Peter Greene takes a hard look at AP (Advanced Placement) courses and wonders how the U.S. Department of Education got involved in pushing a for-profit product as a mark of distinction.
He notes that:
“AP tests are a product of the College Board, the same people who bring you the SAT, and although the name seems to suggest a group of college scholars who gather together on some altruistic mission to guard the gateways of higher education for the Greater Good, the fact is that the College Board is just a business intent on making a buck and keeping its market share (it is also currently run by David Coleman, one of the co-authors of the Common Core).
“Every time a teacher goes to a seminar to learn about designing an AP course, the AP folks make money. Every time a school buys AP materials, the AP folks make money. And every time a student takes the AP test, the AP folks make money– a bunch of money.
“It was a great day for these folks when they hopped on the Education Reform Gravy Train and became the Official Education Course Product of Race to the Top. In Pennsylvania, for instance, a school’s rating factors in how many AP courses are offered. This is extraordinary, like Ford getting the government to rate school district excellence based on how many Ford school buses they used.”
Another coup for the College Board marketing efforts: the rankings of the nation’s best high schools by U.S. News and World Report. One factor in the rankings is what proportion of your students took AP exams.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Don’t worry too much, Mr. Greene. In an effort to make the AP classes look a lot like CCSS, the history course curriculum has changed significantly. In arguing that they have simplified the class, they increased the curriculum guide ninefold. Yes, ninefold. (It was very content driven, not its very skills driven. My opinion: the pendulum has swung too far.)
The test will be sufficiently difficult that fewer students will take their chances on passing it. As an AP European History teacher, I believe that the changes will hurt their bottom line.
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Agree. When most students start pulling at best a score of 2 or 3 rather than 4 or 5 on the AP exams, their appeal will go way down. Even the less selective colleges will not be granting credit for those lower scores.
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My institution will award 3 hours of credit for a 3 on the AP Euro exam.
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Lots of schools do offer credit for a 3, and I think it’s a decent score for a high schooler if it is truly a college level test. My daughter took World History last year, though, and I was horrified at the sample tests. Much of it was nothing like what I was every required to do in college history courses. A lot of it consisted of regurgitation of obscure facts. So I can see why colleges might be questioning the value of AP courses.
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Yes, I know some colleges give credit for a score of 3, and I think that might also depend on the difficulty of the specific course, like chemistry. The most selective colleges and univerisities might not even grant credit for a score of 5, however.
I do agree about the content issue, too much esoteric knowledge, but the discipline and skills developed in taking an AP class are far, far better prep for college than the actual test or even content.
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TE,
Even the 3’s will decrease considerably. The AP European History curriculum document is front-loaded with propaganda. In the first two pages, the document states on three occasions that teachers will be relieved of the necessity of teaching so much content. Then it says it has broken the class into 4 time periods and 5 themes. Sounds good. But then…
the five themes are subdivided into 11, 13, 16, 19 and 10 parts. So it’s really 79 themes.
(Reminds of Rodney Dangerfield’s oral exam in “Back to School.” “Mr. Mellon, I have one question for you. In 27 parts.”)
Then the concept outline speaks generally about, you know, everything that’s happened in Europe (and many times outside of Europe due to its influence) beginning with the Renaissance.
It’s very CCSS in its questions as well. While being subject to a variety of whims depending on who makes the test. It will be a very, very difficult test. It will discourage students from taking the test itself.
I may still get 60 students on average taking the class. But I’ll wager that within three years, less than 15 will take the actual test.
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I don’t have a good sense of what the “right” number if test takers should be. I have seen a number of posts saying that too many students were taking AP classes and few posts saying too few were taking them.
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The College Board has the numbers:
Approximately 132,500 teachers taught AP classes in nearly 14,000 public high schools.
Over the last decade, a broader, more diverse group of students has benefited from expanded access to Advanced Placement. In addition, more students than ever before are succeeding on AP Exams. Comparing the class of 2013 to the class of 2003 revealed the following:
The class of 2013 achieved 1,000,135 more AP scores of 3, 4, or 5 (the scores typically accepted by colleges for credit and placement) and had an increase of 824,368 AP scores of 1 or 2. In other words, there was a greater increase from 2003 to 2013 in the scores of 3 or higher than in the scores of 1 or 2.
