A reader who takes the sobriquet “Democracy” adds this comment about Jay Mathews’ high school rankings, as critiqued by Carol Burris:
I can appreciate Carol Burris’s critique of Jay Mathews Challenge Index. But her criticism falls way short. Advanced Placement is NOT what Mathews – or Burris – thinks it is. And Burris is wrong; Mathews should NOT make two Challenge Index lists; he should make none at all.
The Challenge Index has always been a phony list that doesn’t do much except to laud AP courses and tests. The Index is based on Jay Mathews’ dubious assumption that AP is inherently “better” than other high school classes in which students are encouraged and taught to think critically. The research on AP makes clear that it is more hype than anything else.
Let’s examine only a few of the ludicrous statements that Mathews makes, and then dig into the research on AP.
Mathews: “AP courses mimic introductory college courses in state universities. The final exams are written and graded by outside experts and thus are immune to the tendency in high schools to go easy on students…”
Oh, dear God. The truth is that AP courses do not come close to replicating college courses.
As 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 “high achievers” in his school approached AP tests:
“The majority of high-achieving kids in my buddies’ and my AP classes couldn’t [care]. They showed up for most of the classes, sure, and they did their best to keep up with the grades because they didn’t want their GPAs to drop, but when it came time to take the tests, they drew pictures on the AP Calc, answered just ‘C’ on the AP World History, and would finish sections of the AP Chem in, like, 5 minutes. I had one buddy who took an hour-and-a-half bathroom break during World History. The cops were almost called. They thought he was missing.”
The “outside experts” Mathews cites as the “graders” of AP exams are mostly high school AP teachers who read (rapidly) AP essays (the rest of the exams are machine scored). One of these “experts” discussed 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.”
Many colleges and universities are finding that AP courses offer relatively little to students. A very large number of colleges restrict AP credit to test scores of only a 4 or 5 (for example, Baylor, Boston University, Chicago, Colorado, Northwestern,William and Mary). And many limit the number of credits that can be used. More (Boston College, MIT, Michigan, Washington University) are limiting scores to 5s or or not allowing AP credit whatsoever. As one AP test grader said, “the scores signify less and less. Anything under a 5 should be suspect. I wouldn’t give anyone college credit for an AP test grade if I had anything to do with it.”
Here’s another Mathews doozy:
“The growth of AP…participation has also been fueled by selective college admissions offices using that as a measure of a student’s readiness for higher education.”
Yet, more and more colleges are finding that AP is – in fact – NOT a measure of much of anything, except of a student’s desire to ge into the college of his or her choice, It’s a game.
The primary reason many students take AP is not to “learn” or to gain “college readiness,” but to game the admissions process. Students feel like they have to put AP on their transcripts or they won’t get into the college of their choice. It’s all about “looking good,” and boosting the grade point average.
One very honest AP teacher wrote recently that “Our district has told the counselors to promote the AP program with scare tactics that they will not get into the college of their choice, the district has incentivized taking the courses with up to 4.5 G.P.A. credit.” Yet, research chows clearly that the more weight AP courses are given, the less predictive power the weighted GPA has for college success. Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.
And, Mathews gives us this pearl:
“The National Math and Science Initiative has spent more than $200 million encouraging schools to add AP courses and motivate students to pass them, while training more teachers.”
The National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI) pushes for more STEM training in public schools, and purports “to bring best practices” to classrooms in order to “to reverse the recent decline in U.S. students’ math and science educational achievement.” NMSI claims to be the only group in the U.S. that “rigorously researched and replicated math and science programs that have produced immediate and sustainable results.” Three big problems present themselves though. First, there is no STEM crisis in the U.S., far from it. Second, there has been no “recent decline” in math and science achievement, And third, the “proven program” cited by NMSI most often is Advanced Placement, and the research just doesn’t support the claim.
Researchers Lindsay Lowell and Hall Salzman note in “Into the Eye of the Storm, that there is no STEM crisis in the U.S. They point out that “the math and science performance of high school graduates is not declining and show improvement for some grades and demographic groups.” They add that on the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) “there has been no decline and even some improvement” in U.S. student scores. And they add this:
“The weight of the evidence surely indicates not decline but rather indicates on ongoing educational improvement for U.S. students. This improvement is not only in math and science but in all subjects tested and, importantly, occurs at the same time as a greater and more diverse proportion of the population is remaining in school…The notion that the United States trails the world in educational performance misrepresents the actual test results and reaches conclusions that are quite unfounded.”
