David Kristofferson tutors students for AP exams in California. He sees a scam that benefits mainly the College Board, which sells the exams for $100 per students and rakes in millions.
He wrote this article to share what he has learned.
The first thing that parents and others need to do is that the passing scores on these exams are very low.
Parents don’t realize that the passing scores for at least some of these exams are set very low. When their son or daughter passes with a 3, 4, or 5, parents are elated without understanding what this really means.
For example, the minimum passing score to get a 3 for AP Physics 1 for 2015 was only 41%. Despite that low bar, 63.1% of all students who took the exam were not able to pass it!
41% was the minimum score for a 4, and 71% for a 5.
Unconfirmed reports state that the AP Physics 1 passing grade in 2016 may have been 36%, but the College Board does not readily release such information to the public.
Meanwhile their test fees are pushing close to $100 per exam!
Jay Mathews of the Washington Post has been a strong advocate for the AP exams. He believes that students benefit even if they don’t pass them.
Kristofferson disagrees. He writes:
From my direct experience with students, the AP curriculum covers a large amount of material very quickly. Because the exams are in early May, the curriculum must be completed before then, wasting the final month of school, and making the pace of “learning” even more hectic.
The exams are also filled with very tricky, challenging questions to fulfill the College Board’s quest to, in old school, sexist language, “separate the men from the boys.”
The consequence of this fast-paced, trick-filled curriculum is not quality learning for a very significant number of students, but instead, frantic memorization of test methods and past exam question tricks, most of which disappears right after the student completes the course.
Even worse, this curriculum leads to significant amounts of cheating on local classroom tests!
Read Kristofferson’s article. What do you think?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’m the mother of two high schoolers in Los Angeles. Despite my education activism, I was clueless about the scam of AP classes. In every AP class my children have taken, the teacher has told parents they can’t really teach the way they want because they just have to cover the material. I don’t think my kids have retained one bit of knowledge about World History, which surely is the worst AP curriculum ever. In the final week of class this year, my daughter would “learn” history from the Vietnam War to the AIDS epidemic. In one week! That’s not to be confused with the final week of school, which is still a month away.
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My son’s European History AP teacher gave out stacks of AP questions the first day of class and all they did all year was take practice tests.
Results looked good for her but never time for dialogue and debate.
Not everything is about passing an AP exam.
But the way the AP exams are advertised it becomes stress ‘city’ or competitive for high school student to sign up in CA.
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I do not support AP exams and courses. It’s like when parents brag and say, “My child is in the top reading group. Followed by, “In what reading group(s) is your child(ren)?” All this stratification and labelling inhibits learning and does not address the FACT that classes are communities of learners where students and teachers learn from one another. And it promotes the horridenss of prejudice re: the HAVES and the HAVE NOTS plus the notion of WHITE is RIGHT.
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Any standardized testing like the AP is designed to sort and separate and rank students. What that has to do with, how it improves the teaching and learning process is beyond my capabilities to understand.
Rank stacking for any and everyone! Hey, you low lifers, oops, I mean low test score recipients-“GET A LIFE!”
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This is true for the standardized state tests as well. Since they are given in March, in PA, teachers have to deliver 10 months of content in 7 months. This is particularly challenging for math since many specific skills build one upon the other. Teachers and students have to move at a quick pace to hit on all the content without having the time to assimilate and acquire a level of confidence with each skill. For most students, the learning is thin. The standardized tests encourage a superficial relationship with the content, and with learning.
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Thank God I never took AP courses in high school. I have a tendency to aim for the highest test score possible, so if I took an AP test, passed it, and found out later that I actually failed, I would scream to the point of pulmonary arrest.
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“I have a tendency to aim for the highest test score possible,”
Have you gotten help for that malady??
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Hi Diane.
Thanks very much for mentioning my article. Two corrections to your comments above if I may. I currently work as a private tutor, and I tutor many AP students in math, physics, and chemistry instead of directly teaching AP classes.
I tried to get into high school teaching from 2010-2012 after retiring from high tech, and taught for a year at two different schools. I have a Ph.D., am qualified to teach all levels of math, physics and chemistry, and my students have appreciated me, but, due to lack of seniority and the funding shortfalls during the financial crisis, kept getting layoff notices along with all of the other first year teachers at the school.
I realized that it would take years for me to rise up through the ranks (despite being more qualified and as good of a teacher as most of my peers), and be assigned the top classes where my qualifications could be put to the best use. Because I was doing this work as a public service and didn’t need the salary, I started a tutoring company instead where I make a very modest annual income.
I write these articles on my blog because I see these same ill effects on students year-after-year, and felt the need to speak up. This has also NOT helped my tutoring business because it tends to scare away high-pressure parents who want their kids to take these classes!
Sincerely,
David Kristofferson, Ph.D.
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David,
I assumed too much. I will make the correction.
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Thank you!
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PPS – one more correction of my own since I realize on rereading that my note above was vague.
When I returned to teaching (I was originally a Peace Corps volunteer and a college TA many years ago), I substitute taught at several local high schools for part of a year. I then taught one year each at two different high schools. Because this was in the midst of the financial crisis, both systems had significant budget shortfalls, and all new teachers were hit hard.
At my first job, I could stay, but was cut back to less than 50% time which forfeited benefits. They would have paid me $27,000 and I would have paid them $36,000 to cover COBRA costs for my family’s health insurance. Of course, I said “thanks but no thanks,” and found another job in the San Francisco school district. At the end of the next year, SFUSD had a $53,000,000 budget shortfall, and all first year and contract teachers were laid off.
When you combine this kind of introduction to the education system along with the fact that new teachers are often assigned the hardest classes to teach with students who perform poorly, it is no wonder that the U.S. has a hard time attracting and retaining teachers.
For example, in SF I had a “repeater” geometry class with 28 students who had failed previously, about 10 of whom had learning disabilities, and one was severely autistic. Their learning instructions (“IEP’s”) said not to sit them next to other students with IEPs! That was an interesting geometry problem in itself ;-)!
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Diane, unfortunately I found one more typo. Would be nice to have a copy editor sometimes… On the 2015 AP Physics 1 test, 41% was the minimum score for a passing grade of 3. Unfortunately I accidentally duplicated this number as the score for a 4. 55% was the minimum score for a 4. I fixed this error on my blog and would appreciate it if you could correct it in your text above. Thanks again!
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This might also interest your readers:
Below is the text of my message to a physics teachers mailing list in response to a discussion about AP test cheating.
—–
This is not the first time that cheating in AP classes has been a discussion topic here. Perhaps we should pause for a minute and consider why this happens.
It is my understanding that last year about 60% of students only received a 1 or 2 on the AP Physics 1 exam. This statistic is concerning enough, but the really damning statistic is not readily available to the public – students apparently only needed approximately >= 36% to score a 3 or higher!!!
Please pause and think about that for a minute!
These kids are trapped in a system that encourages them to take AP classes to get into decent colleges and then overloads many of them with too much material for which they are not really intellectually ready to tackle. How often have there been discussion threads here lamenting students’ lack of mathematical preparation, for example?
Compound this with the fact that many students load up their schedule with multiple AP classes, and it is not surprising that they start looking for every conceivable trick to get through these exams.
Meanwhile the College Board keeps charging exam fees that are around $100 per student now …
When I have raised these issues at public parent meetings (and in articles on my blog at http://eduissues.com/2016/10/20/critical-warnings-re-ap-classes/ ), I always get push back from the parents of the successful students. These parents are naturally in favor of a system that gives their kids an edge.
However, clearly based on the test scores, a large number of students are struggling with AP material and are unfortunately driven to desperate measures.
Are we surprised that they cheat? Should we be surprised that our society is dividing into the “1% and the 99%?” We can see it happening in our classrooms! Most wealthy parents hire tutors to get their kids through these classes; poorer families can not afford this route. So much for the education system being the path to “upward mobility” when the curriculum has become so intense that many students need help outside of classroom to master it.
It seems to me that we are all trapped in a system that encourages rushing through the curriculum, and teaching to the test instead of teaching for mastery.