33.2 percent of public high school graduates in the class of 2013 took an AP Exam, compared to 18.9 percent of graduates in the class of 2003
.
20.1 percent of public high school graduates in the class of 2013 earned a 3 or higher on an AP Exam, compared to 12.2 percent of graduates in the class of 2003.
Low-income graduates accounted for 27.5 percent of those who took at least one AP Exam in the class of 2013, compared to 11.4 percent in the class of 2003. A total of 275,864 low-income graduates in the class of 2013 took at least one AP Exam during high school, which is more than four times the number of low-income graduates who took an AP Exam in the class of 2003.
Since 2003, there has been a 7.9 point increase in the percentage of U.S. public high school graduates scoring a 3 or higher on an AP Exam, with 17 states exceeding the national average for this percentage change. Once again, Maryland led all other states in the percentage of its public high school graduates scoring a 3 or higher on an AP Exam.
https://www.collegeboard.org/releases/2014/class-2013-advanced-placement-results-announced
It sure looks to me that the public schools are showing massive improvement in this area.
I wonder how the Bill Gates, Walton, Koch and Broad consortium to destroy public education will turn these stats into a PR lie that claims the public schools are failing or are they just ignoring them hoping the public won’t discover this dramatic evidence of success in the Public Schools.
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Lloyd,
I take it that you think the right number of students taking AP classes and AP exams is at least the current level and possibly higher. Is that correct?
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Using the data from the College Board that I included in my comment with a link to the original source, that would seem the case. Since the College Board gives the AP exams, then they should be the primary source of this info.
If you had read the info and visited the College Board site, why bother to ask the question? That data answered it for you.
Our daughter took a number of AP classes and exams in HS, but Stanford only accepted a small number for college credit. I wonder why Stanford rejects AP classes and AP exams for college credit when most or all state colleges accept them.
Does Stanford know something about the reality and quality of the AP exams from the College Board that we don’t know?
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I wouldn’t call it the “right” number. What is the “right” number?
Here’s a description of the enrollment process to get into AP classes:
The cumulative academic GPA — within the AP course subject or overall — is sometimes used as an indicator of readiness for AP classes. Since AP classes very closely simulate the work level of a college course, it is imperative that students have the appropriate study and reading skills to complete the work. Although the cumulative academic GPA is probably the least used of these standards, it is taken into consideration when the other standards barely meet the threshold of acceptance.
Teacher recommendations weigh heavily in the decision to admit a student into an AP course. Teachers who have had past experience with students applying for AP acceptance know of their strengths, weaknesses and study habits; this information is very useful in determining readiness for an AP course.
Some students end up taking AP courses despite not meeting the requirements set forth by the school. Sometimes, the school’s efforts to convince the student and parent that the student may not be ready for an AP class are unsuccessful. If they insist on enrollment in AP courses regardless of the recommendation of the school, the school must obtain a signed waiver, stating that the parent is disregarding the school’s recommendation for placement.
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Lloyd,
After all this, do you have a position about the “right” number of students to take AP exams? Poster Steven K predicted that fewer students would be taking AP exams in the future. Do you think it is a good thing or a bad thing?
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There is no right number. The number depends on the students who apply and are accepted into AP classes. A student must be motivated to apply, and if a student wants to be in an AP class, then to stay in, the student must perform, must decide to cooperate, study, do the work, etc.
Enrolling in an AP class is a choice—not a number.
Going to college is a choice—not a number.
Where you apply for a job is also a choice—not a number.
Reading a book or going to see a movie is a choice—not a number.
Do you think students have a right to make these choices or do you think that we should follow Obama’s Machiavellian Race to the Top agenda and force every student to be college or career ready even if they don’t want to be? I mean, some kids are perfectly okay with mowing lawns for a job and certainly they don’t have to be college ready and literate to mow lawns, swing a hammer, etc. These are jobs that don’t even require literacy.