Moreover, Lowell and Salzman make clear that there is no shortage of STEM workers. in fact, “the U.S. has been graduating more S&E [science and engineering] students than there have been S&E jobs” for quite a while, and “addressing the presumed labor market problems through a broad-based focus on the education system seems a misplaced effort.” They add that “policy proposals that call for more math and science education, aimed at increasing the number of scientists and engineers, do not square with the education performance and employment data.”
Beryl Lieff Benderly wrote this stunning statement recently in the Columbia Journalism Review:
“Leading experts on the STEM workforce, have said for years that the US produces ample numbers of excellent science students…according to the National Science Board’s authoritative publication Science and Engineering Indicators 2008, the country turns out three times as many STEM degrees as the economy can absorb into jobs related to their majors.”
This STEM focus may be trendy, but it is based on a fallacy. It’s a myth.
The National Math and Science Initiative is funded by the Gates and Dell Foundations (which seem to have a distaste for public schools), by defense contractors like Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin (which have laid off STEM workers), by ExxonMobil (which has funded and disseminated disinformation on climate change), by JP Morgan Chase (which sold toxic securities, defrauded the public, and helped to cause the Great Recession), by Boeing (which is subsidized by US taxpayers, pays a lower tax rate than most American workers, and has laid off thousands of STEM employees), and by the College Board, maker of the PSAT, SAT and AP courses and tests.
Meanwhile, some of the world’s biggest banks and trading companies gamed a “market” of some nearly $400 trillion interest-rate trades, and not in favor of the public. And, more recent disclosures reveal that traders and bankers have rigged the foreign exchange (FX) market, one that involves daily transactions of nearly $ 5 trillion, which is “the biggest in the financial system.” As one analyst noted, this is “the anchor of our entire economic system. Any rigging of the price mechanism leads to a misallocation of capital and is extremely costly to society.”
We have a person in the White House who ran a decidedly racist, xenophobic, and misogynist campaign, and who was helped into office by Russian intelligence agencies who hacked, leaked and falsified documents to harm his opponent, and who has fired the FBI director in an overt attempt to quash investigations into subversion of democracy. Yet, Jay is still pumping out drivel about America’s “best” schools based on a deeply flawed Index that he cooked up and that has no basis in research.
Sadly, Burris seems to support his mania over AP.
The Challenge Index is based mostly on the number of AP tests that a school gives. And the research on AP finds it to be more hype than useful educational tool. It’s past time to let it go. But will educators release it?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“‘Yet, more and more colleges are finding that AP is – in fact – NOT a measure of much of anything, except of a student’s desire to ge into the college of his or her choice, It’s a game.”
Okay, so the question then is, are colleges still playing this game? They’re the ones in the driver’s seat. All they’d have to do is announce, “no more AP credit” and the game would be over. But they have announced no such thing, which tells me that, game or not, it’s still important for high school students to take AP classes to look good for college admission. Which also then raises the question, what are colleges gaining from playing this game, since apparently “good students” is not it?
Okay, I know I should leave it alone, but this: “….Russian intelligence agencies who … and falsified documents to harm his opponent.”
I’m still dubious enough about the hacking and leaking, but I’ve heard absolutely nothing about any falsification. Even the DNC hasn’t denied that the emails were genuine. Any proof on this assertion? To my mind, the provenance of the emails is less concerning than the content. If someone has any proof that the content was bogus, I’m all ears.
Dienne,
I don’t know if this answers your question, but even Trump now acknowledges that the Russians hacked the election. I think we have to wait for the Mueller report to find out how they did it and who was involved, if he is able to find out.
Has he acknowledged that they actually hacked the election, or just that he’s being investigated for that? And what do we mean “hacked the election”? Even if the Russians hacked the DNC server, they didn’t, so far as I’ve heard anywhere yet, hack any vote totals. Those are separate things. And even if they hacked the DNC, there’s been no accusations that I’ve heard that they falsified any documents. At least, nothing that was published by Wikileaks. So far they have a perfect track record – no one has ever been able to prove that they published a forged or fake document.
Yes, his latest tweets attack Obama for not doing anything to stop the Russian hacking of the election.
