It is now easier to pass AP tests
wsj.com
wsj.com
On one hand, you could argue that grade inflation is actually a good thing: if pedagogical methods are getting better over time, then you should naturally expect grades to rise if standards stay the same. After all, we no longer expect literacy to be limited to the rich and/or highly educated.
On the other hand, grade inflation makes it harder to filter above-average students from below-average students. You could combat this by grading on a curve or by making exams harder, but this risks driving students into deleterious zero-sum behaviors - see Asian "cram schools" or American "tiger parenting".
On the gripping hand, maybe grades are the wrong thing to focus on. There does exist the argument that all social classes need smart people, not just the upper-middle/upper classes. Perhaps we should be focusing on improving living standards across society rather than attempting to brain-drain the working class. But this sounds like exactly the sort of thing that would be used to justify aristocracy.
That is literally the opposite of grade inflation.
Words mean actual things, and making up a completely different definition is asinine.
It's obvious that they understand this distinction, so I don't really believe your comment is all that constructive.
In the context of the subject article, it certainly appears that there was a sudden change based on a test-grading change and thus score inflation is indeed what happened. However, it's still possible that the former panel-of-experts system was inadvertently a more relative grading system which was slowly adapting to better pedagogical methods and better performing students. For what it's worth, I consider this unlikely, but it's an idea worth considering rather than dismissing entirely.
This is a faulty premise from the get-go. Human learning, and teaching, go back hundreds of thousands of years. It goes back farther than any technological invention, before the knot, before fire (hell, we wouldn't have those but for teaching/learning). We've been doing this a long fucking time. If we weren't good at it, we wouldn't be the technological (or artistic, or philosophic, etc) species that we are.
We've gotten pretty close to optimal, and we did that centuries or even millennia ago. We're definitely in an era of diminishing returns in pedagogical research. And if we could be honest, this certainly isn't a hard science. Hell, it's usually in the college of education, and not included in the college of social sciences. If we could believe that it was less of a pseudoscience than, I dunno, astrology, then I might even think that there'd be this principle of "we teach to maximize everyone's potential" and not "if done correctly, identical outcomes are possible for every individual". So, no, I have no evidence to support the idea that people who would've flunked 50 years before could magically be made to pass today with the same material.
> On the other hand, grade inflation makes it harder to filter above-average students from below-average students.
This is in part because the grade no longer signifies a measure of knowledge of the materials, and is rather a rubberstamp. But it is also the case that in coddling those who did not deserve to pass, there was no longer enough resources to properly teach those who might've genuinely earned a passing grade in the previous era. This is hidden anyway due to the grade inflation.
>You could combat this by grading on a curve or by making exams harder, but this risks driving students into deleterious zero-sum behaviors - see Asian "cram schools" or American "tiger parenting".
This is plainly false. If people come to understand that you can't cheat or force the grade through Asian tiger parenting, then everyone understands it's just pointless to try. And we return to uninflated grades. But that's a little too unprogressive, I think, for us to ever return to that outlook.
Grade inflation is the proof everyone uses to justify to themselves efforts towards cheating grades. "See, dumb people can get good ones too if they just figure out the correct hustle!" Some of these are more admirable than others ("I'll just study 39 hours per day!"), but it amounts to the same. People who will never understand the material believing that this is not a fundamental barrier to success in that field cause all sorts of problems.
> On the gripping hand, maybe grades are the wrong thing to focus on.
If we do away with grading, how is that any different than giving everyone an A/4.0/whatever? Except, maybe it's a little less work for the instructor who no longer has to scribble down a letter next to each name?
So people studying more is deleterious behavior? There's definitely a point at which is not a healthy childhood, but by many objective metrics (educational attainment, salary, etc) "Tiger Parenting" is a beneficial strategy.
College no longer the domain of a people pursuing intellectually-demanding careers. It’s become an expensive and completely unnecessary prerequisite for the general public, costing them a fortune not only in tuition, textbooks, boarding, etc., but also in the opportunity cost of delaying their earnings and career advancement by 4+ years. We’re now stuck in a fundamentally flawed system.
By ignoring the problems, and actually making them worse by lowering academic standards and pushing the student loan burden to taxpayers, it reeks of either gross incompetence or corruption in our government.
Despite having better per-pupil funding than the wealthiest districts in the state (thanks to a court order mandating increased funding) student performance has stayed the same and even worsened in these districts.
The single biggest determiners of school performance seems to be the level of parental involvement and the average IQ of the students. Well those, plus selection effects to bump up numbers: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/why-selection-bias-is-t...
Anyway, the next year I transferred to a white school and they placed me in core classes again. Difference was that in the white school, these kids were chill so I was fine doing the bare minimum. In this environment, the bar was set so low now, it was easy to ace anything. I did take some AP classes that were challenging.
So my hot take is that school is hard for those looking for a challenge and willing to advocate for themselves. I chose to take assessment tests. I went into the offices to talk to department heads. I never once told my parents this or anyone really. I just knew I wasn't personable enough to survive a year of "looking ass" jokes.
Historically, the US copied Prussian Frederick the Great's School system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system#Unit....
Meanwhile the universities saw themselves as research institutions. They view teaching as a pipeline to produce future researchers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_university
When the states met and decided what high schools teach, they created Common Core which was highly controversial. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Core#Reception_and_crit...
Now there are things like UT Austin's online high school where they teach everything like Khan Academy. Again they are teaching to meet whatever standard the state told them to meet. https://highschool.utexas.edu/hs_courses
This isn't a "problem" per se because that is literally what we drilled into multiple generations of people.