Do you also think that when students make a choice not to cooperate in class and learn, that teachers should be punished for the students choice and the teachers should lose their jobs and public schools should be closed?
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Lloyd,
Excellent. I think we a agree.
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Lloyd,
It is refreshing to see a frequent poster on this blog say that there has been tremendous improvement in tat least one aspect of he public school system over the last decade.
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Have you read Diane’s book, “Reign of Error”? It is a treasure trove of evidence of nothing but success and growth in the public schools.
In fact, without the fake Machiavellian insanity of Obama’s Race to the Top that the public schools must turn out 100% college and/or career ready students—something that no country on the earth has done in history or ever will without genetic engineering to make every child and parent a perfect drone—the U.S. Public Schools are outperforming every other country’s public schools by impressive margins when we compare similar socioeconomic levels.
Even the average PISA test scores of the 23% of U.S. children who live in poverty perform better than even Finland’s students who live in poverty, and in Finland the poverty rate is less than 5 percent.
Maybe Finland could learn something from US public schools when it comes to working with children who live in poverty. With 23 percent of our children living in poverty, we have much more experience than any other developed country in this area—and without the proper support from our government, the U.S. still outperforms every other nation on the planet when it comes to teaching children who live in poverty.
You might want to read about it here: In act, why wouldn’t you want to read about it and see the evidence for yourself? I provided links to the source.
http://crazynormaltheclassroomexpose.com/?s=PISA+and+childhood+poverty
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“The number depends on the students who apply and are accepted into AP classes. ”
Funny
In my district any kid can sign up for an AP class. ( perhaps very basic prerequisites, like being in a certain grade, or passing a intro level course ).
No application.
No ” being accepted”.
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Lloyd Lofthouse,
How do you know that AP classes “closely simulate” college classes? You’ve visited every single one? a lot of them don’t.
Not every school has barriers to taking AP classes. Many will admit any student who wants to take the course. I’ve seen this statement on many AP syllabi. It is simply not true that teacher recommendations “weigh heavily” on the decision to admit students to the course.
You might try visiting a range of h.s. classes in more than one area.
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If what you say is true, then AP classes have also fallen victim to the self-esteem parenting movement. Heaven forbid that the schools would deny any child a chance to boost their self esteem by taking AP classes even if the kid is 16 and reading at a 2nd grade level.
I haven’t forgotten the battle between parents and administration in the district where I taught (1975-2005) when administration wanted to close all the AP and Honors classes so the other kids, who weren’t taking them, wouldn’t suffer a loss of self-esteem. In other words, let’s hide any evidence that some kids read far below grade level. We don’t want their self-esteem threatened.
The parents won the battle to keep the AP and Honors classes, but no parent fought to keep open the classes designed for the below basic readers. all the basic reading classes were closed and those kids who read way below grade level were all crammed in college prep classes where us teachers were forced to teach them out of grade level books. That’s when the failure rate skyrocketed.
Then administration and parents started attacking teachers to make the work easier and not fail as many students who couldn’t or wouldn’t do the work. Again, it was all about self-esteem.
Teachers argued and fought that tide but we didn’t stand a chance.
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A score of 3 is a C, which many schools won’t accept. Why would you start college with a bunch of Cs on your record?
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At my institution the AP score is not listed on the transcript. It is only noted as credit.
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TE – I support that, using the AP like a pass/fail credit.
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I don’t know of colleges that do anything other than credit/no credit for AP classes. Does SUNY treat them differently?
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TE – In the past the AP credit appeared as a grade on the transcript in the SUNY schools, but it appears that now it is just an assigned credit with the score (which is still a “grade”since a 3 is considered a C – although it doesn’t count towards the GPA). I suppose they changed the policy to make the AP courses more useful, although, depending on the major, the course might need to be retaken. This way high school students can complete their entire Freshman year. (I’m not sure if this is a good thing, however – but that is another discussion).
