Above Grade Level Canada

04/18/2023

Highly gifted children take on many guises - and perhaps some you would not expect. Check out the following fascinating list to see if your child exhibits any of these traits - because you just might have a little Einstein in your midst:

Being "gifted" isn't all about having a high IQ score, says education and parenting expert Megan Cannella. Here are the top five signs that your kid may be gifted.

04/12/2023

At least one highly selective university program has turned to grade "adjustments" to try to distinguish between student applicants whose grades are all clustered in the mid to high 90s. The " grade adjustment" size is customized to each school based on the historical data the university has on the "university" grade performance of students from that same school. Widespread grade inflation across all schools has made it increasingly difficult to differentiate between students based on grades alone. However, a university's historical data on how a particular school's "grading" translated into students' actual "university" grade performance might better predict future performance - or so the thinking goes.

In light of this trend, to ensure each student is assessed on INDIVIDUAL MERIT, applicants should try to provide IRREFUTABLE additional evidence of their academic abilities beyond just grades. For example, AP, SAT, and ACT scores can provide independent, third-party data to help distinguish applicants' abilities from their peers. Additionally, participation in academic competitions or other accomplishments can help demonstrate an applicant's intellectual curiosity and potential. Ultimately, a well-rounded application showcasing various academic strengths can help an applicant stand out in a crowded field of highly qualified applicants.

The controversial adjustment factor helps the university sort applications for a highly competitive program. But what does it tell us about grade inflation?

02/09/2023

**You CAN LEARN ANYTHING** researchers from Carnegie Mellon University confirm (even advanced-level Calculus!). It just takes effort & deliberate practice. This conclusion is drawn from an impressive "1.3 million observations across 27 datasets of student interactions with online practice systems in the context of elementary to college courses in math, science, and language."

What surprised many is that regardless of each student's individual starting level, **students improved at approximately the same rate**, session by session, and that, on average, "students needed about 7 opportunities per component of knowledge to gain mastery of something."

REINFORCING the POWER of deliberate practice through tutoring interventions, these research findings suggest "that educational achievement gaps come from **differences in learning opportunities** and that better access to such opportunities can help close those gaps."

A Wharton Professor summarized the results well:

"Huge, huge finding: across grade levels & subjects, students improve in academic performance at the same rate with each practice session. The gap between good & bad students is initial knowledge, anyone can get mastery with practice (7 sessions on average)."

We can all find it heartening to hear the researchers' final remarks:

"Some readers may object that near constant student learning rate unrealistically implies that everyone can master advanced level calculus or interpret abstract data. Indeed, not everyone has favorable learning conditions nor will everyone choose to engage in the substantial number of practice opportunities required. However, our results suggest that if learners have access to favorable learning conditions and engage in the many needed opportunities, they will master advanced-level calculus."

Bottom line: Willpower trumps IQ by a factor of 2 when it comes to academic performance. Put in the effort in the form of deliberate practice - and *You Can Learn Anything* - Above Grade Level Out!

While talent matters, the good news is we all learn at basically the same rate--and can "learn anything we want."

01/19/2023

When it comes to the "how to" of optimizing education policy to improve student outcomes, debate runs wild. YET on ONE point, there is absolute consensus in education: HIGH DOSAGE, structured tutoring (i.e. several sessions per week), customized to the curriculum of each student, with a focus on each student's learning gaps, is EMPIRICALLY proven to "lead to substantial learning gains." This is a conclusion reached by decades of research and endorsed by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University and Stanford University (as mentioned in the article below), which is dedicated to advancing equity and innovation in education based on empirical research. And it's, inter alia, why our Academy students learn two times to five times faster when enrolled in our programs than they do in a regular school classroom!

Some methods are proved to work - but many of the most needy students can’t access them.

01/12/2023

In academia, there is a great deal of hullabaloo over the advent of ChatGPT​ and its potential to be used for nefarious purposes by students looking to take shortcuts on writing assignments​​. ChatGPT is an AI chatbot that can write sophisticated essays​ - among many other things, including even writing computer code -​ in mere seconds based on complex user prompts e.g. compare the literary contributions of Nabokov and Dostoevsky in 500 words​.

