This 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
A few years ago, someone at Oxford University's admissions office said that U.S. students have almost no chance of getting in if they don't have 4 or 5 on various AP exams.
It's interesting to see where the 'pass' bar is in different countries. I've always found the 50% mark, which seems quite popular, to be rather unusual since it implies that someone who 'passed' essentially was correct on only half the material tested (which is then a fraction of the material actually taught), and in any other setting a 50% failure rate would be completely unacceptable.
Not trying to brag, but I also took it a decade ago, (2005 to be exact) and i found it startlingly easy, and got a 5 no problem. So did many of my classmates. It made calculus 2 in college a breeze, since even though the exam had integral stuff on it, colleges would only give me credit for Calc 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.
I 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.)
How would design a uniform final exam for all, say, Calculus I courses? Sure, you can only test the intersection of all, but that encourages the teachers to only teach that subset. Instead, AP exams test the union of all, and normalize the score so that you only need, I think, a raw score of 60/100 to get a 5 on calculus. That way, teachers are encouraged to experiment with their curriculum, and students are not overwhelmed by the need to know everything there is to know. It's really a win-win solution.
Surprisingly low numbers, considering how many hundreds of students ace their calculus tests in college.
It's not surprising if you realise that AP tests can't be gamed as easily as tests designed (and possibly graded) by those who taught the students taking the tests.
What 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?
Is 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.)
In 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.
I 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.
I 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?
I 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.
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.
went 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
My 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.
Side 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...
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.
Trans* 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.
This 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?"
It'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.
In 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.
I’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?
ejcx|9 years ago
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
duskwuff|9 years ago
A score of 1 on an AP exam is the lowest score possible on the exam, and represents an unqualified failure. (College Board describes it as "no recommendation": https://apscore.collegeboard.org/scores/about-ap-scores)
pilom|9 years ago
SeanDav|9 years ago
dctoedt|9 years ago
quaz3l|9 years ago
source: I took AP exams last year.
userbinator|9 years ago
That reminds me of this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grading_systems_by_country
It's interesting to see where the 'pass' bar is in different countries. I've always found the 50% mark, which seems quite popular, to be rather unusual since it implies that someone who 'passed' essentially was correct on only half the material tested (which is then a fraction of the material actually taught), and in any other setting a 50% failure rate would be completely unacceptable.
rjbwork|9 years ago
quantumsequoia|9 years ago
srtjstjsj|9 years ago
> 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.
jasonjei|9 years ago
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.)
HeavenFox|9 years ago
How would design a uniform final exam for all, say, Calculus I courses? Sure, you can only test the intersection of all, but that encourages the teachers to only teach that subset. Instead, AP exams test the union of all, and normalize the score so that you only need, I think, a raw score of 60/100 to get a 5 on calculus. That way, teachers are encouraged to experiment with their curriculum, and students are not overwhelmed by the need to know everything there is to know. It's really a win-win solution.
userbinator|9 years ago
It's not surprising if you realise that AP tests can't be gamed as easily as tests designed (and possibly graded) by those who taught the students taking the tests.
SolderMonkey|9 years ago
I think there's a trend of becoming a better student in college, so I don't find it so surprising to ace calculus in college.
myself as a counter example, I was an ace in high school passing 10/12 AP exams, and almost failed out of college--go figure?
Frompo|9 years ago
dsugarman|9 years ago
dbcurtis|9 years ago
A meter that is always pegged tells you nothing.
quantumsequoia|9 years ago
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.)
all5AP|9 years ago
dba7dba|9 years ago
ghshephard|9 years ago
Trill-I-Am|9 years ago
bobbark|9 years ago
bby|9 years ago
[deleted]
protomyth|9 years ago
brandonmenc|9 years ago
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.
josinalvo|9 years ago
kepano|9 years ago
http://maps.latimes.com/neighborhoods/neighborhood/lincoln-h...
kristopolous|9 years ago
dba7dba|9 years ago
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.
SolderMonkey|9 years ago
caveat; this is a magnet program of about 200 students within the overall two thousand and some
gonzo|9 years ago
(My son got a '5' on the BC calc AP.)
jakub_g|9 years ago
stephengillie|9 years ago
dredmorbius|9 years ago
Firefox has problems, mostly performance. But adblock and reader mode help greatly.
wkdown|9 years ago
jobu|9 years ago
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.
dang|9 years ago
vermontdevil|9 years ago
dsajames|9 years ago
[deleted]
dang|9 years ago
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/newswelcome.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11697585 and marked it off-topic.
bpeebles|9 years ago
quantumsnaggler|9 years ago
dang|9 years ago
roflchoppa|9 years ago
rajacombinator|9 years ago
chillacy|9 years ago
ramblerman|9 years ago
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?"
samstave|9 years ago
CarolineW|9 years ago
kristopolous|9 years ago
unknown|9 years ago
[deleted]
ben_jones|9 years ago
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|9 years ago
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|9 years ago
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|9 years ago
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/19cce15048484abcac18c836f8c0b...
[2] http://abc11.com/education/survey-calls-nc-the-worst-state-f...
[3] http://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2016/05/11/a-texas-hi...
Spooky23|9 years ago
jayess|9 years ago
cbd1984|9 years ago
cbd1984|9 years ago