Until the top schools change their admissions policies I don’t see how we can exit this morass. There is some evidence Harvard, Yale, etc. are rethinking admissions policy, but don’t hold your breath: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/20/opinion/rethinking-college-admissions.html
At the very least I would like to see the College Board post the actual percentage scores for receiving 1-5s instead of only posting the grade distributions, but I would not be surprised if their financial interests would be impacted if they did so. If parents knew what a scam these tests are as evidenced by the AP Physics 1 results above, perhaps there would be a greater movement for reform.
Again, I am sure that some (many??) teachers will say that their AP students are doing fine. The best kids will always find a way to survive (though whether they would thrive better under a different system is a separate question).
I also personally believe that this system is turning kids off from pursuing careers in math and science. I see too many students who view their STEM classes simply as a hurdle to overcome instead of something that they enjoy.
I am old enough that they did not offer AP classes when I went to school, but I loved science and had a career goal of becoming a scientist. I wrote about what motivated me here ( http://eduissues.com/2016/11/09/how-to-interest-kids-in-science-engineering-and-math/ ).
Sadly, at the risk of sounding like “an old geezer,” I see very little of this motivation among students today. In November 2015, I bought copies for all of my physics students of the Scientific American issue celebrating the 100th anniversary of General Relativity. Since none of the magazine was “on the test,” the reaction that I got in return was underwhelming to say the least…
In conclusion, we can find ways to possibly deal with cheating, but I submit that we are dealing with symptoms instead of fixing the underlying cause of the problem: *** too much material in the curriculum covered too quickly, compounded by the perceived need to take too many of these classes. ***
The real question should be: how do we exit from this morass??
Sincerely,
David Kristofferson, Ph.D.
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AP is an expensive joke on the students. I was “certified” to teach AP Spanish, that certification was a joke-glad the district paid for it as continuing education (and boy is that stretching the meaning of that term). I refused to teach to the AP and discouraged all but a couple of students from taking the Spanish AP. But boy oh boy, having more students take AP classes sure/supposedly made the school and district look good in the eyes of the State Dept of Ed.
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Hi Duane,
E-mailed you the information you requested a couple days ago but have not heard back. Just want to check that you received it and it did not end up in your Spam folder.
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A lot of schools designated classes as AP but didn’t have the students take the tests. Sure did tick off the College Board who threatened many a district with lawsuits to quit using the AP designation if the students didn’t take the test. All a big ruse to make a school/district look better and score better on the state evaluation rubrics.
So much in public education is guided by a lack of “fidelity to truth”. The only thing that matters is the “appearance” of education going on in a school. Play the school evaluation rubric game, damned be the students actually being taught and them learning. But then what can one expect when minimal critical thinkers, chief compliance promoters are the supposed leaders of schools.
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Actually, I don’t think that’s true. In order to have a course designated AP, the syllabus has to pass an audit certifying that the course covers the standards. Taking the test itself is not part of the standards, and has nothing to do with whether a course is designated AP.
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That is true now, but it wasn’t always so. The College Board now also requires that the teacher be given its imprimatur.
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Duanne – is there any evidence of this? I believe it 100% but it’s really hard to convince others without the proof (you should see the pushback I got in the APCS community when I shared your post or when I otherwise speak truth to power to the college board)
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Sorry but It’s been around 15 years or so ago and I am only going on what remember of what I heard, observed and/or read about at the time. I wish I had more substantial backing, but alas I don’t. I just know that the College Board was “coming after” districts that used the name AP but didn’t use the AP material (and yes, there were quite a few doing so), including giving the tests (as the tests were administered at the school at the time. Don’t know about now).
At the time it reminded me of how MLB went after Little League teams and prevented them from using the various team names and logos, which I thought was an amazingly crass and ignorant-from a PR point of view, thing to do. They were only interested in the money aspect and not getting a minute piece of the marketing share. Hmm, kind of sounds like the College Board now, eh!
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I have taught AP English Language and Composition for five years, and I am a reader who scores the AP tests annually in June. I also am a father of three. Without hesitation, I have encouraged all three to take my AP class and AP classes in other disciplines. I can confidently speak to the AP Language curriculum:
We do not cover a large amount of material very quickly.
We do not waste the final month of school.
The pace of learning is not hectic.
The curriculum is not “trick-filled.”.
The course features very high-quality learning for a very significant number of students, not frantic memorization of test methods and past exam question tricks.
The cheating is no different than any other class I have taught.
When it comes to the AP Language curriculum, I am sure that Kristofferson is wrong. I, therefore, do not trust everything else he says.
Frankly, I am very disappointed that Diane Ravitch featured this article on her influential and otherwise excellent blog.
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I am glad to hear this. However, it would be more informative if you also posted the typical grade-spread for the students in your classes. The numbers posted in the article– typically, 1/3 good-excellent, 2/3 mediocre or below– make me wonder what the AP-course system is all about. Because this just reflects 1/2+-century of stats [for GPA, SATs, et al measures) wherein 1/3 are prepared to matriculate/ grad from selective 4-yr tertiary pgsms, 2/3 are not. Is the AP system just a glorified tracking system?
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Dear bethree5,
Yes, if you read my entire article this is the conclusion I came to. When colleges get hundreds/1000s of applications with 4.0+ GPAs, the AP exams do definitely sort these students out in terms of their ability to do well on those tests. However, references that I make to the mathematics departments websites at both Berkeley and Stanford indicate that those departments realize these test scores are very imperfect measures of mathematical understanding. They phrase this very diplomatically, of course!
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Dear Experienced Teacher,
I was between tutoring appointments and could not reply at length last time. When you make a charge like
“When it comes to the AP Language curriculum, I am sure that Kristofferson is wrong. I, therefore, do not trust everything else he says. Frankly, I am very disappointed that Diane Ravitch featured this article on her influential and otherwise excellent blog,” I feel compelled to defend my position.
Again, I was speaking about the math/science tests and invite you to read my entire article, not just the excerpts that were quoted above.
The test scores that I quoted do not come from me; they come from the College Board. I think it is hard to dispute that a test which over 60% of the test takers fail when the minimum passing grade is only 41% has a serious problem.
The AP Physics 1 test was overhauled to reduce the amount of material in the curriculum and began anew in 2015. I continue to think that they have not struck the right balance, and that the grades clearly illustrate this problem. The amount of material is not the only issue, but that is the topic for another discussion which I do not have time to address right now. In brief, I would suggest that AP Physics 1 should seriously consider sticking solely to Mechanics and drop all other topics.
Regarding the AP Calculus tests, there are kids that do well on these exams every year, but, as I have mentioned in articles on my blog, each year I deal with students who are smart (4 of my students have been accepted to Ivies or Stanford in the last two years), but not necessarily geniuses, and who are drowning under the amount of material that gets thrown at them in a short amount of time.
This is especially true when parents accelerate their kids (or the kids do it to themselves because all of their “smart friends” are doing it), and have them skip from precalculus directly to Calculus BC.
BC, a year long class minus the month of May, is supposedly the second semester of college calculus, while AB (also a year long class minus May) is the first semester, but the local high school lets students jump from precalculus to BC because the BC class covers all of the AB material in the first two months.
Again, I am not commenting about the AP Language curriculum which I will accept your word as being excellent.
However, in the areas where I have direct experience, I am definitely not impressed with AP to put it mildly. Other teachers that I talk to will agree with me privately, but not publicly, because it is their jobs to teach these courses. I am not subject to those pressures and would happily sacrifice my remaining tutoring business if that is the expense of speaking out about what I firmly believe to be the truth.
If someone else in my area of expertise wants to try to convince me that I am wrong, I am completely open to listening to their opinions if they wish to state them here.
Right now, all I see is a lot of bad results being swept under the rug, and public ignorance about what is really happening.
Sincerely,
Dr. David Kristofferson
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What you teach in an AP course has little to do with what the test covers. I’m sure many teachers who teach AP English, either Language or Literature, do a thorough and professional job.