Drumph is crazy and getting crazier. He is UNFIT to be potus. He is a trainwreck.
I thought I recalled Donna Brazile making some vague insinuations that documents were falsified. Of course that’s just what I’d expect her to do.
dienne77,
The Russians also hacked the French PM candidate Macron and the members of the National Front (France’s neo Nazis) sounded very much like you did.
“En Marche! said the documents only showed the normal functioning of a presidential campaign, but that authentic documents had been mixed on social media with fake ones to sow “doubt and misinformation”.
But, like you, the far right supporters of LePen said that the normal workings of a campaign were actually scandalous and criminal.
If you had actually looked closely at the e-mails, in their entirety, you would have found that aside from staffers remarks — that did NOT end up in actual action taken — what was on the e-mails is very likely in e-mails of Bernie campaign staff. The far right — with help from Hillary-haters — turned normal snideness into criminal behavior.
The e-mails were all talk and no action. I always wondered why the media NEVER asked Bernie’s campaign to go on record as to whether they ALSO got heads up on what kinds of questions would be asked in a debate. I found it very revealing that the supposedly leaked debate question to Hillary (about Flint’s water supply) was never asked but instead it was a question about a small detail that Hillary had no idea about but somehow Bernie did. Just lucky for Bernie, I guess. Lock up Hillary because someone told her there’d be a question about Flint that was never asked! And the Trump campaign is laugjhting at the Bernie bots outraged that they so successfully manufactured.
If only the French voters had more “integrity” they would have done what the Bernie voters did and made sure to elect LePen to punish Macron for his own version of e-mail gate.
Your continued attempt to paint me as some kind of far right winger when my five year documented history on this site clearly says otherwise would be amusing if it weren’t so McCarthyist.
You are not a right winger. I have said that many times. This post does not imply that you are.
I said that the left wing repeated the same nonsense that the right wing repeated in their attacks on Hillary Clinton. The left didn’t just disagree with her on policy as they did Obama. Instead, they decided Hillary was the most corrupt and co-opted Democratic candidate ever — no different than Trump — and in fact, it was exactly what the right wing was telling voters, too!
In France, the left didn’t join the National Front in attacking Macron about things in the e-mail leak. Now perhaps they were aided by a tradition in which journalists didn’t print the e-mails. But they were certainly available but no one on the left was hyping a few out of context comments and acting as if it was the worst corruption in the history of Democratic primaries.
And even after the victory, the left didn’t try to use them to assassinate the character of the “conservative” Macron. Because while they disagree with him on policy, they don’t believe that Macron was so corrupt in character that there was no difference between him and LePen.
France’s presidential electoral system is different from ours. It is not two-party, winner-take-all. There are two rounds, which means that a number of parties can run first time, forcing a coalition of political forces to compromise on policy in order to run as two head-to-head coalitions in the run-off. This system causes voters to be more perspicacious, & dampens the effects of such things as Russian-generated sensational email propaganda.
Mathews claim that “AP means more challenging” (which gets translated by most parents as “AP means better”) is just another in a long list of unproven assertions by people with no deep knowledge or expertise in the areas they make claims about.
The irony is that by getting high school students to play the “Take the test and don’t ask questions” game, AP classes may actually make it less likely for students to engage in critical thinking and recognize BS when they see it.
SomeDAM Poet,
AGREE!
I have a profoundly deep knowledge of AP vs. lower-level classes, having taught both for more than a decade. You have absolutely no idea what in the sam hill you’re talking about.
Here’s a non-anonymous comment on today’s closed AP World History Facebook page:
“I taught at a Big Ten university and at a liberal arts university. AP World History requires far more rigorous writing than freshman survey classes.”
A major thread of the post-Reading discussion is whether, or the extent to which, the new AP history standards are TOO demanding. For anyone who cares to actually hear from those in the know …
Thank you Tracy85.
The casual acceptance of the oft repeated mantra that somehow AP classes are rote learning dumbed down classes with no thinking required does great disservice to the students at public schools all over the country who get high scores on their AP exams after taking a year long class in the subject.
At least there is some quality control in those classes. There are also meaningless easy A classes in which students don’t learn much except how to please a teacher. There are some privates that have a lot of those supposedly more rigorous “non-AP” classes.