As far as your son is concerned. It’s too bad your district didn’t offer the IB program, which also can result in up to year’s worth of credit. That would have challenged him more. It’s unfortunate that families who live in less densely populated areas of our country can’t take advantage of some of the advanced programs offered by districts in the suburban or urban areas who have a larger tax base.
It seems that a common core could not really truly equalize opportunities across the country, even if it was an exemplary program.
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TE,
What is it that you think we agree on?
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We agree that it is difficult to know if the poster’s forecast drop in AP students, in and of itself, is good or bad.
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Are you talking about a drop in quality or drop in attendance?
According to College Board, AP attendance is up dramatically.
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Lloyd ,
The original poster on this sub thread was predicting a drop in the number of students.
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Predicting? Geeze, that’s all it was?
Like predicting who would win the World Cup in Soccer or who would reach Mars first?
Anyone can make a prediction. Anyone can come up with a theory.
And a prediction is sort of like a theory. For instance, I just reached page 210 in “The Teacher Wars, A History of America’s Most Embattled Profession” by Dana Goldstein (out this September), and this is where Gates steps in to push his unproven thoery of “rank and yank” in the public schools.
This never tested theory was about to vanish because Congress never got around to updating NCLB, and then Bill Gates steps in with his first $100 million to revive a Machiavellian management method he believes in—a theory that is not being follow by many other corporations that are following a management tool that Toyota and Sony developed “called continues quality improvement”—the same method used in Japanese schools, and America’s public schools were just starting to move in that direction.
But Gates and his partner in crime, President Obama, used Gates great wealth and the bully pulpit of the White House to abandon a working, proven system used by Japan, Toyota and Sony and many other U.S. Corporations and adopted Gates passion for “rank and yank”.
I think this calls for one humungous law suit where parents, teachers and children take Bill Gates and Obama behind the wood shed and smack the crap out of them.
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Yup. That’s all the thread was about.
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Why pay to take a test which won’t count? After their child fails one AP exam, parents aren’t going to pay for another.
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When I attended Pinnacle High School (Phoenix, AZ) from 2000 to 2004, students who simply *took* an AP exam got an automatic 10% boost to their final course grade. Students could buy higher grades and the school could buy a high US News ranking.
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I always wondered about the US News and World Report Rankings because the No.1 school in my state gets mediocre test scores and offers very little enrichment. Their students all take AP classes though.
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I decided the US News and World Report Rankings were capricious when a college I was familiar with, earned a ranking one year. It was the year that an excellent in-house, PR person focused on college recognition.
I don’t know if she developed contacts or was better at filling out paperwork. I’m certain the institution had its strengths but, a singular shining moment of notice by a magazine, was odd.
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In Louisiana, we have AP tied in to school performance scores. The more the kids take it and if they pass it, the scores will rise. Nothing like the states funding this program more. We also have the ACT series of standardized tests for 9th, 10th and 11th grade, so I guess we are supporting financially College Board and ACT both. I wonder how many other states do the same.
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In my subject (Latin) AP is very much teaching for the test, and the various workshops available are about test strategies. In its current state, it focuses on excerpts from two works of two authors. This is a rather distorted view of the literature of an entire civilization, and can severely the curricula of small Latin programs.
I was fortunate enough to have the freedom to abandon it in favor of a concurrent enrollment for college credit arrangement with a local university. The students get an intellectually nourishing experience with college transcripts/credit, the teacher retains an appropriate level of autonomy, and the emphasis is placed back on the class itself rather than the canned test at the end.
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That’s an intriguing strategy, and I wonder, as the parent of a high school student who is about to start playing the AP game–lots of AP classes so that college will see he is challenging himself to the extent possible, and likely no college credit–if it might be more sense to investigate college now programs. Of course the high school puts its best teachers in the AP programs, so there is incentive for the kids to sign up, but the curriculum seems needlessly harrowing. Wouldn’t it be better to take those survey classes in college, in terms of the likelihood of getting a curriculum that is less formulaic? (Maybe math is an exception.)
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One advantage of the AP format is that students can take the exams even if their school does not offer the corresponding courses. This is important in states like mine where the average high school is very small and does not offer many advanced classes.
