to help him with the wrong format issues due to my background and he got an A, but the whole thing was an incredible waste and it was the one and only CC class he took.

11 hours ago, Heartstrings said:

I know my son took a pre-Calc class at the community college, regular DE he was the only high school kid, pre Covid.  I thought it would be great to have a teacher available to him.  Turned out that 100% of the work and tests was Pearson online and the teacher had no control over it or insight into how it worked. When he repeatedly ran into the same issue, an error saying “answer is correct but in the wrong format” she shrugged and said she didn’t know what it wanted either. The math lab tutoring couldn’t help either because he had the correct answers.  The online part wouldn’t give him credit unless he got the format right. He had to withdraw before he failed as did many others.  An old school class with pen and paper would have been much better.  That instructor probably complained about how many kids weren’t prepared for her class and had to drop mid term.

I have recently done several math classes that use the Pearson online thing.  It is possible to learn how to input the answers the way the program wants them, but it takes an extraordinary amount of time.

The complicated numbers thing is totally ridiculous!  Frequently the same problem will have several versions, some of which are extremely easy (and sometimes actually miss testing the concept being assessed) and others that can take forever to deal with because the numbers are so wonky.  And here's the thing--if tests are done using the system, different students will get different numbers, so some students will get the way too easy numbers and others will get the difficult numbers.  There is no partial credit.  It is beyond unfair.

I am certain that most older instructors have never even worked through the problems in the system.  They choose problems from the physical textbook to assign in the system, and they don't really realize how different the problems can be.  

If this is My Math Lab you are talking about, there is a way to see and do all of the problems in the system.  If a student is having a problem with formatting, they can go into this area of the website and do the problems there to discover what the system wants without getting their score docked.  It's called the "study plan."  I used to do as many problems as possible in the study plan simply because I wanted to discover any that had formatting issues before the exam.  I don't know if it's possible for the instructor to disable this feature or not or if it changes depending on the textbook being used, but if it's there, it's extraordinarily valuable.

[Murphy101]

25 minutes ago, Heartstrings said:

I have family in a good school district and the kids are on iPads or chrome books in kindergarten.  They are expected to log so many minutes in different apps during the week. The  Reflex Math app is doing the heavy lifting in math instruction.  It’s crazy.  

Yep. I see that here too. It’s awful. And I really do believe it is harming brain development. I’m almost to the point of calling it abuse severe enough to cause brain damage.  I’m not talking the don’t spend too much time in front of the tv worry of the 90s.  I’m not worried about even 1 hour a day for a kindergartner. We are talking 5 year olds who are being forced to endure 5+ hours a day in front of a screen. It’s affecting their vision, their back, their hands, their emotional development and their brain development. And worst of all, we KNOW sit doesn’t even make them better academically. I think it’s flat out cruel. 

23 minutes ago, Heartstrings said:

That sounds like a great program.  I do wonder at what point these complaints from colleges trickle down to k-12, or do they? I wonder if private school students are doing better than public school kids in this regard? 

It does and it doesn’t. Here the result of that is lots of pushing for college and trade class as DE, often by literally having credit programs built at the high school to offer courses. It makes parents feel better bc look little Timmy can’t be doing that bad if instead of taking British lit in 11th grade he is taking comp 1 for DE or “criminal justice” at the trade school. Except these courses have ONLY high schoolers in them. And the material covered and expectations of exams and behavior of students is no where near the standards of an actual credit course with adults.

It’s expensive to taxpayers fraud as far as I can tell. And it still doesn’t address that even at these lower standards, less than 20% of students can even take those courses.  And it doesn’t address that the biggest problem with a supposedly NT high schooler who can’t get an 18 in reading or maths on the ACT is the education they haven’t gotten since 4th grade.

I’m willing to believe we have a crazy amount of NT kids who actually are not NT. Idk why. The water. Electronics. Idk. Gene pooling. Idk. But I don’t think it’s all that. I think most of the problem is flat out fraud in the education model. Bc the math isn’t adding up to anything other than something is very very wrong waaaay before 11th grade or freshmen year of college. 

[pinball]

19 hours ago, Laura Corin said:

I have definitely seen lack of acceptance that not everyone is suited for every degree. I suspect it is partly a small-fish-big-pond problem  - the students at the selective university where I work were used to being top of the class at their high school. 

Recently a student was told by their academic advisor that they had failed a prerequisite module  - on the second attempt  - and would have to change major. They contacted many members of staff and cried in their offices, unable to accept that if they couldn't pass this module, they wouldn't pass the next and the one after. We were doing them a favour by saying 'No'.

The University has walked the precipice between being sympathetic about pandemic disruption and holding the line on academic standards. In general the proportion of grade levels has not changed too much.

This rings true to me…the lack of acceptance.

To use this idea as a jumping off point:

Younger generations appear loathe to accept the status quo in general. Norms aren’t norms anymore and there is the belief that change is always possible. 

It is not surprising that the idea that *one class* could derail one’s dreams of becoming a (doctor, nurse, accountant, whatever) is simply not acceptable to a generation that believes anything can change. 
 

and SHOULD change, simply because they want it to.