Neither test, however, begins to measure what students should cover in Freshman Composition (which I teach). Also, anyone may take the test. It is not necessary to take the course. Being a good test-taker counts for a lot more on these scores than whether a student can find, assess, and use quality information, organize and revise their work, and edit. I also score AP, both language and literature, and we are repeatedly told, “Reward them for what they do well,” and “Remember, this is a draft.” My average time reading a literature essay is 55 seconds. On my students’ papers, however, I spend between and and two hours (counting drafts) each. No comparison.
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I’m not much of a fan of AP classes.
I have 2 high school kids taking such classes because our school cut the other, excellent high level classes in order to force students into the APs. We call them “info-cram” not education.
And I have to shell out another $500 or so even though I already pay some serious taxes.
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Dear Experienced Teacher,
My experience is in math and science, and I stand 100% by my opinion there. I have been a research scientist, software manager, and an IT director in several biotech companies, in addition to being a high school teacher, and know my subject areas very well. I was also the manager of the national DNA sequence database for the NIH in the early days of the Human Genome Project.
I have no basis for commenting on the AP Language tests, and have no wish to contradict your opinion about those tests, but you also should not extrapolate from those exams to the math and physics tests.
Sincerely,
Dr. David Kristofferson
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If AP tests are just glorified subj-breakdowns of college adm tests like the SAT, they should cost no more, added together, than the cost of 1 SAT test.
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And the College Board certainly knows how to work the system. By convincing the parents and politicians of the “importance” of AP they’ve created a market. Then they get municipalities to pay for there tests (AP as well as PSATs and SATs) — they get the schools to do all the work -teaching, administering the exams, proctoring – all for free while the taxpayer pays and the College Board laughs all the way to the bank
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Exacto!
The College Board really started “pushing” (as like a drug dealer) that AP supposed importance in the early 00s. I saw through the nonsense then and it doesn’t take much to see through the nonsense now-especially since the AP tests suffer all the onto-epistemological errors and falsehoods and psychometric fudgings that Wilson identified that render any results COMPLETELY INVALID.
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Pushing is indeed an appropriate characterization, Duane. And like so many things related to standardized tests, it all goes back to Texas.
Tom Luce was a failed gubernatorial candidate who had what he described as (in true Texas spirit) a halftime moment and realized that god had another plan for him, and it was education.
“ ‘Tom Luce showed remarkable foresight when he led the team that passed the most comprehensive public education bill in Texas history,’ O’Donnell said. ‘Tom founded Just for Kids to make data on school performance available to Texas parents and was a founding director of Advanced Placement Strategies, a Texas nonprofit program that is increasing the number of students — especially those in low-performing schools — who now pass AP exams in math, science and English.’
Luce was chief of staff for the Texas Select Committee on Public Education, which produced one of the country’s first public school reform efforts in 1984. He was appointed assistant secretary of education by President George W. Bush in 2005 and will continue his work as chairman of the National Math and Science Initiative.”
http://www.dallasnews.com/business/columnists/robert-miller/20130402-odonnell-foundation-hires-tom-luce-dallas-attorney-and-education-advocate.ece
Despite its official sounding name, the National Math and Science Initiative was not funded by government but underwritten by ExxonMobile. It gave an enormous import to AP exams.
http://www.nms.org/Blog.aspx
We had our own franchise in Massachusetts; MMSI.
http://www.massinsight.org/ourwork/college-success/
I saw this “miracle” of the AP performed here in Boston. The Mass Math and Science Initiative set up shop in my school (89% of our students were minorities). We already had an outstanding track record of well-prepared kids diligently working their way toward scores of 4 and 5 in a host of AP classes. But the goal was not to have kids do well, the goal was simply to get more kids to take AP classes. Why?
Well, although teachers had long taught AP courses successfully, no outsider consultants were involved. Suddenly, we were inundated with “verticle alignment” workshops, AP workbooks, CD’s, mandatory extra time for teacher AP training (including Saturdays) and cash payments to students taking the tests, as well as “merit pay” to AP teachers for high scores. In other words, what had been an in-house effort to take our most talented students a step forward toward distinguishing their academic records was co-opted to make bank for test fees, materials and consultants.
In that same time period Duane mentions, the College Board for the first time began to require that AP teachers write up and submit an AP curriculum to them for approval (un-reimbursed, of course), and AP training courses began to be required of teachers so that they would be “qualified” to teach those “endorsed” classes. More “ca-ching” at the cash register.
Remember that our faculty and students had a long track record of success in this arena. Under pressure from the school department, our numbers of students taking AP classes expanded exponentially, until nearly every student was enrolled in some AP class or another. So we met the goal of more kids, but of course our percentage of high scores fell off precipitously. It ruined the school’s atmosphere because kids felt they were failures for not taking 4 AP classes and while we’d been a very successful school in terms of preparing kids to do well in college after graduation, we were also pretty laid back about not creating a pressure cooker atmosphere.
It so happened that my own kids were applying for college during this time period. I noticed that though AP had been on the lips of admissions officers of “elite” schools four years earlier for my older child, now there was little interest. Every admissions person I asked about this at competitive liberal arts colleges had the same answer – “that credential has been devalued”.
But the College Board is doing just fine. All scams take a while to play out.
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Thanks, Christine for the historical primer on “the push” for AP. I certainly didn’t know all the particulars, I just knew and felt the sting of the push. Sting because I refused to implement it and that wasn’t kosher as far as the administration of the district was concerned.
And I like that the “that credential has been devalued”. Serves the College Board right!
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There is ANOTHER reason that the AP credential has been “devalued” at some elite colleges. It is because many elite private high school students don’t look especially good when their scores on AP exams are measured against the top applicants from public high schools. The top students at private schools do score 5s, but those elite private high schools also expect elite colleges to admit their students who are in the 25% – 75% in their school, not just the top students.
How does the elite college admissions officer justify rejecting the kid from Bronx Science who has a bunch of 5s on the same AP exams that the student from an elite private high school only receives 3s and 4s on? Why, by devaluing the AP exam! Isn’t it better to simply accept the elite private high school’s word that getting an A or A- in one of their “superior” non-AP classes should weight more than any exam where one of their student’s AP exam score is directly comparable to the scores received by students from Bronx Science who are also applying?
Ironically, Oxford and Cambridge DO value the AP Exams (and SAT subject tests). To even be considered for admission an American student must get 5s on at least 3 relevant AP exams.
And the cynic in me wonders whether the real reason that elite colleges in America now pretend that AP scores are irrelevant is because so many public high school students are acing those exams and they are competing for admission against elite private school students who don’t all receive 5s. If the elite colleges were using AP scores to measure applicants’ academic prowess, many students from elite private school would get shut out.
But I do think that universities like Harvard do look closely at AP scores. Perhaps they just do that to compare one public school applicant to another. But those scores have some weight.
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Interesting points. I would be at least minimally happy if the College Board stated publicly on their website what 3’s, 4’s, and 5’s really meant in terms of percentage grades on each of the tests! I think this information is hard to find for a reason. I can’t speculate on the motivations you mention above.
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Does it really matter what 3s, 4s or 5s mean as % grades? Does it matter that missing 2 on the SAT math exam may get you an 800 on a May exam and missing 1 might give you a 780 on a June exam?
Isn’t that what scaled scoring is all about?
Whether or not an AP class plus a high score on the exam is the equivalent of a college course depends on the college, doesn’t it? Even the colleges that give credit for SOME AP Exams often won’t give credit for another one because they don’t believe that class is credit-worthy (although it might help for placement if a student wants it to).
I agree that judging a school or teacher on how well the students’ fare on AP Exams is nonsense. I agree that some teachers may teach to the test although many teachers do not. I agree that it is silly to have students who are struggling to pass Regents exams in a subject are taking AP classes because schools are pushing them.
I just don’t agree that they are entirely worthless and apparently neither do the folks at Oxford and Cambridge.
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Dear NYC public school parent,
When you ask “Does it really matter what 3s, 4s or 5s mean as % grades? Does it matter that missing 2 on the SAT math exam may get you an 800 on a May exam and missing 1 might give you a 780 on a June exam?”, I think it does.
High school is the last “required” education that future citizens of our country receive. The extremely low passing scores on, e.g., the physics and math exams that I cited say to me that only a small minority of the students are learning the covered material.
