Introduction
In order to complete this activity, I spoke with DrS, a twenty-year veteran teacher of AP US History who is famous for helping her students score well. She moved overseas this past summer and is so effective that she is continuing to teach her class via videoconferencing this year. She is also a parent of three college students -all of whom are graduates of our school- so I conducted my mock interview with her playing the role of parent.
Issues of Concern
My experiences and discussions helped me understand how little parents really know about standardized assessment and thus how important it is to help them understand the process. Often, I discovered, a parent’s question doesn’t communicate what it is they really want to know, so the real skill lies in decoding the questions they ask and providing the information they are really after.
For example, most parents don’t understand how grades can be curved, what normalized scores are or, if they do, they don’t understand how a curved score can be useful. Or, many parents don’t understand the different kinds of knowledge that might be assessed on an exam so they can’t help their children prepare effectively.
One issue that DrS told me she has to face a lot is when parents have unreasonable expectations for their children on the AP US History exam. Often, shortly before the test, a parent might ask, “How will my child do on the test?” and, if the answer is anything but a guaranteed 5, the parent will want to stop the student from taking the test.
An answer to this question must communicate at least two things: first, the grading process specific to AP exams must be explained so that the parent understands that the scores are not analogous to scores out of 100. The fact of the matter is that a 3 is a respectable score on many AP exams and will certainly not hurt a student’s college chances in most cases. In this situation, the parent is really asking for reassurance that their kid should take the test and has not wasted his or her semester preparing for it.
Another common question has to do with retaking exams. A parent might assume that any score less than 5 warrants a retake, so a response has to communicate the point that the exam is designed to measure more than simple content knowledge and that we can trust the score to reflect the student’s master of the subject. Colleges are not impressed with a student who takes an exam three times before earning a 5 since they prefer well-rounded students with a variety of interests.
Parent Discussions
DrS and I agree that I did well during my mock interview with her. She felt that I could have been more forceful when explained how the school uses score data, but that, all in all, I was informative and did a good job explaining the intricacies of the scores with clarity.