Instead of bashing AP classes and exams, what we should be doing is bashing the notion that every single child is supposed to be college level work — or near college level work — while still in high school. It’s nonsense promoted by people who keep looking for ways to convince parents about how terrible their public schools are.
But AP classes ARE today’s way of maintaining a tracking system, aren’t they? Not trying to say tracking is good or bad. But I fail to see the difference between today’s AP classes & the ‘accelerated track’ that prevailed when I was in hs in the ’60’s.
bethree5,
I agree, AP classes are basically standardized honors classes.
I taught AP US History from 1986-87 to 2009-10 and was a reader from 1992-96 and 2002-07. Essay readers were roughly half hs teachers, half college profs (incl community colleges). I always aimed to make the course the equivalent of a freshman college course and stated that clearly in my syllabus.
It’s hard to generalize, because the AP course outlines and tests have changed, mostly to make the courses easier over the last 20 years and esp. since Coleman became CB CEO. High schools in DC put students into AP courses regardless of interest or readiness and AP has been rebranded as college prep (rather than college equivalent). DC high schools have AP quotas, minimum numbers of courses to be offered, clearly catering to the “AP for all” standard that Jay M promotes.
When I first taught the course, the principal told me to have standards and a process for selecting students, so that it would not turn into a privileged club for students from the nearby JHS. During the last 8-10 years that I taught AP USH, administrators of various kinds began to label AP as elitist and AP teachers as “gatekeepers.” This started before mayoral takeover (and the appointment of Rhee, then Henderson as chancellor) and intensified under them.
By the way, the watering down of AP courses coincided with the dismantling of traditional vocational ed courses that culminated in one-track “college and careers” diploma paths.
AP US Hist essay readings:
It’s true there were essay booklets with cartoons, love/hate letters about teachers, etc. Essays were read quickly, often too quickly. On the other hand, college profs would say that some of their best prepared students were those who had taken AP classes in hs – this was, of course, before AP mass enrollment. In the last few years, there was considerable grumbling by readers about scoring rubrics being too lenient.
Re STEM courses:
If the STEM crisis is a myth, why are technical programs having a hard time recruiting graduates of U.S. high schools?
Bottom line: If STEM crisis exists, why are STEm workers being laid off? Why are their more graduates than jobs? If tech programs (what kind?) are having a hard time recruiting, it may because there aren’t jobs and/or the tech school have done a poor job of helping their graduates find them.
Now THAT is fascinating. In other words, the high-bar to college admission got lowered– and the vocational alternative to college disappeared! Presumably, consequent to ’80’s corporate mantra, reflected in natl ed policy, that the only way to counter globalism was for 100% of US kids to get a college STEM education. [Meanwhile, among other fallout, a couple of generations were lost to the trades– the void was filled by CA & SA immigrants: today, if you have an issue w/your boiler or HVAC sys or just need a new roof or siding, you will most likely be dealing w/a naturalized CA or SA trade foreman.]
Also, “AP has been re-branded as college-prep (rather than college-equivalent).” That is a huge downsizing from my late-’60’s boomer hs days, when AP did not yet exist– but you could graduate from h.s. a year early by squeezing the 120 credits into 9th-11th & acing the SAT. AP as ‘college-prep’ sounds equivalent to late-’60’s ‘accelerated-track’ courses.
Also, “the AP course outlines and tests have changed, mostly to make the courses easier over the last 20 years and especially since Coleman became College Board CEO”. Well, to this, I can only say, “nu?” This is the same guy who headed up devpt of CCSS for k-12, then moved to head of College Board where he proceeded to re-write first GED exam then SAT exam to correspond to his K-12 CCSS… Only in America!!
AP classes are like being in the top reading group. Parents like to BRAG.
I was offered AP classes in college. I declined.
I knew that I didn’t know everything and wasnted a deeper understanding of what I had learned. I was right to decline those AP classes. I learned much more and got a deeper and more insightful educaiton, because I declined those AP classes offered to me.
Same with grades…I often refused to do the busy work just to get an A in my high school classes. Besides I worked since I was 15 all the way through high school and college so I ddin’t have time to do “busy work” for that A. I had to. I paid my own tuition and lived at home. Btw, I shared a small bedroom with my three younger brothers and I slept with my parents till I was 10. Some people are aghast at this. When my parents moved into the bedroom my uncle had, my father purchased two sets of ARMY ISSUES bunk beds. I shared a 5 foot long closet and had one drawer. Had to…we were NOT RICH. And my parents were minimalist. Oh, my father always worked TWO jobs, too until my mother was able to work when my two youngest brothers were in those days, Junior High. My mother went to work as PRESSER (iron) for Malia Garment Factory. She caught the bus to work.