I am NOT saying that we should ban or take away AP classes from all students. What I am saying is that there is a very significant number of students in the fields with which I am familiar that are being done a major disservice by these classes, and parents don’t realize this because these % scores are not readily available.
As noted above, these tests seem to be a sorting mechanism for college admission offices, but, other than that, they are not teaching material to a significant number of test takers in an effective manner. I believe that many of these kids would be much better served by non-AP classes that could concentrate on the needs of local students instead of trying to cram everyone into the “Harvard mold.”
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“they are not teaching material to a significant number of test takers in an effective manner.”
Seems like a mile wide brush with which you are painting, David. It sounds like the whining that has been going on for since the 1800s with university professors complaining about the “preparation” of and supposed lack of knowledge of the students who enrolled in their precious college.
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Whining?!? Seems like simple logic to me, Duane. High fail rate despite very low passing bar = “they are not teaching material to a significant number of test takers in an effective manner.” Time to call it a night…
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Our daughter enjoyed her AP English classes (for this I give total credit to the teachers, both of whom I believe strayed from the AP curriculum!), but she didn’t enjoy the AP tests…in fact, I think she actually threw up one year. And this was some 14 years ago.
Finally, I think her high school–although considered one of the top in the nation–didn’t make the U.S.News & World Today list of top high schools due to the fact that they DON’T push AP on every student.
So sad…too bad.
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Glad to see this issue highlighted. I can’t recall exactly when (in the early 2000s) it dawned on me that the standardized exams had become a total money making scam. I had kids who ran the gamut — took the exams and did very well, took the exams and did poorly (the kid with the IEP who tests terribly), and took the courses, but skipped the exams. I thought AP Calc AB and BC were great for kids who were really solid in math before they started. I thought European History was a mile wide and an inch deep (and I agree about the tricky questions that seemed designed to test something other than content knowledge) — and therefore largely a waste of time due to the delivery method and timing. What I really wish is that schools would come up with a comprehensive world and European History sequence — starting in about 7th grade, to cover the material of those courses more slowly and comprehensively, over 4 to 6 years. THEN, if kids wanted to take a “course” (or just the exam) in high school, it might make more sense.
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Thanks again, JEM, and everyone else for your comments. I hope everyone took the time, as Diane requested, to read my article and didn’t just comment after reading the short excerpts above. All of my experiences with AP have been in math and science. As I noted above, I have extensive academic and private sector experience in these areas and believe very strongly that my opinions about the math and physics exams are correct. I provide evidence in the article to back them up. To be clear, I present no evidence nor even discuss the AP humanities curricula in the article. If ” Experienced Teacher” above says the Language programs are great, then who am I to argue 🙂 !
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“If ” Experienced Teacher” above says the Language programs are great, then who am I to argue 🙂 !”
One should argue that any AP program is bogus. What? You weren’t teaching the subject matter to begin with as part of your curriculum before the almighty AP? Notice I said “teaching the subject matter” and not the “AP version of the subject matter”.
I was teaching more and above what the AP prescribed before the AP was shoved down teachers’ throats in the early 00s.
As I stated above, the AP test suffers all the onto-epistemological errors and falsehoods and psychometric fudges that render any results “vain and illusory”, in other words COMPLETELY INVALID, that Noel Wilson identified in his never refuted nor rebutted 1997 treatise “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
David, If you have not read this seminal work, arguably THE most important work in educational writing in the last 50 years, I highly recommend that you do so.
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Thanks, Duane. I’ll check it out.
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If, while reading Wilson’s work (most everyone that has read or attempted to read has told me that it is a difficult read) you have any questions please feel free to email me: dswacker@centurytel.net. Please put “Wilson’s work” in the subject matter line so I don’t thing you are spamming me-ha ha.
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I’m happy to see there are others questioning the purpose, value, and validity of Advanced Placement courses and tests. What’s missing from the discussion here, however, is what research says about AP. It isn’t kind.
A 2002 National Research Council study of AP courses and tests — math and science courses and tests — found them to be a “mile wide and an inch deep” and inconsistent with research-based principles of learning. The study was an intense content analysis led by top-notch researchers who were experts on effective teaching and learning. More experts were involved on content panels for each discipline (biology, chemistry, physics, math), plus NRC staff.
A 2004 study by Geiser and Santelices found that “the best predictor of both first- and second-year college grades” is unweighted high school grade point average, and a high school grade point average “weighted with a full bonus point for AP…is invariably the worst predictor of college performance.”
A 2005 study (Klopfenstein and Thomas) found AP students “…generally no more likely than non-AP students to return to school for a second year or to have higher first semester grades.” Moreover, the authors wrote that “close inspection of the [College Board] studies cited reveals that the existing evidence regarding the benefits of AP experience is questionable,” and “AP courses are not a necessary component of a rigorous curriculum.”
A 2006 MIT faculty report noted “there is ‘a growing body of research’ that students who earn top AP scores and place out of institute introductory courses end up having ‘difficulty’ when taking the next course.” Two years prior, Harvard “conducted a study that found students who are allowed to skip introductory courses because they have passed a supposedly equivalent AP course do worse in subsequent courses than students who took the introductory courses at Harvard” (Seebach, 2004). Dartmouth found that high scores on AP psychology tests do NOT translate into college readiness for the next-level course.
Indeed, students admit that “You’re not trying to get educated; you’re trying to look good;” and, “The focus is on the test and not necessarily on the fundamental knowledge of the material.” Students know that AP is far more about gaming the college acceptance process than it is about learning.
In The ToolBox Revisited (2006), Adelman chided those who had misstated his original ToolBox (1999) work: “With the exception of Klopfenstein and Thomas (2005), a spate of recent reports and commentaries on the Advanced Placement program claim that the original ToolBox demonstrated the unique power of AP course work in explaining bachelor’s degree completion. To put it gently, this is a misreading.”
Ademan goes on to say that “Advanced Placement has almost no bearing on entering postsecondary education,” and when examining and statistically quantifying the factors that relate to bachelor’s degree completion, Advanced Placement does NOT “reach the threshold level of significance.”
The 2010 book “AP: A Critical Examination” noted that “Students see AP courses on their transcripts as the ticket ensuring entry into the college of their choice,” yet, “there is a shortage of evidence about the efficacy, cost, and value of these programs.” And this: AP has become “the juggernaut of American high school education,” but “ the research evidence on its value is minimal.”
As Geiser (2007) notes, “systematic differences in student motivation, academic preparation, family background and high-school quality account for much of the observed difference in college outcomes between AP and non-AP students.” College Board-funded studies do not control well for these student characteristics (even the College Board concedes that “interest and motivation” are keys to “success in any course”). Klopfenstein and Thomas (2010) find that when these demographic characteristics are controlled for, the claims made for AP disappear.
Yet, here we are. People, including many educators, still think AP is inherently “better.” That it is “college-level” learning. That it means something important. In Virginia, the state superintendent’s association recently gave its superintendent-of-the-year award to a poser who boasted about the number of students in her district who took – and passed – AP tests. Jay Mathews’ Challenge Index of “best” schools is based almost entirely on the number of AP tests given in a school. The College Board spreads loads of fake news about AP. Exxon-Mobil is all-in on AP, and the US Chamber of Commerce wails that American students lag in “..pass rates for Advanced Placement exams in STEM subjects.”
Meanwhile, Russian intelligence agencies hijacked the American presidential election and there’s a Yam in the White House who ran a campaign on xenophobia, racism, misogyny and anti-democratic rhetoric – and got 62 million votes.
Guess what?
“ya got trouble, folks!
Right here in River City.
Trouble with a capital ‘T’…”
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Thanks for that information, democracy!
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Thanks for your detailed comments. Many agree completely with my personal experience working with kids as well as the gently-worded statement that I quoted from the Berkeley math department web site.
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Jay Matthews and US News and World Report gave these tests a huge boost when they used them as a primary metric in rating schools. In general journalists love combing through the test results because they are a cheap, easy and fast way to provide seeming mathematical precision to something that is clearly elusive: the overall quality of a school.
