C4T#1

Quantum Press: John Burk

I am commenting on John Burke's blog More on AP From Harvard's Eric Mazur on January 27, 2012. In his blog post, he discusses the AP test and replies to Mazur when he relates Harvard students who do not take the Physics AP to others not in Harvard who do take the Physics AP with a score of 5. Burke believe that the majority of those who made a 5 on the AP were from Physics B, a class that runs through the material quickly. Also, he discusses how Harvard students with a 5 on the Physics AP are a bit overconfident and less like to ask for assistance. Grant Wiggins suggestion, "the fact that earning a 5 on AP physics shows some negative correlation with performance in a college physics course among Harvard students should be very sobering indeed" accumulates in Burke and he believes that taking a course that is based on the AP score is meaningless, and somewhat misinterpreted. He then moves on to relate this testing to the Cold War and the Soviet Union, comparing the AP's to useless nuclear weapons and the burned out students to the economic downfall of the Soviet Union. I responded in my comment that I agree with his stance and that every acceptance exam is difficult to all persons, even Harvard students. I went on to describe my personal experience with the ACT acceptance exam for colleges. Furthermore, I ended with the thought that almost every acceptance exam has a preparation class and even though some material on the exam was not covered, it is not the teacher/professor's fault. They covered the material handed to them that they think or hope will be on an exam not produced by themselves. Students are the responsible ones in college to acquire the material needed and study with the best intentions of succeeding.

I have to go back in time and comment on his blog on January 26 called, Following up on 1 hour of learning with my students. On this blog post, he discussed how his honor students responded to an essay presented to them about one hour learning ritual. His students were very interested in this versus student over-achieving debates and such on global warming and whatnot. he then discussed AP courses in relation to honor courses when thinking about college. AP courses are fast pace and how it doesn't really matter when trying to enter college. I responded to him that I took remedial classes and they actually helped me and when I was in high school, I took regular classes and ended in a 3.7 GPA and a 17 on the ACT and I still got into a great college. I then commented that colleges do not look for extra curricular activities, but GPA and ACT scores.