[Heartstrings]

6 minutes ago, EKS said:

If this is My Math Lab you are talking about, there is a way to see and do all of the problems in the system.  If a student is having a problem with formatting, they can go into this area of the website and do the problems there to discover what the system wants without getting their score docked.  It's called the "study plan."  I used to do as many problems as possible in the study plan simply because I wanted to discover any that had formatting issues before the exam.  I don't know if it's possible for the instructor to disable this feature or not or if it changes depending on the textbook being used, but if it's there, it's extraordinarily valuable.

I’ll remember that if I can ever get him to go back to college.  Not to be whiny but he had such a terrible experience with that class, especially with the teacher not being to offer help whatsoever, thst he refuses to go college now that he’s graduated high school.  A bright kid who writes code for hours in his free time now absolutely refuses to get a college degree.  He’s trying to break into the field through alternative routes.  It’s so disheartening.  
On a grander scale that's going to mean less educated Americans and more need to either outsource good jobs or bring in people from other countries to do them.  Maybe the children of the very wealthy will be employable in good job, but not regular working class kids.  

[Innisfree]

22 minutes ago, whitestavern said:

A copy of the students’ letter:
 

https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:492b3cfe-fac5-3dac-b756-409b9a2237a5#pageNum=4

Thanks for posting that; it’s interesting to see the actual complaints.

 I find I’m sympathetic to the students about the fact that, no surprise, some students have more challenging situations than others, and learning during a pandemic is harder than learning under better circumstances.

 I’m less sympathetic about their conclusion that the class should take less time and be less challenging. The need to master the material before going farther in their studies hasn’t changed.

Some inequities aren’t going to be solved within the context of individual classes. If the argument were for completely publicly (or university) funded education, to help erase inequities, that would make sense, even if it were controversial. An argument for better preparation at the (already publicly, if unevenly and often inadequately, funded) K-12 level makes sense. Dumbing down an essential prerequisite to medical studies does not make sense.

[EKS]

Interestingly, it appears that the prerequisites for o-chem at NYU can be fulfilled by getting either a 4 or a 5 on the AP chemistry exam.  I wonder if that is playing a role in any of this.  

[Innisfree]

3 minutes ago, EKS said:

Interestingly, it appears that the prerequisites for o-chem at NYU can be fulfilled by getting either a 4 or a 5 on the AP chemistry exam.  I wonder if that is playing a role in any of this.  

That sounds likely.

[silver]

1 hour ago, whitestavern said:

A copy of the students’ letter:
 

https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:492b3cfe-fac5-3dac-b756-409b9a2237a5#pageNum=4

I read through this, and there are some valid points from the students. But I can't help but be amazed that they're complaining about having to spend "11-19 hours" doing a 5 credit hour course. That amount of time for a 5 credit hour course is typical, especially a lab science course. There seems to be unrealistic expectations. 

Also, the main complaint seems to be the lack of grace being given to students taking the course during a global pandemic. But the students are completely unforgiving and not extending grace to the professor and TAs that are also living in a pandemic. The professor, being in his 80s, was literally putting his life at risk to be teaching at that time (it sounds like it was a hybrid course, with some students virtual and some in person)--but no grace from the students for that. They whined about the extra time they put into the course by taking it virtually, yet gave no grace to the professor for the extra time he put in to getting videos recorded for them and (probably) learning new technology. 

I hope the letter they submitted to NYU was cleaned up and had a more professional tone than those notes.

[Innisfree]

2 minutes ago, silver said:

There seems to be unrealistic expectations. 

This exactly.

[Heartstrings]

7 minutes ago, Innisfree said:

This exactly.

That goes back to high school being too easy and grade inflation.  I never studied in high school. Even AP classes didn’t take much out of school time other than reading.  Suddenly needing to spend 20 hours a week on a class can be a real shock if you aren’t prepared.  
 

It’s also partially because so many kids have to work during college.  I’m not for lowering standards but standards written for a time when most kids didn’t work probably aren’t going to work the same once kids are working nearly full time through college.  I don’t have an answer to that though.  

[Murphy101]

17 minutes ago, silver said:

I read through this, and there are some valid points from the students. But I can't help but be amazed that they're complaining about having to spend "11-19 hours" doing a 5 credit hour course. That amount of time for a 5 credit hour course is typical, especially a lab science course. There seems to be unrealistic expectations. 

Also, the main complaint seems to be the lack of grace being given to students taking the course during a global pandemic. But the students are completely unforgiving and not extending grace to the professor and TAs that are also living in a pandemic. The professor, being in his 80s, was literally putting his life at risk to be teaching at that time (it sounds like it was a hybrid course, with some students virtual and some in person)--but no grace from the students for that. They whined about the extra time they put into the course by taking it virtually, yet gave no grace to the professor for the extra time he put in to getting videos recorded for them and (probably) learning new technology. 

I hope the letter they submitted to NYU was cleaned up and had a more professional tone than those notes.