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District 13 parent – do you love your child? Why would you put them under that kind of pressure? So they’ll take AP Chemistry, a third year foreign language, AP literature, AP American History, Trigonometry and Advanced Algebra, plus electives at the age of 16 or 17?
Why put your child under that kind of stress? Is it what they want – the challenge of spending all their free time completing school work – or is it what you want – or is it a push from the school district?
No more than one AP a year, unless your child is a genius.
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Ellen,
Kids differ. I think your rule of on AP class a year would be fine for some, poor for others. Lots of students take multiple AP classes in a year, a number of our local high school students take multiple classes at our local university while still in high school.
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TE – I am not against high school students taking multiple AP courses/exams if that is what they truly desire and have the ability to do. I also support students who are able to successfully complete college classes while in high school. However, this should be for a minority of the students – yet AP is being peddled for all.
I am against students who are forced to take AP exams by either parents or administrators. There is plenty of time for college, after high school graduation. I feel our students and their parents are being brain washed to accept AP as the norm.
And my question is – why are we pushing college down into high school? Why can’t we let our youth enjoy their high school years. The CC proposes making everyone college ready for when they graduate. Aren’t you proposing that they be college ready even earlier, while they are in their early and mid teens.
One size does not fit all. We need to watch our words to make sure we aren’t pushing AP as the norm for high school students. Shouldn’t the emphasis be on teaching the basics, not automatically jumping to the advanced class? Isn’t inappropriate curriculum what we are fighting against? Are we not guilty of some of the same thinking which we claim to despise?
So, yes, AP should be one of a student’s choices, but it should not be an automatic expectation.
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Ellen,
I wrote my post in response to your statement “No more than one AP a year, unless your child is a genius”. This sounded to me like you were suggesting a rule. Was that not your intent?
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Sorry, TE, that I didn’t make myself clear, I was not suggesting a hard and fast rule, just a guideline. I personally feel that one AP class each year is plenty. However, there are children who can handle more. There are others who shouldn’t take any.
My objection is the attitude of adults that are influencing students to overload their coursework, especially in their Junior and Senior years. There should be other options.
And parents who push their kids – who benefits? Parent ego or bragging rights? Not all children are ready for college level courses at the age of fifteen or sixteen.
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Ellen,
As you say, students differ. What would you have done with my middle child? He graduated high school at 16 having taken 9 AP exams in the three years of high school (our district has a junior high school/senior high school framework) and separately 25 credit hours of classes at the local public university. His major frustration was trying to get folks to take him seriously. He reports that many of his college friends had much the same experience in high school. One became so frustrated with her high school experience that she dropped out and spent a year “attending” MIT.
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TE – those are the exceptions. I can honestly say that there are not too many children as gifted as your son. Perhaps his friends were also gifted. Students often complain that school was too easy or too hard. Obviously, your son really needed to be challenged.
I worked at a Gifted and Talented school, but we had few there that were in your son’s category. Many had completed High School Biology, Algebra, English 9, plus a Foreign Language credit by the end of eighth grade. They (and others) were pushed into AP classes, but many floundered. Being excelerated, plus taking honors and AP courses was overwhelming. The school had to analyze their approach and pull back a little, since some classes such as World History and US History were only available as AP classes, and instead of English 11 Honors it was AP Composition. Add in Trig, Chem, Physics, Calculus, Foreign Language and the schedule was just too full to do each class justice.
Instead, the majority of high school requirements were completed by the Junior Year. Senior Year included a relevant internship in the community plus the opportunity to take some real college coursework provided by a local university, depending on the child’s interests. In other words, every student had choices based on their abilities and desires, or an individualized curriculum with some classes being taught online.
What is your son doing now? Did he complete college? Did he find his niche? Is he happy? Is he making a difference? Is he living up to his potential?
My older daughters, although not scholars, are doing well and have created a good life for themselves and their families. My younger ones are still finding their way. My goal is to have them live full and enriching lives.
And that is my wish for others’ children as well.