AP tests CAN help individual students get the attention of competitive colleges and, in some cases, save students lots of money by enabling them to “skip” a year in college. But they taint the debate about school “quality” because they serve as the “tie-breaker” in US News and World Report rankings and the “deal breaker” in Jay Matthews’ rankings and continue to reinforce the notion that in teaching and learning time is constant and learning is variable.
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It’s not that AP courses “CAN help individual students get the attention of competitive colleges,” it’s that that they are perceived as “the ticket” to getting into selective colleges.
As I noted in my comment above,
Indeed, students admit that “You’re not trying to get educated; you’re trying to look good;” and, “The focus is on the test and not necessarily on the fundamental knowledge of the material.” Students know that AP is far more about gaming the college acceptance process than it is about learning.
Parents prod their kids to take AP. Guess what? So do guidance counselors.
Do some students “benefit” from taking AP courses and tests? Sure. But, students who benefit the most are “students who are well-prepared to do college work and come from the socioeconomic groups that do the best in college are going to do well in college.”
What do students actually learn from taking these “rigorous” AP courses and tests? For many, not much. One student remarked, after taking the World History AP test, “dear jesus… I had hoped to never see “DBQ” ever again, after AP world history… so much hate… so much hate.” And another added, “I was pretty fond of the DBQ’s, actually, because you didn’t really have to know anything about the subject, you could just make it all up after reading the documents.” Another AP student related how the “high achievers” in his school approached AP tests:
An AP reader, one of those “experts” cited by Jay Mathews when he gushes over AP, related this about the types of essays he saw:
“I read AP exams in the past. Most memorable was an exam book with $5 taped to the page inside and the essay just said ‘please, have mercy.’ But I also got an angry breakup letter, a drawing of some astronauts, all kinds of random stuff. I can’t really remember it all… I read so many essays in such compressed time periods that it all blurs together when I try to remember.”
As to saving money and skipping a year in college, it happens, but it’s rare.
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My oldest daughter did get enough credits from her AP’s that she was able to graduate from her elite college in three years, saving big $ on tuition. Four years later, after the push began for AP’s for all, (coinciding with US News rankings), her sister was told by the same school it was no longer interested in AP scores.
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Dear Christine,
When AP classes are substituted for college classes it does save money, but I often wonder at what “cost” in education…
Please note my comment about high school versus college science lab experiences elsewhere in this section and at http://eduissues.com/2016/10/20/critical-warnings-re-ap-classes.
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“to provide seeming mathematical precision to something that is clearly elusive: the overall quality of a school”
Not only the overall quality of a school but, what a student actually knows.
That supposed mathematical precision is meant to give an objective/scientific sheen to an otherwise rotten apple.
That supposed mathematical precision relies on the false notion that a standardized test “measures” something, something like student ability whatever that means, or student achievement, again whatever that means, in a certain subject/realm or a latent trait, one that is “nonobservable”. Really?? Did I just fall off the turnip truck?
Yes, those things are what the supporters of standardized testing will tell you that the tests do, and that they do so with “mathematical precision”. Again, did I just fall off the turnip truck?
The most misleading concept/term in education is “measuring student achievement” or “measuring student learning”. The concept has been misleading educators into deluding themselves that the teaching and learning process can be analyzed/assessed using “scientific” methods which are actually pseudo-scientific at best and at worst a complete bastardization of rationo-logical thinking and language usage.
There never has been and never will be any “measuring” of the teaching and learning process and what each individual student learns in their schooling. There is and always has been assessing, evaluating, judging of what students learn but never a true “measuring” of it.
But, but, but, you’re trying to tell me that the supposedly august and venerable APA, AERA and/or the NCME have been wrong for more than the last 50 years, disseminating falsehoods and chimeras??
Who are you to question the authorities in testing???
Yes, they have been wrong and I (and many others, Wilson, Hoffman etc. . . ) question those authorities and challenge them (or any of you other advocates of the malpractices that are standards and testing) to answer to the following onto-epistemological analysis:
The TESTS MEASURE NOTHING, quite literally when you realize what is actually happening with them. Richard Phelps, a staunch standardized test proponent (he has written at least two books defending the standardized testing malpractices) in the introduction to “Correcting Fallacies About Educational and Psychological Testing” unwittingly lets the cat out of the bag with this statement:
“Physical tests, such as those conducted by engineers, can be standardized, of course [why of course of course], but in this volume , we focus on the measurement of latent (i.e., nonobservable) mental, and not physical, traits.” [my addition]
Notice how he is trying to assert by proximity that educational standardized testing and the testing done by engineers are basically the same, in other words a “truly scientific endeavor”. The same by proximity is not a good rhetorical/debating technique.
Since there is no agreement on a standard unit of learning, there is no exemplar of that standard unit and there is no measuring device calibrated against said non-existent standard unit, how is it possible to “measure the nonobservable”?
THE TESTS MEASURE NOTHING for how is it possible to “measure” the nonobservable with a non-existing measuring device that is not calibrated against a non-existing standard unit of learning?????
PURE LOGICAL INSANITY!
The basic fallacy of this is the confusing and conflating metrological (metrology is the scientific study of measurement) measuring and measuring that connotes assessing, evaluating and judging. The two meanings are not the same and confusing and conflating them is a very easy way to make it appear that standards and standardized testing are “scientific endeavors”-objective and not subjective like assessing, evaluating and judging.
That supposedly objective results are used to justify discrimination against many students for their life circumstances and inherent intellectual traits.
C’mon test supporters, have at the analysis, poke holes in it, tell me where I’m wrong!
I’m expecting that I’ll still be hearing the crickets and cicadas of tinnitus instead of reading any rebuttal or refutation.
Because there is no rebuttal/refutation!
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I’m glad to see others share my disdain for the way test results are used…
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Duane, I see all your posts about standardized tests being invalid and I agree with many of them and certainly standardized test scores should be looked at in context, not the way they are used now.
However, let’s forget about politics and just talk about the real world.
Twenty thousand high school students are applying for 1,000 seats at Princeton. How do you distinguish them? Especially when some private schools have grade inflation and the grading policies of thousands of public schools are all over the place — even among teachers teaching the same subject in the same school!
Standardized exams — including the APs — have always been a means to compare students from disparate high schools directly.
Before they were widely used in admissions, seats in elite universities were regularly handed out to mediocre students coming from the correct boarding schools. I’m sure that could still happen, but at least it is possible to say that mediocre student got mediocre standardized test scores and you are rejecting students whose scores on the same tests are significantly better.
I am cynical about motives when elite private high schools (where AP exams began) claim the AP Exams have no validity so we won’t have our students take them anymore? Just believe us that our own course is superior and anything better than a B in one of our high school classes should be considered superior to an A in a public school class?
That is certainly a convenient perspective to take if your students are in the same applicant pool against students who are getting 5s on those standardized tests.
I agree with you that standardized tests are an imperfect measurement. But throwing out any kind of standardized testing as invalid simply perpetuates a system that has only benefited the elite.
I think standardized testing work best when students can freely elect whether to take or not take the exams based on their desire to attend a college that requires their score for admissions. But having very selective colleges require a standardized test score works to keep the admissions process at least somewhat more fair. Far from perfect. But better than the alternative we had in the past.
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NYpsp,
A lot there! So please bear with me as I respond to a few of your points.
“However, let’s forget about politics and just talk about the real world.”
Analyzing and showing the inherent errors and falsehoods involved in the standardized testing regime is not a political process in any overt way. It is an endeavor to get at the truth at the heart of the matter, which really is a onto-epistemological philosophical matter that borders on a scientific realm by verifying statements as true or not true. To me all educational practices should be looked at in that fashion.
Is that is “political”? Sometimes it may very well bleed over into the political realm by showing laws, mandates and policies are based on false premises and therefore invalid. Isn’t that what research is supposed to do?
Second, that “real world” is a misnomer for a certain reality that people experience. I find the term quite lacking in coherent meaning as what is one’s “real world” is another’s fantasy world and vice versa.