​However, it has many positive applications that are rarely mentioned. When used for good faith purposes, ChatGPT can be used as a powerful research tool and a way of scaffolding learning and writing skills. In a way, it's like having an intelligent conversation with a researcher on a topic of interest. When used in this way, it can be leveraged by students to take their work to the next level - rather than a means of bypassing or undermining school work (much like a calculator can be used in math class to focus on higher-order mathematics).

Like most new technology, the tool itself is neutral: it's just a matter of how humans choose to use it.

Joanne Lipman, Yale University lecturer, joins 'Squawk Box' to discuss the future of artificial intelligence in schools, guardrails to mitigate cheating with ChatGPT, and the use cases for AI like ChatGPT.

11/21/2022

"According to Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2023, these are the best universities in Canada and where they ranked internationally:

#18 University of Toronto
#40 University of British Columbia
#46 McGill University
The best showing was from the University of Toronto. U of T was #21 in 2019, so it’s been slowly climbing to #18 in 2023."

What is your assessment?

Considering higher education? According to a new global ranking, only a handful of top Canadian institutions are on the world stage.

11/21/2022

An interesting and very nuanced take on the real underlying WHY of pandemic learning loss. "Remote learning" is often identified as the culprit, yet some students experienced improvements in their grades during the remote learning period. Other students performed on par with their prior academic performance. The data suggest the decline in scores has much more to do with the disruption, stress, pervasive health crises within families, and overall instructional and societal shakeup than the educational delivery method(s) (i.e. in-person or remote or both).

The recent release of the 2022 NAEP scores, which showed historic learning declines in math and reading two years following the onset of the pandemic, has brought renewed urgency to conversations around learning losses and recovery. Beliefs about these topics shape how policymakers, educators and pa...

10/31/2022

🤔The relentless pressure for "high grades" for admission to top universities seems to be driving odd grade inflation. Fifteen years ago, 25% of students entering Ontario's top 5 universities had high school averages of over 90%. Now, 75% of entering students have high school averages over 90%. This trend is causing massive anxiety for students, parents, and teachers alike!

GTA high schools are handing out higher marks than ever before, a Star analysis finds. Is runaway grade inflation holding top students back and setting others up to fail?

10/22/2022

➕➖😔Canadian students are STRUGGLING in Math. This week the Ontario government announced "catch up" payments of $200 per student for parents to arrange extra tutoring support. Why? Just released EQAO math scores reveal that 53% of Ontario Grade 6 students FAILED to meet provincial math standards. Even more troubling is the REGRESSION of Grade 9 students, with 52% meeting the standards now - DOWN from 75 percent three years ago. That is a staggering 23% DROP in students who meet the minimum math standards in just 3 years.

Pandemic disruptions have clearly undermined student learning. Data on math performance in Quebec in 2021 revealed that 25% of students were FAILING Math. That's 1 out of 4 students - a very troubling number.

New test scores show Ontario students are struggling in math after the introduction of a new curriculum and years of pandemic learning. Parents and the provi...

10/11/2022

🧠​Some pretty astounding statistics on the difference between girls' and boys' school performance have recently emerged: girls consistently outperform boys across the board - and this has to do with the delayed maturation of certain brain regions in boys that help with attention, impulse control, and overall success in classroom settings. These brain regions simply mature later in boys, neuroscience has now discovered.

The data are pretty stark: "Twice as many girls as boys are in the top 10 percent of students ranked by GPA, and twice as many boys as girls are among those with the lowest grades. It’s an international pattern: Across economically advanced nations, boys are 50 percent more likely than girls to fail at all three key school subjects: math, reading, and science. In the U.S., almost one in five boys does not graduate high school on time, compared with one in 10 girls—the rate for boys is about the same as that for students from low-income families."

The solution many affluent parents are now adopting is to have boys start one chronological year later (when their brain maturation is more conducive to academic success).

This problem has real-world consequences: there are now 3 girls for every 2 boys in undergraduate programs.

This is a very interesting and thought-provoking article.

Why boys should start school a year later than girls

10/03/2022

Proud to share one of our recent Above Grade Level students talking about his recent experience with our tutoring services:

10/03/2022

Proud to share one of our recent Above Grade Level students talking about her recent experience with our tutoring services: