Education, Math, and More with Mr. Allison

Regarding who should and shouldn't be allowed to take AP courses, or even advanced courses in high school. Here's my take. I don't tell any kid they can't take an advanced course. I've had kids take AP Calculus concurrently with Pre-Cal, but let them know they're going to have to learn some things outside of class before their Pre-Cal class is going to get to them. I've taken kids who failed my College Algebra or Pre-Calculus courses. One year I had a kid who failed my College Algebra class as a junior take my Pre-Calculus, AP Statistics, and AP Calculus classes all at the same time. He passed Pre-Cal with a C or a D, failed both AP Stat and AP Cal, but scored 2s on both AP Exams. He had the ability to do so much better, but just would not do any work at all. Everything he learned, he learned in class. It would have been easy to keep that kid out of my AP classes, maybe even out of my Pre-Cal class too, based on his grade in College Algebra. But I chose t...

 I saw a Facebook post this week where a parent stated, "Grades are not a measure of knowledge, but a measure of compliance." Unfortunately, I think there is a lot of truth to that in our culture today. My goal with grades is the opposite, though. Grades should be representative of what a kid knows. Years ago, the math department where I work established test scores as 75% of a student's grade. I cannot speak for other teachers, but this has worked well to help kids LEARN the material, instead of counting on lots of completion-graded homework and classwork points to keep their grades high, even when their knowledge is lacking.  Take a class with 1000 points possible in a grading period, where students take three 100-point tests. If a teacher grades everything but tests for completion, a student could turn in every paper with every answer wrong and "earn" 70% of all the possible points. In most schools today, 70/100 is a C. Even if this student scored a zero on e...

 Spoke with a friend of mine this weekend who works in another school in another part of the state. He told me his principal told him that we used to prepare these kids for college, but that's the past. Now we're preparing them for trades. Let me start by saying I have absolutely nothing against people working in the trades. I have very successful family members and friends who do just that. I have absolutely NOTHING against people working in trades! I have nothing against kids not going to college if they don't want to, as long as they find another way to earn a living.  But to say our job in education is not to prepare these kids for success in college is idiotic and just plain wrong! Our job is to educate kids and educated kids will be ready for college! That doesn't mean they have to go to college. It means they have the opportunity to go to college if that's what they choose! I did not want to go to college after high school. I didn't think I needed it. I w...