This is exactly my take away too. 

3 minutes ago, Heartstrings said:

  It’s also partially because so many kids have to work during college.  I’m not for lowering standards but standards written for a time when most kids didn’t work probably aren’t going to work the same once kids are working nearly full time through college.  I don’t have an answer to that though.  

I have a proposal. The answer is to do away with nearly all general electives, which for the majority should have been covered prior to college imo.

We need to look at the domino affect of that.  If we need 14/15 year old to be able to handle comp 1, what must a 12/13 year old need to be able to do? And so forth reverse engineering of the education system. In my ideal with doing that, 15/16-18 would be a time of testing specializations. Take a carpentry course. Take a premed geared course.  Take physics or study more in-depth an aspect of history or language or literature.  Work paid pt in internships to shadow different employment options.

I’ve tried really hard to model this as best I can for my own kids with a true mixed bag of results given the system I have to work around and within and the students I have. But I think it would be a good starting point.

But the biggest problem to implementing has it is the prevailing attitude is not to work back from the goal but to just do away with the goal being education at all. 

[Heartstrings]

1 hour ago, Murphy101 said:

have a proposal. The answer is to do away with nearly all general electives, which for the majority should have been covered prior to college imo.

I agree with this even though it makes me sad.  I really believe it’s good to take a history, social science, science course as part of a well rounded program, but it’s so expensive at $1200+ per class.  Which is why it will never change, those electives and basics are cash cows, and it’s “how it’s always been done”.  

Edited October 5, 2022 by Heartstrings

[shawthorne44]

I am not one to knee-jerk think that other countries are doing things better than us (USA).  But, I think that the British have that right.   All the general knowledge should have been taken care of before college, and with genuine testing to prove that the grades aren't the PS version of mommy grades.  

 

[Innisfree]

6 minutes ago, shawthorne44 said:

I am not one to knee-jerk think that other countries are doing things better than us (USA).  But, I think that the British have that right.   All the general knowledge should have been taken care of before college, and with genuine testing to prove that the grades aren't the PS version of mommy grades.  

 

I was impressed by the idea, which came up in a recent thread, of studying biology, chemistry, and physics each year at the high school level, too. Our students would be far better prepared if we followed that model. It might require deciding who is on a college track sooner, though.

[Frances]

4 hours ago, EKS said:

I said "and the professor insists on doing the 5%-can-get-As thing."  Your example has a high cluster, but the professor is still insisting that only 5% can get As.  If the scores aren't at least somewhat normally distributed, it doesn't make sense to make to make decisions about them as though they are.

That said, what is so special about 90%?  

Pretty much every college and grad school class I took and taught had 90% and above as some sort of A for a grading scale.

[Arcadia]

36 minutes ago, Innisfree said:

I was impressed by the idea, which came up in a recent thread, of studying biology, chemistry, and physics each year at the high school level, too. Our students would be far better prepared if we followed that model. It might require deciding who is on a college track sooner, though.

The IB program structure is similar and doesn’t require kids to commit until 11th grade. Even then, my booksmart nephew took three core subjects at higher levels instead of four because he likes free time. They take six subjects for 11th and 12th at a mix of higher level and standard level. 

[EKS]

52 minutes ago, Frances said:

Pretty much every college and grad school class I took and taught had 90% and above as some sort of A for a grading scale.

Just because that was the case is not a reason that it has to be this way.  You can design a test where 80% or 50% or whatever would be an appropriate cutoff for an A. You can grade an essay using a numerical rubric that renders an adequate performance as failing (this actually happened in some of my education courses in graduate school).  I suspect that most colleges have certain defaults (like 90%+ is an A) that are rarely questioned.

I would also argue that the vast majority of educators have never thought deeply about grading.  I could list example after example of crazy grading practices in both my college and graduate school classes as well as my children's high school classes.

[Bootsie]

5 hours ago, EKS said:

I have recently done several math classes that use the Pearson online thing.  It is possible to learn how to input the answers the way the program wants them, but it takes an extraordinary amount of time.

The complicated numbers thing is totally ridiculous!  Frequently the same problem will have several versions, some of which are extremely easy (and sometimes actually miss testing the concept being assessed) and others that can take forever to deal with because the numbers are so wonky.  And here's the thing--if tests are done using the system, different students will get different numbers, so some students will get the way too easy numbers and others will get the difficult numbers.  There is no partial credit.  It is beyond unfair.

I am certain that most older instructors have never even worked through the problems in the system.  They choose problems from the physical textbook to assign in the system, and they don't really realize how different the problems can be.  

If this is My Math Lab you are talking about, there is a way to see and do all of the problems in the system.  If a student is having a problem with formatting, they can go into this area of the website and do the problems there to discover what the system wants without getting their score docked.  It's called the "study plan."  I used to do as many problems as possible in the study plan simply because I wanted to discover any that had formatting issues before the exam.  I don't know if it's possible for the instructor to disable this feature or not or if it changes depending on the textbook being used, but if it's there, it's extraordinarily valuable.

