News-Record.com

Let's see a seminar on good vs. evil?

OK, the GCSB has Darlene Garrett to offer on the good side. The evil side has the standard set of characters or dwarfs. If I were to list Grier, Duncan, Cooke, Kearns, Mendenhall, and Sykes do you know what else I have besides the biggest clowns in Guilford County this side of the democratic County Commissioners?

You also have a list of the people who did not have the interest to show up at the Southwest High graduation over the weekend. Perhaps once they are finished cork-screwing the school into the ground they will have an interest in showing up. Of particular interest would be why the 2 High Point residents did not show up at a High Point school.

Oh, I'm sorry this was a post about private schools and AP. That's easy, the previously mentioned clowns have watered down the county public school system so much that a private school "C" is more valuable than a public school "A".

Buck,

Now that you mentioned about SWH graduation, I heard that only Nancy Routh showed up. My friend went to Page where there were about 6 board members; another friend e-mailed me about another graduation where several board members were there.

Guess that just confirms how much they care about SWH. I guess green and black and white are just not their colors.

The two HP reps did not go - guess they really don't consider SWH part of the HP District. The other at-large SB member didn't go either.

This is a case of actions speaking loud and clear.

Just proves once again to the High Point City reps that you know where HP stands as far as Guilford County is concerned.

Here's a little something about AP classes:

The Guilford County Schools Class of 2005 earned $50 million in college scholarships. The Class of 2000 earned $28 million. That's a whopping 79 percent increase.

So what's changed in that time? Well, Guilford County Schools has really pushed AP courses, both in expanding the number of offerings at every high school and getting more kids taking AP classes.

Those efforts appear to be paying off - literally - in the form of increased scholarships.

Also, as the paper said counslers are doing a better job of promoting scholarships, there are new scholarships available every year! In addition many of these scholarships won will not be used. One senior might get the offer of several scholarships at different schools and they have to decide which one to use.

With all that, I do think it is great that our students are doing this well.

I haven't heard any comments on the fact that the board has decided to move their meeting to 5:30 starting in July. I have already written each BOE member and requested that they make the public comment time somewhere around the current time, as we work/have kids/sports/dinner/ etc and for them to think that 5:30 is convenient for parents is very closed minded. Also, for myself and many, many others it takes along time to reach downtown. Depending on traffic (and it will be much worse at 5) it can take me 30 minutes to get to the meeting!

Another interesting idea is that we might go to a 10 pt grading system... with that conversation there was comments about not giving scores lower than 50! Sounds like a softening of the grading score. One positive thing is that many states (per GCS) already use this system and our students are at a disadvantage when applying at out of state universities.

Bruce, I stongly believe that a more meaningful scholarship number would be the dollars that students actually utlize. Is this information available?

Is it true that this published number includes dollars each student is awarded for every school that he or she is accepted to even though they only attend one school in the end?

If the answer to my question is yes, don't you feel this a quite a misrepresentation? How can a kid be attend 2 colleges at the same time? I don't believe that even Dr. Grier walks on that much water.

Yeah, it's true that these totals are the amount of scholarships earned, not the amount used. So one student could rack up two or three scholarships and only use one of them.

However, the scholarship totals were calculated the same way in 2000, when GCS students earned $22 million less than they did this year.

And, no, I don't feel the school district is misrepresenting the situation in this case. Students still have to earn these scholarships, whether or not they use all of them or not. Just because you've been named a Morehead Scholar at Carolina doesn't make it any less prestigious to be named a Park Scholar at N.C. State, too.

Hope this link works. I created a link to a document the district sent us with school-by-school scholarship totals for the past several years.

Here it is.

Bruce,

I think that you need an AP course in logical thinking. You drew the conclusion that increased scholarship funds being earned was the result of an increased number of students taking AP courses. You stated "Those efforts appear to be paying off - literally - in the form of increased scholarships."

