Ronak Bhatt

Hot take: eliminate AP classes and credits entirely. Instead, teens that want college credit should have free access to dual enrollment programs under their state university system to earn college credit via college classes. AP test incentives are misaligned in the worst way: "Students and families are happier because they get college credit. . . . Schools are happier because they look good. Governors and state agencies are happier because they get to brag about it.” Dual enrollment does not resolve every incentive problem, but it at least eliminates one layer of abstraction. It also can help reduce the cost of college by shifting some general requirements into the academic stagnation that is high school. This could be the simplest way to pivot American high schools toward tracking, too, so long as students not looking at college are also able to access courses that lead toward interests and industry certification. To anyone who defends AP classes are the last leg of meritocracy in schools, I'd argue it's more meritocratic to not gate keep the real thing just because someone is slightly younger than a college freshman. The ceiling can be much higher. It is possible, as the College Board suggests, that "AP standards for qualifying scores remain more stringent than grading standards in many college classrooms." Sure; but that's an issue for the state colleges to resolve. College students regularly transfer in with community college credits for these introductory courses, so the colleges have already determined that AP tests are unnecessary. AP tests are the signature of a decades-long evolution of high schools choosing college prep over life prep, so it's not a unqualified scapegoat to begin moving in another direction. I welcome any steel man against this idea.

I've spent over 20 years working closely with current and former gifted students. 90% of them would have started looking for exits the second anyone came in with a heavy handed emotional literacy lesson. It's junk like this that gives gifted Ed a bad rep.

I just gave a closed-book, pen-and-paper midterm exam in my 300-level course at UBC with 100 students. All exams were graded by an experienced graduate-level TA according to a rubric. *** The average was 64/100.*** My class averages at UBC are usually 80-85. Context: • This was the first midterm, covering ONLY 4 weeks of material. • Students had a list of possible questions in advance: no surprise questions. • Questions included (a) 3 concept definitions, (b) 3 paragraph-long questions, and (c) a 1.5-page essay. • I have taught this class multiple times. Nothing in my teaching style changed this semester. • We read entire paragraphs of text in class, so students don't have to do something on their own that wasn't covered during the lecture. • Students take a 10-question multiple-choice quiz at the end of every class (30% of the final grade). • Attendance is 95-99% every class. Attention during lectures and participation in pair-work activities are very high → anticipating the end-of-class quiz. *** But unfortunately, I suspect many students are not reading the material on the syllabus. They are asking LLMs to summarize it instead.*** After the midterm, students reported: • They thought they knew concept definitions but couldn't produce them on paper. • They thought they understood the arguments but struggled to connect them or identify points of agreement and disagreement. My view: It might be “cool” or “innovative” to teach students to summarize readings with ChatGPT or write essays with Claude. But we may be doing them a disservice: reducing their ability to retain material, think creatively, and reason from what they know. If you only read what AI has summarized for you, you don’t truly "know" the material. Moving forward: We have a second midterm coming up. I don't know how to convey to students that the best way to do better on the exam is to rely on and improve their own reading skills.

We need to normalize PhDs teaching high school. That solves at least two problems: absorbs some of the elite overproduction and put subject-matter experts (rather than ed school grads) in hs classrooms. (I know there are other problems.)