I have used Pearson My Labs in a number of situations.  Faculty have some latitude in what they allow as available as far as study plans, example problems, and hints.   One of the ways I have found the data entry to be problematic is for multi-step problems.  The answer may say to round to four decimal places, but it will be unclear if intermediate steps should be round to four decimal places, which can make a difference in your final answer.  

[Bootsie]

2 hours ago, Frances said:

Pretty much every college and grad school class I took and taught had 90% and above as some sort of A for a grading scale.

Where I teach there is no specific percentage that translates to an A; we have no published grading scale.  I can make 98% and above an A or 50% and above an A if I see fit (because there is nothing magic about "90" and it is a percent of something that is not standard and objective).  I have taught classes in which my final grade distribution was forced to be within a certain range.  

[ktgrok]

8 minutes ago, Frances said:

Depending on how it’s done, it can actually hurt good students. The most common sense way to do it, taught to me by my stats profs, is to look for natural breaks in the score distribution and assign grades to each group. And not give any grades lower than percentages would indicate. So for example, 90% and above is some type of A. The way my son’s first honors organic chemistry professor did it was to declare that only 5% of the class could get an A regardless of their test score, then 20% Bs, 50% Cs, 20% Ds, and 5% Fs, with no consideration of actual percentages. So there were students scoring 90% and above who got Bs in the class and it trickled down from there. Fortunately, he had a much, much better prof in every way for his last two terms of orgo and ended up taking an advanced orgo class from him his sophomore year.

same with mine

[Bootsie]

5 hours ago, silver said:

I read through this, and there are some valid points from the students. But I can't help but be amazed that they're complaining about having to spend "11-19 hours" doing a 5 credit hour course. That amount of time for a 5 credit hour course is typical, especially a lab science course. There seems to be unrealistic expectations. 

Also, the main complaint seems to be the lack of grace being given to students taking the course during a global pandemic. But the students are completely unforgiving and not extending grace to the professor and TAs that are also living in a pandemic. The professor, being in his 80s, was literally putting his life at risk to be teaching at that time (it sounds like it was a hybrid course, with some students virtual and some in person)--but no grace from the students for that. They whined about the extra time they put into the course by taking it virtually, yet gave no grace to the professor for the extra time he put in to getting videos recorded for them and (probably) learning new technology. 

I hope the letter they submitted to NYU was cleaned up and had a more professional tone than those notes.

I thought I had opened the wrong link.  What I saw was a list of notes/complaints--not a letter.  The 11-19 hours of work appeared to INCLUDE class attendance time--which if it were a four hour class with a one hour lab would be about 7 hours--so 11-19 hours TOTAL is not at all unreasonable.  In fact, only 11 hours would be LESS than I would expect.  

Many of the complaints did not seem to have anything particular to do with the professor.  Things like the university suggesting students purchase tablets so that they can write answers to exams, students complaining that they can't spend that money, and then the professor having to use multiple choice questions instead of open-ended questions isn't really about the professor's teaching.  The students are complaining about societal issues (Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ concerns, etc.) that are not about this professor.  This professor can't pass students who know less (and have them admitted to med school) because of these societal issues.  (I see no where that they were saying that the professor was making racist or insensitive comments.)  As far as the complaints about lectures from Wednesday night not being posted until Friday, there may have been issues beyond the professors control.   I had ZOOM videos of lectures but could not post them until there were transcripts of them available--and it could take 24-48 hours for that to be processed during the pandemic.  The students complained about slow lab grading that seemed to be done by TAs--did the professor have any control or authority over that?  

[ktgrok]

I think sometimes the problem with students not realizing how many hours a week a class will take is that so many colleges or scholarships are pushing kids to take more hours per semester to get them graduated in 4 yrs vs 5. Add in the many that are working and/or caring for families on top of that and you get a time problem. 

I was told to expect at least 3 hours out of class for every hour in class. So a 3 credit class was 9 hours of work outside of class. A 5 credit class would be 15 hours, on average. So what they are quoting seems reasonable and expected. BUT - maybe no one ever told them to expect that??

Also, the fact is classes are NOT averages, so I had classes where I spent MAYBE 2 hours a week on them, even though they were 3 credit classes that should take 9 hours of work. And then there would be a Chem lab that was only technically 1 credit - but I'd spend 10 hours a week working on it. If you've signed up for the class thinking that it will be like the others you took, which for whatever reason took way less time, it can be a shock for sure!

I think it would be helpful if class descriptions included a reasonable estimate of time out of class to plan for. 

And I think scholarships and colleges should stop pressing students to take more hours than they can handle if they are also working full time, etc. Taking fewer classes per semester and passing is better and will lead to faster graduation than more classes and failing. 

[SanDiegoMom]

I didn't read all the replies on the first page but what jumped out at me was that this is NYU - one of the most expensive private universities - and I believe that the more quickly college costs jump up, the most families EXPECT a certain outcome from attending the university. 

I also agree with the comment on the AP exam being a prerequisite.  That is most likely not nearly enough for the average to above average student. 