As far as your hypothetical problem pertaining to admissions criteria and selection process to a university, well, that is for them to work out. Have universities discriminated in many different forms and fashions in the past and even the present? Yes, of course. It can’t be avoided as the ones making and applying the guidelines and rules are human. All entrance criteria are of human, subjective origin. Can’t get around that fact. If I knew what to do, if I had the hubris and gall to believe I had the answer, hell I could make millions.
But I don’t have an answer, I’m only pointing out that using the results of standardized tests for anything other than ascertaining how a particular student interacted with that assessment device on a particular day and time is a fool’s errand. Nothing else. Any other uses of the result cannot be rationo-logically nor ethically justified.
No doubt that using standardized test scores like AP scores are convenient, efficient and cheap (as the costs of the testing rests not on the university but with the student and or school) for a university admission process. But expediency should not and cannot ethically trump the many justice concerns stemming from all the inherent errors and falsehoods of the standardized testing process. Even though that expediency occurs on a daily basis in the admissions process.
“I agree with you that standardized tests are an imperfect measurement.”
That “standardized tests are an imperfect measurement” is not the crux of my analysis. Those tests are not measurements of anything. They are an assessment, judgement, evaluation (very imperfect to the point of invalidity) of supposed student learning but by no means are they a “measurement”. A measurement requires an agreed upon standard unit of whatever is being measured. Please tell me what a standard unit of learning is. What? You can’t? Of course one can’t because there is none. Nor is there a measuring device that is calibrated against said standard. So how is it possible to have a “measurement”? It isn’t plain and simple.
And that leads to the “truthiness” problem of standardized test proponents. The proponents assert that the whole process is a “scientific endeavor” and that we should view the results as accurate and precise. They are neither nor are they scientific. Pscyhometrics is a pseudo-science at worst, pure quackery at best. Wilson has proven that the onto-epistemological foundations of psychometrics are false and error filled. A false and error filled conceptual foundation is not and cannot support the claims of precision and accuracy demanded by a scientific inquiry.
Which leads to your last thought of ” a standardized test score works to keep the admissions process at least somewhat more fair. Far from perfect. But better than the alternative we had in the past.”
The standardized test process, by being a falsehood and error filled one can in no way be “somewhat more fair”. The prejudices involved in the process are just better hidden beneath that pseudo-scientific sheen. Yes, far from perfect, so far from it that they should be immediately discarded from use in the admissions process. No, it’s not a “better alternative”. It’s a more cunning and insidious process that hides all the errors and falsehoods that render the process completely invalid.
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But every single criticism you made of standardized tests can be made of ANY test that a teacher gives to his or her class, can’t it?
Do you give tests at all? I don’t understand how any exam would be fair by those standards. All tests are biased. In fact, sometimes I think the worst biases are in the grading of papers and essays!
I believe there are many students who are brilliant thinkers and will never do well on standardized exams. That’s why it is good that standardized exams are only one evaluation piece.
I also believe there are many students who will be graded harshly by a teacher who either has expectations that are far beyond the norm or has favorites or values students who are articulate and shy students end up with low grades despite mastering the material.
Are you saying there should be no grades ever?
And do you object to colleges using some standardized measure to figure out how to evaluate the students coming from thousands of different high schools who want spots? Maybe they should just sell them to the highest bidder! (Just kidding, I suspect some of them do!)
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Yes, NYpsp, you are correct that all tests are biased, and I would add subjective. That can be either good or bad depending upon how a class test is used.
“can be made of ANY test that a teacher gives to his or her class, can’t it?
Do you give tests at all?”
Yes it can. Yes, I did (I’m retired now)
The devil is in the details in how an assessment, test if you will, is used. Is the main purpose to assign a grade? Do test grades make up a large portion of a semester grade? Used as a summative type evaluation?
In my classes, first off I discussed the complete invalidity of testing and grades so that the students knew right off the bat how to play the grading game I had to do if I wanted a job. Usually my semester grades were about 80% homework completion points. You did the work (I randomly spot checked, but ended up checking probably close to 90% of the home/classwork) you got the points. If you didn’t have it on time you could get 50% of the points available by completing the work when we went over it, and we went over every home/classwork. The tests/quizzes counted for around 20%. I graded them (so I could have a decent idea where the students were in learning) and then we went over them in class with the students then making corrections, hopefully attempting to understand what their mistakes in learning were. They then got 50% of the missing points back. The object was to use the test as a learning device and not as a summative evaluation.
Yes, I believe grading and grades should be eliminated. It may be a pipe dream but . . . .
I really don’t care what each higher ed institution does in regards to its usage of grades and/or test scores for admission, but at the same time it would be nice if all involved realized just how bogus those test scores are. I’ve not really given any thought to how I might set up an admissions process. But it would be something like having the university make it’s own admissions test for its needs and have the students write some kind of essay as part of it. Maybe assign the faculty to grade the tests. Hell, I don’t really know without some serious study of not only the institution but of current admission policies of said institution. I’d probably have a lot more questions than answers.
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^^^Sorry, let me correct myself.
I should not have called standardized tests a “measure”. But if they are used as “an evaluative piece” does it then become acceptable for colleges to use them as one way to evaluate students?
Or are you saying there should just be no tests at all, and does that include classroom exams that teachers design themselves?
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Those tests are an assessment, a very poor one at that, but if the universities want to use such a flawed instrument that is up to them, not me. I just point out just how crappy the tests actually are and how they are very subjective in and of themselves.
I’ve never said that there shouldn’t be classroom tests devised by the teacher(s) who are there. I am not against assessing student learning but that assessment should include the student’s input (or parent’s of younger students) and it should not be a “proclamation” from on high by the teacher about a student.
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Duane,
I finally had time this AM to read some of your lengthy comments in detail. I understand your philosophical bent better now. Back in the 60s our local high school, and I believe UC Santa Cruz, tried to eliminate grading, and both eventually went back to giving grades due to “the system” and the demands of the “real world.” While I am sympathetic to your concerns, this battle is a bit like tilting at windmills unfortunately.
You mentioned how you did use tests in class to assess student learning along with what many teachers refer to as “test corrections” to help students learn from their mistakes. You also allowed student input into their assessments. I agree with some of this, but I should also mention one other obvious purpose of tests and the reason why it is not advisable to make it too easy to make up poor grades.
People, myself included, tend to be lazy even when they enjoy a subject, and the threat of a test hanging over their head often is a key motivating factor that gets them to learn the material. If they can fix too many mistakes via test corrections, one runs a risk of promoting a lack of effort on the part of the students.
My goal in writing my article is much simpler than to try to delegitimize the entire standardized testing system.
People have clearly raised points in the comment section here that are both pro and con AP. Philosophical arguments will always have a wide range of viewpoints arrayed around them with small chance of attaining a consensus.
I merely wanted to note that, wherever one falls on the spectrum of standardized testing opinion, the AP physics and math results that I cited in my article are simply unacceptable.
*** How can anyone, whether pro or con testing, be satisfied with a system where about 60% fail when the passing grade is only about 40% correct?????? ***
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Thanks for the more detailed response, David!
A few things that catch my eye.
“. . . his battle is a bit like tilting at windmills unfortunately.”
Yep! It is a Quixotic adventure and yes it deals with the nature of reality, perceptions and what is sanity vs insanity. I fully understand that pie in the sky aspect. I’ve written years earlier on this blog and elsewhere for folks to join my “Quixotic Quest”.
“. . . the reason why it is not advisable to make it too easy to make up poor grades.”
That gets to the heart of the problem, getting a grade vs learning the subject matter. Many are swayed by the grade argument as motivation, as you suggest “People, myself included, tend to be lazy even when they enjoy a subject, and the threat of a test hanging over their head often is a key motivating factor. . . ” where I would finish the statement with “not for learning but for the grade.”
You see, my focus and duty as a teacher is to help the students learn the subject matter at hand, not get a certain grade. We’ve all had students who can get 100% without any effort. And we’ve had students who struggle as they may working studiously, especially if the testing component of a grade is a high percentage, that will not get above a “C” grade. Are either of those situations anything but a condemnation of grades and the total farce that they are??