Do you think that there might be some other factors to attribute to this result? It may be true that an increased number of students taking and AP courses had an impact on a greater number of scholarships, but that's a very large leap to make with without considering other contributing factors. I would suggest that you do some investigation here before you reach that conclusion and celebrate AP courses as the horn of plenty for scholarships, even though, I am sure, that Terry Grier appreciates your support and heartily agrees with your conclusion. How does an increased number of students just taking an AP course actually result in scholarships? Has there been an increase success rate of students taking the courses and passing the test at a higher level?

If history shows that the rooster crows every morning before the sun comes up, does that mean that the rooster caused the sun to rise? If so and the rooster oversleeps one morning, will the sun not rise?

Dean,

The Delta House boys must be keeping you up too late, because your rooster analogy doesn't work.

If everything else has pretty much stayed the same, but one thing changes and the result is vastly different, isn't it pretty safe to assume that the one change made a big impact?

I'm not one for giving Dr. Grier and the school board credit when it isn't due. I'm also not one for making up wild excuses to explain why a $22 million increase in scholarships somehow is bogus, just because some readers here on The Chalkboard hate Dr. Grier & company.

Maybe I should explain a little more.

The push to get more kids in AP is the biggest local high school reform of the past five years. In other words, the biggest difference between now and five years ago is that far more kids are taking AP courses.

Sure, there are other factors in the scholarship totals rising. Inflation, for one, and Dr. Grier said high school counselors are more aggressive in seeking out scholarships. Plus, the number of students is rising every year.

None of those factors can explain a 79 percent rise in scholarship totals in the past five years. Something else is happening -- something that is making colleges take notice of Guilford County Schools students.

If this was just a one-year increase, I could chalk it up to a fluke. But the scholarship totals rose steadily from 2000 to 2004 and remained stable in 2005. That's a trend.

As soon as "Grier and Company" vote to dummy down the courses, and make it easier to get and "A" and harder to get and "F", I suspect we will see an even bigger increase in Scholarship Money awarded to the bright students of Guilford County.

Are our kids really getting smarter? Or is our School Board just getting dumber?

Next I suppose your SAT score will not matter. Scholarship applicants will just have to list how many AP classes they took. NOT how many they passed, JUST how many they took.

And since the original topic, I've been thinking (and I'm pretty smart, I took and AP class or two in my day)...

Since districts are now ranked by the number of AP classes taken, I advocate that as soon as a child can correctly "bubble-in" an answer sheet, that we begin AP testing. I was thinking, just give as many AP tests as possible, across the board, starting in kindergarten, we'd be the bestest school system in the whole freekin' world!

Bruce,
Do you (or anyone else)know what kind of scholarships private school and home school students are receiving.
It would be interesting to see how each group compares and would probably give us a better idea of how our system is doing.
I guess we would need to know total numbers of seniors from each group and total dollars awarded and figure out an average.
I'm not a "numbers" person, but if anyone has access to this data, I would be interested in finding out.

Kay,

That's a really good question. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to track down this data. Guidance counselors at each public high school track scholarship totals.

I'll check with a couple of the biggest private schools and see if they can give me scholarship totals.

Bruce,
One other thought when gathering data....
Is there a breakdown in academic, athletic, need based, arts, etc. scholarships?

Thanks for helping....

Another change: New scholarships are created every year. So some of the scholarships that are awarded now were not even available in 2000. (The comparison year).

I have contacted 3 large intstitutions and they have all verified that available scholarships increase each year, they are becoming easier to find, and with new ways to apply for multiple ones on-line, more and more students are applying.

So this is happening across the country. Yes, it's a trend, but not just for Guilford County, and hardly because of a few more students attempting AP classes.

Bruce, investigate beyond Guilford County, hey, just investigate, and you will see that the number of scholarships awarded anywhere, has increased.

Colleges like to see that students have challenged themselves, and at least tried AP classes even if they didn't get the best grades. Sure, it helps to be successful in the class, but just having the class on your transcript with a decent grade helps.

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