[Frances]

2 hours ago, SanDiegoMom said:

I didn't read all the replies on the first page but what jumped out at me was that this is NYU - one of the most expensive private universities - and I believe that the more quickly college costs jump up, the most families EXPECT a certain outcome from attending the university. 

I also agree with the comment on the AP exam being a prerequisite.  That is most likely not nearly enough for the average to above average student. 

This. My son took college chemistry at the local LAC during high school and it wasn’t some high powered college. The only way someone could test out of college chemistry there was by passing the finals. No student in the history of the college had ever done so and it is likely that many had taken and scored well on AP Chem in high school. In fact, when his prof won a major teaching award, several of the students they interviewed said they had gone beyond their high school chemistry class in the first month of the two semester course.

[Murphy101]

A note that during the Obama administration one thing he wanted and  pushed to reform to lower student debt was that schools should have to prove they have put good faith effort to place students who can actually get degrees.  There were and still are, but a bit less so, many colleges that take in millions on incoming freshmen that get student debt to attend and the uni KNOWS a majority will not even finish the first semester. It really reeks of scam and so the administration pushed that schools should be more transparent about this or risk not getting federal funding. Thus the push to finish on track and maybe to lower standards.  And it’s not all wrong. Colleges shouldn’t be getting millions of federal and state $ and putting students into debt for admitting students under a premise that is false:

That the student can take the courses according to the degree plan and expect to graduate, when the truth is 60% or more of students can’t even take the suggested first semester courses either due to inability or lack of actual sufficient offering.

[regentrude]

4 minutes ago, Murphy101 said:

 Colleges shouldn’t be getting millions of federal and state $ and putting students into debt for admitting students under a premise that is false:

That the student can take the courses according to the degree plan and expect to graduate, when the truth is 60% or more of students can’t even take the suggested first semester courses either due to inability or lack of actual sufficient offering.

That's hardly the colleges' fault. Colleges admit students based on their high school transcripts. We have incoming freshmen who took calculus in high school but are placing into remedial college algebra once they get here. If the colleges can't go by the high school transcripts, since there is no national standardized curriculum and no highschool exit exams that would show whether students are actually qualified to attend college, what are they supposed to do? Create entrance exams?

[Murphy101]

7 minutes ago, regentrude said:

That's hardly the colleges' fault. Colleges admit students based on their high school transcripts. We have incoming freshmen who took calculus in high school but are placing into remedial college algebra once they get here. If the colleges can't go by the high school transcripts, since there is no national standardized curriculum and no highschool exit exams that would show whether students are actually qualified to attend college, what are they supposed to do? Create entrance exams?

You are not all wrong about that either.

Didn’t the ACT and SAT in theory become de facto entrance exams for this reason?

I’m not necessarily against placement/entrance exams.

[regentrude]

Just now, Murphy101 said:

You are not all wrong about that either.
Didn’t the ACT and SAT in theory become de facto entrance exams for this reason?
I’m not necessarily against placement/entrance exams.

The ACT and SAT are on the way out with many schools now being test optional.
And they aren't a great predictor of college success. Better than nothing, sure, but a far cry from the rigorous multi-subject high school exit exams with open-ended questions that demonstrate college readiness in other countries.

Entrance exams are not practical. 

[matrips]

3 hours ago, ktgrok said:

so many colleges or scholarships are pushing kids to take more hours per semester to get them graduated in 4 yrs vs 5.

Agreed!  We thought our kids would be able to make an easier workload for themselves because they’ll come in with so many credits.  But the scholarship requires 15/semester unless you want to go in the summer, so there goes that idea of less stress and more time for their core classes.  And they can’t race through due to prerequisites, so they’ll end up taking unnecessary courses. 🙄. Just hoping to make sure they’ll be gpa booster classes.

[Bootsie]

23 minutes ago, Murphy101 said:

A note that during the Obama administration one thing he wanted and  pushed to reform to lower student debt was that schools should have to prove they have put good faith effort to place students who can actually get degrees.  There were and still are, but a bit less so, many colleges that take in millions on incoming freshmen that get student debt to attend and the uni KNOWS a majority will not even finish the first semester. It really reeks of scam and so the administration pushed that schools should be more transparent about this or risk not getting federal funding. Thus the push to finish on track and maybe to lower standards.  And it’s not all wrong. Colleges shouldn’t be getting millions of federal and state $ and putting students into debt for admitting students under a premise that is false:

That the student can take the courses according to the degree plan and expect to graduate, when the truth is 60% or more of students can’t even take the suggested first semester courses either due to inability or lack of actual sufficient offering.

I taught at a state school which had a problem of too many students who started but never finished.  The problem was the university could NOT quit admitting the students; they were required to if the students met certain state requirements that the university had no control over.  If students were ranked at a certain level in their high school class, they HAD to be admitted, no matter how low their ACT or SAT scores were.  Even with a relatively low high school GPA, the ACT and SAT hurdle were low.  And, if a student completed a certain number of hours at the junior college, they had to be admitted to the four-year university.  The university basically had no control over its admissions.  One "solution" was to create a new degree--a bachelors of university studies--which was basically if you signed up for X courses you would get a piece of paper saying you had a degree.  