I have seen student assessment work where grades were not given and student motivation was enhanced and not lessened. My own children went through K-5 with a non-graded assessment system. I saw the wonders that it worked with students, especially struggling students and/or those with an IEP. (I coached multiple teams in multiple sports that was mad of students of that school, did scouts with them and saw the positive effects of their schooling on their outside of school activities). YES it, the it being no grading of students, can be done successfully. And I believe it could be done with great success at all levels of learning.
My goal is to delegitimize standards and standardized testing and that is exactly the point of my soon to be printed (in the next week or so, just tying up the loose ends) “Infidelity to Truth: Malpractice in American Public Education”
And in regard to your last question, (and please don’t take this response personally) let me just say that none of that matters due to the complete invalidity of the process of making, using and disseminating of the results. Any discussion of said results are therefore just a bunch of mental masturbation that can only result in falsehood and error being perpetuated.
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“I’ve not really given any thought to how I might set up an admissions process. But it would be something like having the university make it’s own admissions test for its needs and have the students write some kind of essay as part of it.”
Isn’t that exactly what the universities did when they got together and established the SAT as a standardized admissions test?
And for a decade or so that SAT did have an essay as a part of it until this year.
They stopped giving the essay because they thought the grading was too subjective and had little validity!
It is true that standardized exams have been badly misused for political reasons (to “prove” a school is failing).
However, they have some validity just like a report card does.
As we know, a report card might show a low grade because the teacher was harsh. A very high performance on a standardized exam might show that the student has a very strong mastery of the subject that isn’t revealed by the teacher’s B grade. And a private school that regularly gives its favorite students (perhaps the scions of big donors) A+’s in every class would be shown to have severe grade inflation if their students’ standardized test scores were just average.
I like that many colleges are making SATs optional because they realize that some students don’t do well on such exams but are still very smart and creative students who should be admitted. But I also know parents who were told they were deluded that their 8 or 9 year old was anything but average and they were wrong to wonder why their kid wasn’t given the more advanced work that other students the classroom teacher had deemed more worthy were given. The classroom teacher was offended that his or her judgement would be questioned by such deluded parents. And it wasn’t until the end of the year when a standardized test showed the kid understood high school level math problems or the kid’s reading comprehension was beyond 12th grade level that the teacher acknowledged that perhaps her judgement had not been correct. After an entire year watching other students being challenged based on a subjective judgement which would very likely have continued if there had been no testing.
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Hi Duane,
No offense taken. One final comment though on the following where you state:
“That gets to the heart of the problem, getting a grade vs learning the subject matter. Many are swayed by the grade argument as motivation, as you suggest “People, myself included, tend to be lazy even when they enjoy a subject, and the threat of a test hanging over their head often is a key motivating factor. . . ” where I would finish the statement with “not for learning but for the grade.”
It has been a retirement goal of mine to teach myself General Relativity for quite some time. I bought several books, etc., but keep putting it off because of the press of other obligations. As I am going on 64 now, I have absolutely no need for grades. However, I definitely know that if I were to sign up for a class and have someone impose an external deadline on me, I would reach my goal much faster than I would through self-study.
In this respect, the teacher, instead of being a “slave-driving bastard,” is actually doing the student a favor!!
I don’t think this point is too controversial hopefully! 😉
Time to get back to work…
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“I am going on 64 now” I’m two years younger, but my body at times feels like it’s 150. And it keeps on reminding me (pain) of how much fun I had getting to this point, I just wish it would shut up! Hopefully, you are in better condition than I!
Good discussion! I appreciate the back and forth.
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Appreciate the discussion too, Duane!
I’ve always been a physical fitness buff as evidenced by my Gravatar on my blog. Part of the reason I retired early and only tutor part time – always out on my bicycle. Unfortunately the latest round of AP testing resulted, as always, in a student getting sick and passing it on to me, so I’m not at the top of my game today either 😦 .
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Ah, the joys of picking up an illness from the students! It’s one thing I don’t miss about teaching. The other thing is the adminimals-ha ha!
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I try to get everyone to use Skype for lessons when they are ill and will be doing so myself today. Unfortunately I don’t always get complete compliance.
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P.S. – Hope you scrolled down to the end of the Comments and read my latest. If you know of any such research, I’d greatly appreciate it!
Also think you might enjoy my old article about not trusting educational experts via the link from that comment. I think that was one of my better pieces of writing and almost 30 years in the making.
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The real problem with most AP courses is the pretense that they are equivalent to college courses.
With rare exceptions, they are not.
This is particularly true of chemistry, physics and biology, which normally have a significant lab component in college. Most high schools simply do not have the lab facilities and resources of a college.
Because of the pretense to being “college courses”, the people who set the syllabuses feel the need to include all the material in a freshman college course.
Finally, NO one should take AP physics without first taking calculus.
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Excellent points. I have written the exact same thing about the poor quality of high school versus college lab experiences in my article http://eduissues.com/2016/10/20/critical-warnings-re-ap-classes/.
I routinely advise my science and math students not to skip the intro classes in college even if they can. On the plus side I think their AP experience will come back to benefit them if they do so because it is my fervent, but unproven hope that they will finally understand what they dashed through in high school. However, I have seen enough students turned off by the intensity of these classes that unfortunately they never want to have anything to do with these subjects again!
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At my public high school, prior to the insinuation of the Massachusetts Math & Science Initiative I mentioned above, the faculty made a decision to use the AP exam as a means to distinguish our first generation, minority and English language-learner students when they applied to selective colleges.
Boston draws immigrants from across the world. We had a very mixed group of low income kids about two-thirds of whom spoke a language other than English at home – Spanish, Haitian Creole, Cape Verde Creole, Igbo, Portuguese among them. Naturally, their SAT scores on the English section were low. High AP scores got them a look on transcripts that otherwise would have been rejected.
In the World Language department, we set up a sequence of classes called Spanish for Native Speakers. I taught the first two years, using literature and history of Latin America (not unlike the ethnic studies coursework Arizona later prohibited) to polish the kids’ reading and writing skills. In their junior year, my colleague taught AP Spanish to the same group of students. We never narrowly focused on the test, but nearly all the kids scored 5’s and 4’s, and every single kid had a passing score. Students who didn’t see themselves as college material were buoyed by these results. Of course, we were really just gaming the system to our students’ advantage, but it worked. Our colleagues in other departments took a similar approach.
A group of teachers, working with the guidance department, encouraged kids with strong AP’s to apply to schools where we knew admissions officers were likely to have the time to weigh GPA’s more than test scores; read through their essays; and see kids in a wholistic way. A string of kids applied to and were accepted at colleges like Smith, Wellesley, Hampshire, Dartmouth, Brown, MIT and, yes, Harvard. It mattered because these wealthy private schools had the resources to provide full scholarships and would even accept our undocumented students. Their performance, once they were admitted, opened a pipeline for more of our students. In this way, we improved the reputation and raised the profile of our school to selective colleges, which redounded to the benefit of all students in their applications to less selective schools.
Remember this was a teacher-driven initiative. When MMSI invaded our school, control was taken from us. AP madness harmed the atmosphere and focused on scores, not on kids – it became a competition, not a collaborative challenge. The College Board made bank; the AP consultants made bank; the kids (and teachers) were used.
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Here in California, AP classes are used to game entry into what has become the ridiculously competitive UC or Cal State system. You get an extra point on your grade point average added to your AP grade, so an A grade in the class (not the test grade) is a 5 instead of a 4. So in the endless race to nowhere, these students are cramming as many APs ($$$$) as they can in subjects they don’t even like or have any interest, all in the name of “rigor.” My son is a bright engineering/math/physics kid without a whole lot of interest in English or History. So, he took AP Calc and Physics, which he likes and does well. He also took AP Government and AP History, which he got through, but clearly would have appreciated and excelled in a different class. Parents would argue that the extra point should be a reward for doing advanced work, but I’d argue that the student should take on advanced work because they are ready for it and enjoy the subject matter, and not just because their college counselor told them to do it. The other issue which parents don’t always understand is that each college has different criteria for using AP credit to place out of certain subjects. In a lot of cases, you need at 4 or a 5 for credit, and in the end you sign up for a different math class instead of taking Calculus, for example. Having the college credit doesn’t mean the student is going to graduate from college early. It’s a total racket that just means more $$$ for the test-taking machinery.