I am proud of the way I was raised and glad to have had the opportunity to work since I was 15. When people ask me, “What jobs did you have?” I proudly tell them, “Pineapple canner, sales clerk, office clerk, waitress, and teacher.”
My family also raised chickens, rabbits, and ducks for food. We had a banana tree and papaya trees. I feel sorry for the young ones of today who probably don’t even know where their food comes from and don’t have chores (contributions to the family) to do.
Lights out were at 8:00 pm. My parents awoke at 4:00 am.
I feel sorry for our youth of today. It is not a kinder place, just a meaner place fueld and filled with greed at all levels.
Do you know what the real crisis in K-12 education is?
The real crisis is that students in public schools and students in private schools take entirely different exams. And the private school’s exams don’t purport to show how good a teacher is — nor do they purport to show that one private schools is “better” and the other one should be shut down as parents are wasting their $40,000/year tuition for a private schools that isn’t getting top test scores.
AP classes and AP Exams were considered the gold standard UNTIL public school students started taking them en masse and suddenly all those private school students’ test were scored in the same pile as public school students. That is when so many private schools decided the exam had been so “watered down” that only their very top students should be taking it! The rest should be judged on the private school’s own far more advanced class where 75% of the students get As or A- with the “worst” students getting B+. But believe me, even those B+ students should be considered as far superior to the public school students who get a 5 on their AP and there is no reason for the private schools student to take a silly “watered down” exam to prove it.
In England, every student — regardless of school — takes the same A-level exams. The rich “public” (i.e. private) schools don’t say “Our students won’t be taking those A-levels as our courses are far above that so just trust us that our students are superior.”
In fact, if an American student wants to apply to Oxford or Cambridge, the university won’t accept them unless they achieve 5s on a set number of relevant AP Exams. (Unless they are IB students). So Oxford and Cambridge — unlike their Ivy League counterparts — don’t simply accept the word of the exclusive private schools that their students are so superior that there is no need to prove it by taking an exam that any old plebeian can take and have their scores compared directly with those commoners. We should just take their word that their students ARE superior because the private school chose them.
I am not a particular fan of APs per se, but it is one exam that both private and public students take. So there is no hanky panky like the state tests where the exam is designed to guarantee failure and allow attacks on schools where kids fail the exam. And despite the claims that years ago the APs were tremendously more rigorous, I doubt that anyone could take AP Calc B/C and insist that it just isn’t as rigorous as those non-AP Calculus classes that the private schools claim is all their “superior” students should be judged on.
“The real crisis is that students in public schools and students in private schools take entirely different exams.”
So many crises in education and you think that’s the “real* one? So if they all took the same ridiculous, completely invalid exams*, then the problems would all be solved? Ay ay ay.
*all exams are ridiculous and completely invalid
Every argument the reformers use to bash public schools is based on test scores. They are given enormous weight to judge teachers and schools. Even the “good” schools, when Arne Duncan attacked suburban parents who just didn’t want to acknowledge how terrible their children’s school actually was and that’s the only reason they opposed state tests.
I lived through the time when test scores were not used to judge schools. Students took tests so teachers and schools could have some general benchmarks. No one decided a child’s performance was the best measure of his teacher’s performance that year. There was no need to prep because that would defeat the entire purpose of the tests. They weren’t high stakes.
And yes, the fact that private school students are exempt from this nonsense is the main reason it has been allowed to proliferate. It’s easy to proclaim that tests have huge value (for public school kids) when your kid’s school doesn’t have to take them. If those tests were taken by every student in America – no matter what type of school he is in — you would have heard a much louder outcry. Especially as they were re-designed to guarantee failure.
Tho you hold UK colleges as the gold standard, you should note that at PreK-12 level, UK has been following our [retro] lead for two decades. They have been privatizing in low-income areas w/a ‘school-choice’ agenda, & have imposed hi-stakes accountability testing. Their K-12 curriculum has been consequently ‘dumbed-down’. As an FL-teacher who followed their early-language-learning forums in ’90’s-’00’s, I can attest that they have abandoned early-foreign-language-learning– once seen as an advantage as part of Euro trade [because all their Euro-trade partners were multi-lingual]– now beaten back as part of anti-globalism, culminating in BREXIT.