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Ellen,
My middle son still has a couple of quarters to go, though he will graduate two quarters early. He is about to apply to graduate school. We will have to see how that turns out. The student from my local high school that pushed the furthest (almost a half a dozen graduate classes while in high school) is currently doing a post doc in computational neurobiology somewhere on the east coast.
Even if only one half of one percent of students are interested and able to follow this type of trajectory, there are easily five thousand of them in New York City alone and even a couple of thousand scattered across my state. Given the lack of services for students out of the main stream in my state (remember most high schools offer no AP classes at all because the majority of high schools are small and rural) I am more concerned about the inability of students to find a suitable course of study than being pushed into unsuitable classes.
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TE – it sounds like feast or famine. We too often forget the inequities of the rural community.
I don’t think we disagree, we are just looking at different sides of the same coin.
You should be proud of your children’s accomplishments. As teachers, we are in a better position to guide them in the right direction. Unfortunately, too many parents do not have a clue about how the educational system works.
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College Board is legally a non-profit, though this is designation is under some dispute:
http://edlab.tc.columbia.edu/index.php?q=node/4908
http://www.aetr.org/
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/policysocial-context/21184-is-the-college-board-a-nino-nonprofit-in-name-only.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/10/ap-classes-are-a-scam/263456/
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A benefit of the proliferation of political non-profits, is that the public no longer infers an organization’s legitimacy, by virtue its non-profit status.
At one time, touting an organization as a non-profit, conferred some respect. The IRS’s inaction in enforcing rules, guarantees that obvious self-interest is as likely with a non-profit as with a for-profit.
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Yes, true, the students can take the exam without taking the class, but see my comment above. The skills developed in an AP class are, in my opinion, the most valuable things about them.
@District 13 Parent: As you probably know, the cost of college is one of the chief reasons parents and students want the AP credits. Between AP credits and other college programs, some students come out of our high school with the equivalent of a year’s worth of college credits.
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You might think that the self-discipline needed to prepare for the exams without a class would also be valuable. For the students in my state that attend small high schools (the median size high school is under 250 students) there is no possibility of taking an AP class.
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@TE: Why do I get the impression that teachers are irrelevant in your world? Also, I would bet that less than 1% of high school students have the self-discipline to prep alone for the AP exams. More power to those that do, but I don’t think it’s a common occurrence.
@ D13 Parent: I’m not familiar with College Now, but you are probably right that it would be viewed similarily by colleges as AP classes. And you know, even college credits a student might earn in high school through programs with community colleges or like Project Lead the Way (technology and engineering) are not guaranteed to transfer.
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Sharon,
I agree that generally speaking having an AP class is better than not, but since the majority of high schools in my state offer no AP classes due to their small size and even the larger schools have relatively few classes, I see having the opportunity to take the exam based on self study as important.
It is not very rare for a student at my local high school to take an AP exam based on an independent study or a slightly wrong class. My middle son, for example, took the physics C exams but an AP Physics B class (The only class offered), took two exams based on independent study class, a third from reading the textbook (No AP classes offered in these subjects though the high school is one of the 20 largest in the state), and the Calculus exam after taking the two semesters of science engineering calculus at the local university (few schools accept transfer credit from incoming freshman so he took the Calc C exam to ensure some credit)
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Of course, Buffalo is a large urban school district, but in order to optimize the size of AP classes, sometimes Skype or Long Distance Learning is used between schools.
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@Sharon in NYS: yes, I’m aware of that; it’s very much on my mind. I just wonder, given the expense and rigidity of the AP format, if College Now classes wouldn’t accomplish the same thing if they’re available. The schools that won’t accept AP credit probably won’t accept them, but many would.
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Wasn’t it David Coleman who recruited Bill Gates to join the fake education reform movement?
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Our school only offers AP in English, literature and calculus. The calculus teacher stopped teaching to the test because few students voluntarily took it. There is no other calculus class. My son could have received credit for his composition class, but in reality he is not a strong writer. He is taking freshmen composition so that he can understand what his university expects. Additionally, our school does not weight AP grades which did affect his class rank
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Good for your son!!! I wish I could teach him. The AP English Composition exam does not BEGIN to measure what students should learn in a good college composition class.