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As my daughter found out, many colleges “unweigh” those 5s and knock them down to 4s in figuring out and accepting the student’s high school GPA. So that AP benefit of bumping up a grade point isn’t really one for many students.
Why the hell we “grade” students to begin with is just one of the many onto-epistemological nightmares that most accept as “natural and normal”. Sad, effin sad!
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In a discussion thread on my blog a reader pointed out that, although many students may not be well-served by AP classes, an opposing case can occur in rural high schools that do not have the means to provide AP classes. Gifted students there can be held back.
I had the following idea which I am sure will amuse readers here too:
“The dilemma is how are students distributed between the AP and non-AP classes? If they self-select and AP classes are seen as the key to getting in to college, they naturally choose the AP route, and we end up with the results reflected in the test scores above. If the school “streams” them, then the schools get flack for “holding deserving students back.”
The College Board could require prerequisite classes, but that would be tough to enforce.
Finally, and this is a bit “tongue-in-cheek,” they could set up pre-AP class prerequisite knowledge testing, and charge students both coming and going!!! Only students that scored at a certain level on the prerequisite test would be permitted to take the corresponding AP class!!! 😉
P.S. – in physics, and I am sure in some other technical areas, a lot of high schools have teachers in the subject who were not physics majors. This sometimes means that AP classes in those schools are a “bridge too far” for the teacher and, consequently, not an unadulterated joy for their students. There is “no one size fits all” solution which is why nationally imposed “solutions” often fail.”
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If access to AP tests are necessary for the advance of equity, then the AP tests should be free! You cannot ask people to pay for civil rights.
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Hi Diane. Glad to see you back in this discussion!
I actually wanted ask you and the other readers a related, but slightly different question to tap into the collective knowledge base here.
My biggest problem personally with the AP physics and math curriculum is this:
The number of practice problems students are given in their classrooms before they have to move on to the next topic is usually woefully inadequate to master these difficult subjects.
The teachers are in a rush to stick to some kind of schedule and prematurely test the kids in class while they are still struggling with the topic.
This often leads to drastic drops in students’ high school GPAs and consequently make it harder for the student to get into college!
Teachers often include complicated AP test questions on the classroom exams early in the year which further exacerbates the problem as I have written about here:
When I discuss this problem with local educators, I have never been able to get an answer to the following question:
HOW MUCH PRACTICE IS ENOUGH?????
I have tried researching it in my limited spare time via Google and came up empty handed too.
There must be some kind of psychological/education research somewhere that has attempted to measure an average number of, say math problems, that a person must do to retain the material/skill for a given period of time.
Clearly some concepts are harder than others and require more practice, but with all of the efforts put into textbook publishing and teaching over the centuries, one would think that an attempt to answer this question would have been made.
One doesn’t want to “drill and kill” (a glib phrase which I hate, by the way), but one also doesn’t want to give so little practice that a lesson is “in one ear and out the other” which I usually find happening in AP classes.
After rushing through the entire curriculum, teachers try to remedy this problem at year end by having students do massive test practice problem packets, but by this time the damage to kids’ classroom grades has been done and is often not easily reversed.
Surprisingly, I have yet to encounter anyone who was aware of such research!
I have seen articles about “spiraling,” etc., and a lot of inane “research shows” articles which make copious claims unsubstantiated by data (please see a humorous older pre-blogging article of mine at http://www.kristutoring.com/08_Never_Believe_Educational_Experts_or_Me.pdf).
What I would really like to see is a simple psychological study that uses a significant sample representing a cross section of the population, has subjects practice a math topic with varying number of “homework problems,” and then tests them at various times afterwards.
Clearly the test procedure itself would count as learning reinforcement, so steps would have to be taken to minimize this impact, e.g., not telling the test taker how they did, etc.
As always, educational research methodology suffers from the problem behind the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle. One can’t measure something without perturbing it.
But even a somewhat flawed study might be interesting if anyone knows of one.
Thanks in advance!!!
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In response to your response suggesting I check out the end of this post to access your article. Interesting little expose of some dubious pedagogical practices. As usual, I have a few comments:
“This practice of using “trick questions” too early damages students’ confidence when they are trying to master material for the first time.”
Are you saying that the AP has “trick” questions? If the test, indeed, does have trick questions, that is a condemnation of the AP test itself, eh!
“Are teachers trying to wash students out of their class early to lower class sizes or teachers’ workloads?
Are teachers trying to drop students “for their own good” early because students sign up for too many AP classes?
Do teachers think this practice challenges students appropriately?”
It seems to me that you can be quick to blame teachers. Please “say it ain’t so Joe!” Perhaps there is a more mundane reason, like that adminimals (sorry but I have to use that neologism) are placing undo pressure on them to “raise the AP scores” and the teachers are trying anything to see if “it sticks to the wall.” I’ve seen that many teachers struggle with making their own tests, at least in the foreign language realm so what you see may be a case of lack of teacher knowledge of test making more than anything.
“Parents, please take the time to get involved with your child’s education and learn what is going on! Talk to your kids and see if they are impacted by this practice.”
As one who taught a subject that most parents have no clue about-Spanish, I can say that they usually would say: “I don’t know squat about Spanish. You’re the teacher, do what you know what’s best.” Hell, I’d be hard pressed to know anything about teaching physics, so I imagine most parents would probably say something similar.
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Thanks for those comments. Sorry for the confusion, but the article about not trusting educational experts was the second link in that comment: http://www.kristutoring.com/08_Never_Believe_Educational_Experts_or_Me.pdf
You make good points about not blaming the teachers. When I returned to teaching in 2010, most of the teachers I knew did a fine job. I have talked to several privately to try to determine what is driving the whole system. Unfortunately, no one seems to want to “fess up” and one can easily think of many reasons why. I think there are also those who genuinely disagree with me and like the AP system.
Finally, have you ever seen any research regarding the practice question that was the main point of that comment??
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No, I haven’t.
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Man, you’re not far from where this year’s NPE Conference in Ocotober is taking place (Oakland). It would be nice to see you there. I’ll be there driving in from Missouri.
As I love the outdoors, I will be camping along the way and when I’m there. (I’m also a bit of a skinflint not liking to pay for hotels) Could you fill me in on any state or national parks that are within an hour or so drive of Oakland (on the coast would be great).
See: https://networkforpubliceducation.org/2016-national-conference/ Even though it says 2016, it takes you to this year’s conference information.
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Glad to but let’s take this offline. Please use the Contact form on my blog to send me your email address. School is getting out soon and I am going to be busy for quite a while shortly, but I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.
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My email (I’ve given it out many times on this blog, maybe I’m crazy, although some would take out the maybe) is:
dswacker@centurytel.net
Read part of your story of your children. Holy cow, I had almost the exact same experience with my children (3 of them, the oldest two the same ages as your daughters) in regards to reading.
Anyway feel free to contact me via email!
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Thanks, will get back to you tonight or tomorrow AM. Please keep going on the story when you have time. There are more plot twists to come!
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Yes, read it all! And I am amazed at all the similarities to what I have experienced. Actually, it’s kind of spooky. Either that or it’s so common that the absurdities are so widespread that no matter where one is in the country the same shit goes down everywhere. Me, I blame the adminimals for most of this nonsense.
But then again I didn’t come to teaching until I was 39 and have had many other circumstance (and idiocies) under my belt that helped me recognize the bullshit right off the bat. Research says that folks like me make for “bad” teachers-ha ha!
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I would probably blame education schools teaching the same nonsense theories to a lot of teachers in training, but I don’t know this for a fact.
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You might enjoy this site, although I believe Mr. Teachbad doesn’t keep it up anymore. http://teachbad.com/
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One more thing: MrTeachbad certified me as a “bad” teacher way back when-LOL!
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Diane et al.,
I posted an important question near the end of the lengthy comments section and was really hoping to get an answer to it. Please see my comment with the text “HOW MUCH PRACTICE IS ENOUGH” below. If anyone knows of relevant research, I would greatly appreciate receiving the references! Thank you!
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