This is the cohort from which Oxford & Cambridge draw…
You are correct about the privatization effort — which I think is a different issue. Oxford and Cambridge have always based admission on an exam (although in the past it was written essays).
And England has a very different system so that students can stop after taking GCSE at age 16 instead of going on to “college” (which seems to be the last 2 years of high school) to prepare more academically inclined students for their A levels and university.
I don’t actually hold UK universities as the gold standard. There are many issues with them, among them the fact that students are deciding what to study at age 18. I suppose this is more the trend in the US, too, although the most elite universities still make it very easy for undecided students to spend a year or two experimenting with classes before committing to a major.
You had me at The Problem With Ranking High Schools.
Democracy,
I do not share Mathews’ mania for AP. I suggest you read this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/05/21/the-problems-with-2017-national-rankings-of-americas-high-schools/?utm_term=.52ab2e66d1f8 where I critique the list.
In fact, I started the Schools of Opportunity Program with Kevin Welner several years ago in order to combat Jay’s list and the US News list.
I grew to deeply dislike AP, and worked to eliminate all of AP in my high school. I did so with the exception of Calc and Stats before I retired. I do believe in IB. It is a rich, accessible curriculum with embedded assessments that make sense that are not multiple choice.
Putting that aside, some charter schools are less than honest in their reporting (I am taking a look at the entire list) and are using the list to promote their schools. That must be exposed. They are also not serving the interests of their students well. Please again, read this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/05/21/the-problems-with-2017-national-rankings-of-americas-high-schools/?utm_term=.52ab2e66d1f8
Whether you or I like AP, it is not going away anytime soon. What Diane posted was a tiny slice of a dialogue with Mathews that I shared with her in an email. It has been part of an ongoing conversation that I am having with him. He will not abandon his list, but if I can convince him to not let charters use his list to pump their numbers by giving kids a ridiculous amount of tests and also reward their attrition, that is better for all of the kids who presently attend charters.
I do not believe in the charter school philosophy. I do believe in the kids who attend them, and if we can make their experiences better, I always think that is good thing.
—
Follow me on twitter @carolburris
While this post may have a legitimate beef with these rankings, it totally misses the mark on the general claim that AP courses are not more rigorous than, say, honors-level classes. I teach both — world history to sophomores. There is NO comparison. The amount of homework, the amount of reading (of a college-level text AND primary and secondary sources that would be FAR above the capabilities of most honors-level students), the amount of writing … the critical thinking skills, etc. If I held my honors students to the same standards I hold my AP students, then we’d have a serious issue on our hands because more than half of them would fail the course. It is correct that as the push for equity has all-too-often led to massive misalignments in student readiness and placement, the goal — an exposure to more rigorous content — has been admirable. I’ve been a Reader on many occasions (I just got back from Salt Lake City a couple of weeks ago), and of the literally thousands of essays I’ve read, not more than about a dozen or so were hand turkeys or complaints about a student’s teacher or whatever. Sure, many were written by students clearly in over their head. But, as this poster seems to enjoy anecdotes, I’ll point out that I’ve had ex-students come back to me and tell me their first year in college (at large public universities) yielded the easiest classwork they’d faced in years, so rigorous were their AP studies in high school. So there’s that …
The gaming of the grade point average using AP classes is readily apparent in the UC and Cal State system. My son was advised (peer pressure, not us) to max out whatever APs he could take . He is a STEAM kid through and through, and despite having no interest in AP History or Gov, took them anyway, hated them both, and would have been better off taking a different class. Because UC/Cal State gives extra weight to the grade point average for an AP class, students are taking far too many, in courses that they have little interest or ability. If you choose added rigor, suit yourself, but far too often students are given a participation trophy for any perceived rigor, regardless of whether it improves their outcome or matches their interest. Parents, unfortunately, have succumbed to this pressure en masse, resulting in unnecessary stress on their kids, not to mention the ridiculous expense of the tests. The Race To Nowhere lurches on, and our kids pay the price. Sorry, UC, thanks but no thanks, he’s going to study engineering in Boulder…
You seem ignorant to the possibility that a student can absolutely HATE an AP course but benefit resoundingly from it. I have had many AP students who were challenged to the extreme — bad attitudes and all — and didn’t necessarily do very well on the exam in May. But in our state, all students take the PSAT in their freshman, sophomore and junior years before taking the SAT in their senior year. I’ve had too many students to count who’ve improved by leaps and bounds from their freshman year to their junior year simply by having taken AP World History as a sophomore. We’re talking going from the 9th percentile to the 49th percentile … from the 35th percentile to the 84th percentile. Most of these individuals will never know why that happened … will never make the connection. I simply do not see those kinds of improvements from my honors students. Anyone who actually knows what it’s like from the inside wouldn’t be surprised by these results at all.