[Innisfree]

Today the NYT has a follow up opinion piece by a sociology professor at Chapel Hill, which I’m linking as a gifted article below. She makes some of the same points various people here have made, including that students at expensive private universities don’t expect to fail. Her larger point is that adjunct faculty are generally treated badly, including being easily disposed of if the university decides they’re causing trouble. She says this situation is only unusual because the professor who was fired is distinguished, white, and male, while adjunct faculty in general skews in the opposite directions.

Fwi, her column moves on to other matters at the end.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/05/opinion/nyu-chemistry-fired.html?unlocked_article_code=v39hi2KlyKkeAd0rZH0WH3yJlKhLbX9Q7zg-gORBhkiwcxbHXlgotcBE7STr7Y1aO2tZ0DYwVyqSsOJFkWwjIEE7m7H3FvPTT5t68PvQUDDPV5QcwxJ6xfmO9UxAxvNKruvZq89gBIX5oZid37mEEhNvDA_u-2yRgJLSviaUgDhQFK4WBzWtOMcC9W400U08zqirhqsviTiFg2WZae7CabgWmg95ypmpYpvwQD9freo0YPHPc3PjpZansj_YO4-vtfzgFXsqTv6tgEYeO8VJBdfT9rpM4SyNIGgxyQh4-cBmcS8uFYaU8xylsduI5EHcuQkH5MeFzIWQ58fS0_8&smid=share-url

[Murphy101]

10 hours ago, regentrude said:

The ACT and SAT are on the way out with many schools now being test optional.
And they aren't a great predictor of college success. Better than nothing, sure, but a far cry from the rigorous multi-subject high school exit exams with open-ended questions that demonstrate college readiness in other countries.

Entrance exams are not practical. 

Well I could be fine with multi-subject high school exit exams too.

[Murphy101]

10 hours ago, Bootsie said:

I taught at a state school which had a problem of too many students who started but never finished.  The problem was the university could NOT quit admitting the students; they were required to if the students met certain state requirements that the university had no control over.  If students were ranked at a certain level in their high school class, they HAD to be admitted, no matter how low their ACT or SAT scores were.  Even with a relatively low high school GPA, the ACT and SAT hurdle were low.  And, if a student completed a certain number of hours at the junior college, they had to be admitted to the four-year university.  The university basically had no control over its admissions.  One "solution" was to create a new degree--a bachelors of university studies--which was basically if you signed up for X courses you would get a piece of paper saying you had a degree.  

Which is absolutely ridiculous and in my opinion a move by the state to cover up k-12 education fraud.

[EKS]

1 hour ago, Murphy101 said:

Which is absolutely ridiculous and in my opinion a move by the state to cover up k-12 education fraud.

It truly astounds me that it isn't blatantly obvious to everyone by now that all of the "fixes" for the problems in education actively avoid evicting the elephant in the room, which is that K-12 education fraud as you call it, and more specifically K-8.  You can't fix problems with K-8 by tacking on universal preschool at one end or requiring more math at the other in high school.  Changing standards doesn't address the issue, and requiring standardized testing doesn't either.  And neither does focusing on social-emotional mumbo jumbo because self esteem! and grit! and whatever else. 

This stuff we're seeing at the college level (and, frankly, beyond) is simply another way to avoid the elephant.

Edited October 6, 2022 by EKS

[shawthorne44]

11 hours ago, Murphy101 said:

A note that during the Obama administration one thing he wanted and  pushed to reform to lower student debt was that schools should have to prove they have put good faith effort to place students who can actually get degrees.  There were and still are, but a bit less so, many colleges that take in millions on incoming freshmen that get student debt to attend and the uni KNOWS a majority will not even finish the first semester.

I agree that is a good idea.    But we (Americans) don't have what it takes to do what is needed, which is adequately prepare the kids that want to go to college.   I think the problem started with the idea that everyone had to get a high school degree.   That sounds shocking until you look back at the tests they were taking in high school in say the 50's.   Those would be maybe Junior level in College now.  So, people were as prepared for employment and life after graduating high school as they are graduating college now.  One of the education books I read to prepare for homeschooling had three samples from the same standardized test each 20 years apart.   You look at them and think "This one is 4th grade, that one is 8th grade and the last one is probably 12th grade."    Nope, they are all 8th grade tests of the same test.    The root cause of this is that kids passing the tests matters more to the educators than the students.  

I am not saying that we need to try to make everyone get the same high-standards high school degree, or that we need to let everyone that can't perform at that level drop-out.   But, we need to have different tracks starting in Junior High that are voluntary, with maybe some on-boarding plans for the late deciders like English and Math during summer school to get them to a sufficient level.  The higher level needs to completely prep kids for college, and any kid that does get that college-prep degree and then needs remedial college classes, the cost of the remedial classes should be paid for by the high school.  The lower-level degree can be like what it is now.  