"Go to college if you don't want to flip burgers forever.", as was oft said. We will become a country of white collar service industries, it was oft said.
We demanded everyone go to college, everyone thus went to college regardless if it made any logical or financial sense to do so.
Meanwhile, the trades are seeing fewer and fewer students and apprentices, blue collar jobs are seeing fewer and fewer applicants, and people who actually gave some thought to going to college or not generally have had happier lives.
The problem isn't everyone going to college, it's the notion everyone should go to college.
Government and unions have intentionally choked the life out of trades by ensuring very few can get into it. It's a club, and you ain't in it.
The solution is effective - nullify duration requirements, replace with in person testing.
You must internalize the externality of requiring a college degree to obtain a job, and shift the cost to the demanding parties. Universal access to community college and robust apprenticeship pipelines are also potential solutions. Otherwise, people will just give up [1] [2] [3], as it is the rational course of action. Think in systems. With all due respect, this system is garbage and we can do better if improved outcomes are desired.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/01/neets-and-new-unemployables-...
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/05/23/is-coll...
[3] https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/03/economy/young-americans-givin...
The solution is actually simple. remove all federal student loan aid and grants. Only project grants should be used to onboard students into a higher uni education. If there's no work to be done then no students. There should never be an education program where the professors are not including their students in tangible work.
Guess we have to close all those pesky departments that don’t use many funds for research because the professors only work on fundenmental problems that don’t have linear solution. Goodbye theoretical physics!
You might say it’s a distinction without a difference, but surely it’s a healthy trend for more than 10% of the population to have access to a college education. (120 IQ is 90th percentile.)
I dunno, I think it’s a question of framing. If you think that the lowered standards of admission (which are not evenly distributed amongst all colleges, btw - I doubt the average IQ at Harvard is 100) will degrade the experience for the more intelligent students, then sure, I was restating GP’s point.
But I’m not sure that’s the case. You get out of college what you put into it. The presence of some students with average intelligence should have a limited affect on the experience of someone with higher intelligence (YMMV - this depends on the quality of the institution and the effort of the student).
There would always be outliers - did a 140 IQ student have a bad experience in college when the average was 120?
The point that college stopped being a signal of raw intelligence and potential and became a way to gatekeep people who couldn't afford it from the same level of white-collar jobs of people that could.
> There would always be outliers - did a 140 IQ student have a bad experience in college when the average was 120?
Probably to some degree, but it wasn't that pronounced. People below a certain intelligence level almost have a deliberate culture of ignorance (at least in America) - e.g. being proud of not having critical thinking skills and berating others for sounding smart.
People like this don't belong in college.
You've conveniently not stated what you to believe that threshold to be, and likely no evidence exists to support your hypothesis so I'm not even going to ask for it.
Instead the average IQ is 102, meaning many college students are below average in intelligence. We’re populating our universities with students of less academic potential than you would expect given the number enrolled.
[1] https://www.collegetransitions.com/blog/percentage-of-americ...
The question we should be considering is, given that university education comes at substantial expense, and that the number of students our university system can accommodate is necessarily limited: what students are justified in going to university, by their ultimate social and personal benefit?
I would argue that sending unintelligent people through university is counter-productive: it undermines the quality of conversation and culture of the university by allowing mid-wits to shift the conversation. It undermines the standards that professors apply to their students by making it intractable to fail much of their class. It lowers the bar, even for the capable students. Thus it diminishes the education, most tragically, for the capable students who might otherwise take us to greater heights of understanding.
If so, Google Scholar finds only two citations to it, neither interesting, which tells me the conclusions haven't been really examined by others in the field.
I bring this up because my first thought was to wonder how they handled any implicit cultural bias which might have been in the 1950s-era tests. If the IQ tests favored well-off white students, which were over-represented in college students back then, then IQ result would be excessively high for the 1950s students.
The alternative explanation for the secular decrease in student IQ is that IQ tests became less culturally biased over the same period of time.
I saw no discussion of this possibility in the paper.
Yes. Of course. Some people in the comments will lament letting the dum dums into college but that’s not the problem. The problem is we consistently see this pattern across our society. Profit above all else. Our entire society in the western world now is a big game to extract as many dollars (sorry, value) from each other as possible through any means necessary. And we are not learning our lesson.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careersandeducation/it-is-no...
Text-only:
https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/BB1qFqwY
Feels like the US picked the worst of both these systems.
Increasing emphasis on vocational schooling would probably be a good idea from an economic (when viewed outside the narrow free market lens) and national competitiveness standpoint.
I kind of feel like there may be some ideological factors going on, but I don't know enough about Germany or East Asia to comment. Are those countries more comfortable with certain kinds of inequality or are vocational professions more respected (or a little bit of both)?
While it may be beneficial to have support for apprenticeships and vocational training, it's controversial that the decision point is made so early. At that age, it may be less about the child's ambitions and abilities and more about the family's resources and social class.
Part of me thinks that may not be such a bad thing. It's very meritocratic thinking to assume that the smartest ("best") kids should always bubble to the top, but that also probably has some perverse consequences. All parts of society need and benefit from talent (e.g. becoming a union leader or a really skilled mechanic), and concentrating talent at the top helps tell a (false) moral story that only those at the top are really deserving of the rewards.
I taught AP along with non-AP chemistry for a number of years and I think the AP program is a good fit for those students who plan on going to university, especially those interested in the sciences. In two semesters we covered almost the full range of chemistry topics (only organic was slighted) and the students came out well prepared for college chemistry.
The value in an AP course, to my mind, is not the AP exam. It's that the class has the depth and the pace of a college class. Even those who barely passed my course knew a lot more chem than those in the non-AP class.