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Our school switched from Honors English to AP English two years ago for the very reason that Diane mentions in the last paragraph, though the principal knew this reason was embarrassing and so he couldn’t be honest about it. He presented his view at a department meeting (however, we were told beforehand that the change was a done deal and the upcoming vote, even if it opposed his preference, was not binding) with personal anecdotes that students who took Honors were not treated with the same respect by college admissions as those who took AP (no data to support this, though the guy crunches numbers on his lunch break), that we needed to change to help our students move forward, and that AP was more rigorous and college-oriented. Our city-wide ranking in USN&WR jumped several notches the next year once he could claim the 200 juniors and seniors taking Honors as AP and thus his reputation (the real motivation) was burnished. AP is not the same quality as Honors; and while writing a highly pressurized 40 minute essay is a good skill to have, an Honors class teaches a more extended (7/8 pages), research-based type of writing focused on the sort of paper universities expect.
A novel about our school system under the Bush administration (examining the horrors of NCLB which was a preparation for RTTP and Common Core) has just been published: From a Mid-Wood: Public Education and One Superposition and it was written by your truly. It is funny, if a bit sad – like our current pedagogical state.
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My district is an “AP District,” so the district pushes AP every chance it gets. Every kid who gets or 3 or higher on the exam brings $50.00 to the district. My district got over $100,000 last year from passed AP exams. Sadly, no one was actually any help in getting my AP program set up, and I had to do it all by myself.
I am teaching AP Human Geography, and my students did okay on the test, and I was lucky enough to be able to do a lot with my kids that was real education and not AP stuff. But, if the curriculum changes to the history curriculum, I’m not going to teach it anymore.
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The CB isn’t an enemy of public school kids. I’m a regular reader and supporter of this blog and I have to respectfully disagree here. Having taught for ten years in schools in the bottom 5 or 10 percent based on CST tests, I’ve seen how open enrollment to AP courses inside these schools, while controversial, provides opportunity and access to really challenging material. At the same time, in CA, there’s now a State Seal of Biliteracy that students can earn on their diploma. For students who speak Spanish as their home language, the AP Spanish (or Mandarin) tests offer them a wonderful opportunity to show their knowledge and be commended for it as an asset rather than as something subtractive. These kids, if they qualify for free and reduced lunch, get waivers to test for free. Finally, many urban districts offer a free PSAT (CB product) to every sophomore student. With the results of the test, students have access to a range of free CB tools online that help them investigate colleges, free SAT test prep materials and more. All of this was in place long before Coleman got to CB.
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I score English AP exams, and I agree with Mr. Greene’s points. However, at least as far as English (and Spanish) go, he is wrong about one thing: schools do not buy AP material. The AP doesn’t sell material–at least not in English and Spanish. When our points are inaccurate, we undermine our own credibility.
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Ironically, the ranking is based on whether the students take the AP exam, not how well they score. There are a lot of 1s and 2s out there, and not too many 4s or 5s.
In my mind, we are stuffing students into optional courses which require a higher level of ability then most can achieve in high school. And even if they can be successful, the work load is too intense, especially if they are taking other AP courses in addiction to the regular high school classes. Talk about burn out. If they are ready for college, let them graduate early and attend the local university. Or find them an internship in a field which interests them.
This is another example of meeting adult needs over the interests of the students. I can see one or two AP classes in a topic of interest, not numerous classes for the sake of a school’s ranking. (And often the AP is in place of the regular core subject, not a further delving into the curriculum after taking the required class.)
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So many of you have super bright children that excelled in their AP classes. Mine were the normal bunch. I didn’t push AP, and they were able to graduate from college without garnering any AP credits. They also had more time for sports and other extracurricular activities.
My older daughters now have families of their own and while school is important, there is also an emphasize on enjoying other aspects of life, not just the academics.
Sign me:
All for a well rounded child, not a whiz kid.
Getting my priorities straight.
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