Generally, kids perform at the standards required of them.   I once taught in a poor, Hispanic, very low-expectations high school.   The Tut exhibit had come through the area and we discussing that he was pharaoh at such a young age.  I'd been reading about Tut and I told them that was the normal age for nobles to start their adult job.   I was talking to High School Seniors and I asked them, "If you had been required to apply yourself, wouldn't you have learned as much by age 12 as you know now?"   They all agreed that yes, even just actually requiring homework would have made that happen.  

 

[Heartstrings]

1 hour ago, Murphy101 said:

Which is absolutely ridiculous and in my opinion a move by the state to cover up k-12 education fraud.

There seems to be several different frauds going on at several different layers, in education and in every other arena in the country.   Change is extremely unlikely because so many people are making so much money from these schemes.  It’s all very disheartening.  

[Heartstrings]

21 minutes ago, shawthorne44 said:

   But, we need to have different tracks starting in Junior High that are voluntary, with maybe some on-boarding plans for the late deciders like English and Math during summer school to get them to a sufficient level.  The higher level needs to completely prep kids for college, and any kid that does get that college-prep degree and then needs remedial college classes, the cost of the remedial classes should be paid for by the high school. 

I completely agree with this, and yet I no faith in our ability to pull it off.  We all know how the racial and socioeconomic break down would be on those tracks and can make guesses as to the gender break down, especially in southern states where I am.  
And yet it seems like the only way.  Children need to be separated by ability in skill subjects starting in Kindergarten.  Holding back bright children in K is why those same children aren’t prepared for a rigorous college.  How could they be when they were never allowed to accelerate or be challenged and spend k-8 bored out of their mind?

What we do now is working for no one.  We’ll, it’s working well for who it’s supposed to work well for, but no one else.  

Edited October 6, 2022 by Heartstrings

[Innisfree]

55 minutes ago, EKS said:

It truly astounds me that it isn't blatantly obvious to everyone by now that all of the "fixes" for the problems in education actively avoid evicting the elephant in the room, which is that K-12 education fraud as you call it, and more specifically K-8.  You can't fix problems with K-8 by tacking on universal preschool at one end or requiring more math at the other in high school.  Changing standards doesn't address the issue, and requiring standardized testing doesn't either.  And neither does focusing on social-emotional mumbo jumbo because self esteem! and grit! and whatever else. 

This stuff we're seeing at the college level (and, frankly, beyond) is simply another way to avoid the elephant.

I don’t agree that social-emotional education is mumbo-jumbo: for some kids it’s vital, and most or all are likely to benefit to some degree. It’s one way to help classrooms be places where learning can take place, because there are fewer behavioral issues. But that’s the only way it tackles *academic* issues. And, in the same way, I think offering (not requiring) pre-K can help some kids.

Can you explain what you mean when you say changing standards won’t help? It seems like the essential problem is that there aren’t sufficiently high standards for college-bound students, but maybe I’m not understanding.

 

[shawthorne44]

1 hour ago, Heartstrings said:

I completely agree with this, and yet I no faith in our ability to pull it off.  We all know how the racial and socioeconomic break down would be on those tracks and can make guesses as to the gender break down, especially in southern states where I am.  
And yet it seems like the only way.  Children need to be separated by ability in skill subjects starting in Kindergarten.  Holding back bright children in K is why those same children aren’t prepared for a rigorous college.  How could they be when they were never allowed to accelerate or be challenged and spend k-8 bored out of their mind?

What we do now is working for no one.  We’ll, it’s working well for who it’s supposed to work well for, but no one else.  

Yes, I agree.   But even within the same race, looking at Charter Schools.   The kids that applied and got in by lottery, perform to a high standard, like the rest of the kids at their school.    The kids that applied and didn't get in, performed just as badly as the rest of the kids at their regular school.  
But, the base problem is that the education experts are the ones that failing miserably, so the fox is guarding the hen house.   

Years ago in an extremely poor area of Dallas there was a Math teacher that really ticked off Dallas School Admins.   Most of the kids didn't speak English at the start (Hispanic).  Very early Elementary, but I forget what grade.  He taught those kids several years worth of elementary math and it was a real problem for the school because A) it showed that other kids could be taught to that level and B) what to do with the kids next year?  

 

[Frances]

On 10/4/2022 at 9:17 PM, Murphy101 said:

Um. This guy IS arguably one of the best in this subject!  And I bet he wishes he’d never made a single video and had instead retired jan 2020.  And seeing this kind of thing repeat pattern in higher education - why would anyone else do it?!   These are really smart people and a smart person is going to see this trend and think, no thanks.

The combination of retiring/dying and lowering of standards/incentives has created a literal brain drain.

Like healthcare, no matter how bad things have gotten, there are still way more qualified people that want to be doctors, physical therapists, and in states like mine, even nurses, than there are training slots for them. And if you think that is competitive, try getting a PhD and then competing with literally thousands of other people for one tenure track slot. No matter how bad working conditions get, it would take a very drastic change in the number of people getting PhDs in this country for what you are envisioning to occur.

I do agree the lowering of standards is very problematic. But like all of the changes to the healthcare industry that has made those jobs less attractive, there really hasn’t been a corresponding decrease in young people pursuing those careers. The same is generally true for academia. 

Edited October 6, 2022 by Frances

[Heartstrings]

8 minutes ago, shawthorne44 said:

 But even within the same race, looking at Charter Schools.   The kids that applied and got in by lottery, perform to a high standard, like the rest of the kids at their school.    The kids that applied and didn't get in, performed just as badly as the rest of the kids at their regular school.  

I’ve seen this with parents too.  A local school does Kindy screening and will recommend that kids wait a year if they aren’t ready.  I know that a lot of parents are thinking about that 1 or 2 years earlier and are working with their kids to get ready so they can start school.  I know personally some that would not have been working with their kids without that added bit of pressure, even though legally they aren’t required to accept the recommendation to wait a year.  

[Heartstrings]

12 minutes ago, shawthorne44 said:

Very early Elementary, but I forget what grade.  He taught those kids several years worth of elementary math and it was a real problem for the school because A) it showed that other kids could be taught to that level and B) what to do with the kids next year?  

Really they should have put him in charge of math instruction and soared to the top of the rankings.  Except how would that look, if a school with a high ESL population was at the top of the rankings?   That would never be allowed.  

[Frances]

20 hours ago, EKS said:

Just because that was the case is not a reason that it has to be this way.  You can design a test where 80% or 50% or whatever would be an appropriate cutoff for an A. You can grade an essay using a numerical rubric that renders an adequate performance as failing (this actually happened in some of my education courses in graduate school).  I suspect that most colleges have certain defaults (like 90%+ is an A) that are rarely questioned.

I would also argue that the vast majority of educators have never thought deeply about grading.  I could list example after example of crazy grading practices in both my college and graduate school classes as well as my children's high school classes.

I’m interested in how you design such a test in advance? I can certainly see looking at the distribution of scores that result from such a test and deciding that 80% or 50% is the appropriate cut-off for an A, but how do you write a college exam designed to do so?

I took several grad classes for stats professors who worked for ACT as consultants. I still think the way they graded made the most sense. You have the basic 90/80/70 etc scale that guarantees students will get no lower than the letter grade associated with each category. But then you plot the distribution of scores and look for natural breaks and where they occur, you assign different grades. So maybe if the exam was harder than you anticipated, then 85 or 80 or 75 becomes the cutoff for an A. But if it was easier than expected, you don’t punish the students and say now 95% and above is an A.

[Murphy101]

3 minutes ago, shawthorne44 said:

Yes, I agree.   But even within the same race, looking at Charter Schools.   The kids that applied and got in by lottery, perform to a high standard, like the rest of the kids at their school.    The kids that applied and didn't get in, performed just as badly as the rest of the kids at their regular school.  
But, the base problem is that the education experts are the ones that failing miserably, so the fox is guarding the hen house.   

Years ago in an extremely poor area of Dallas there was a Math teacher that really ticked off Dallas School Admins.   Most of the kids didn't speak English at the start (Hispanic).  Very early Elementary, but I forget what grade.  He taught those kids several years worth of elementary math and it was a real problem for the school because A) it showed that other kids could be taught to that level and B) what to do with the kids next year?  

 

21 years ago I had my oldest in private k for 3 hours a day. He was doing early reading (such as cat in the hat) and basic math (telling time, basic measurement of inches/feet, adding 13+9).

Then we had to move and we put him in a suburb public school for 1st grade.

It was awful. Within weeks he was not only not progressing, he was regressing. Telling me he wasn’t old enough to read and tell time yet. Constantly being told to pick up trash on the playground bc he was disruptive in class. I go to the teacher at the first parent teaching meeting and say basically listen I get it, you have 24 other kids in here and most of them do not know their ABCs yet (truth of the situation) so how can I help you help my kid? Can I bring workbooks? Assist in class? (Keep in mind I had 5 younger siblings at home so it was not easy to offer that!) Should he be placed in a different track class? I know he isn’t gifted, but he can read and do math already, so how can we help him together?

You know what she said?

”Mrs X, it just doesn’t matter.  It’s not my fault you sent him to private school last year.  If he can read at a 3rd grade level, then it isn’t going to hurt him to wait until 3rd grade to advance.”

I pulled them from school to homeschool 2 weeks later. 

[EKS]

2 hours ago, Innisfree said:

Can you explain what you mean when you say changing standards won’t help? It seems like the essential problem is that there aren’t sufficiently high standards for college-bound students, but maybe I’m not understanding.

Changing standards won't help if the system itself isn't changed to support working toward those standards.

Things that need to happen:

• Developing a clear idea of what the purpose of education is in our society and for each individual
• Acknowledgement that not everyone can move at the same pace and that not everyone will end up in the same place at the end  
• If we want people to actually learn things, we need to require mastery along the way AND we need to invest in the infrastructure to support that mastery
• Understanding that teaching content is critical--to reading ability, to understanding the world, and to student engagement--and that standards that are divorced from content are doomed to fail