Apparently more and more colleges are not seeing the profound difference between AP and non-AP students that you see. Obviously, your students who absolutely HATED an AP course are not driven by their love of the subject.
People like to toss around quantities like “many” or “more and more” as if that’s really saying something. Here are some facts: Between 2004 and 2014, AP World History grew from 48,000 to 246,000 exams given (this year it was 299,000) … Psychology from 72,000 to 260,000 … Physics from 76,000 to 161,000 … U.S. Government from 113,000 to 271,000 … Calculus from 225,000 to 406,000 … should I go on? Are these simply ill-informed fools wasting their time and effort? Or are they busy not listening to people who don’t have their facts straight and knocking out their freshman year of college by the time they graduate from high school? Yeah, I know plenty of them.
Thank you for all of your comments on AP. I have several observations from my experience in our high school:
–The AP curricula is strong; however, it is not the ONLY curricula. For example, what the College Board has chosen to emphasize in English (such as tone or rhetorical devices) is perfectly fine, but this is just one way to teach English. I find that, in our school, the weight given to AP squelches our abilities to teach in other, creative ways. At my liberal arts college, the beauty was that each professor was stunningly unique, and that made learning so exciting. It makes teaching exciting, too.
–If the AP course is truly being taught at a college level, then the teacher should have a college-type schedule in order to handle the preparation and paper grading. In other words, how can a true college-level course be taught by someone who is teaching six periods, five days a week? This isn’t fair to the students if the teacher can’t keep up–or it’s not fair to the teacher, who is asked to do too much.
–If the AP course is truly being taught at the college level, then these high school kids who take many AP classes are being overloaded and over-stressed. To not be overloaded, students are forced to choose between too-easy classes or too-rigorous classes. Why not have just-the-right-amount-of-rigor classes so students can take every subject at that level, and not be forced to sacrifice one subject for another?
–How can college credit be given in courses that are taught by people who do not have master’s or doctorate degrees?
–Why do colleges accept AP credit? Isn’t this a money-losing proposition for them? How did this ever get started? I suppose that colleges fear losing students.
–The two-for-the-price-of-one mentality is permeating everything. It seems that everyone I know is in favor of dual credit classes, often to improve economic outcomes, not educational outcomes. This must be due to the high price of college . . .
–Lastly, where is the discussion on what is developmentally appropriate for our youth? Freshman English was a marvelous time in my day to read, discuss, and explore at a time when one was away from parents in a new place with a real professor–we were developmentally ready to read and write and wonder and grow. I am saddened that many students will not have this opportunity because they took “college” English as a 16-year-old.
Using AP numbers to rank high schools is just plain strange. The value of AP courses to students probably varies with the discipline. I can only speak to my experience teaching Calculus 2 to students who received AP credit for Calculus 1. Generally these students do as well(and sometimes better) than those students who take Calculus 1 in college. On the average the ex AP students are more mathematically gifted–which is why they were given the opportunity to take AP calculus. While it may seem contradictory to say so, this doesn’t imply that AP calculus is always the best substitute for the experience of taking calculus in college. My ex AP students are very proficient with the mechanics of calculus–they can compute limits, derivatives, and integrals and solve word problems quickly and efficiently, but, in general, they seem to have had little or no exposure to the theoretical underpinnings of the material. For example, they may know that the derivative of a function at a point represents the rate of change at the point, but they can’t give you the formal definition or understand where it comes from. They know that the derivative of sinx is cosx, but they’ve never seen a proof that it is. These students also often lack the maturity of their peers who took their first semester of calculus in college. There is a big difference in taking a class 4 days a week for 14 weeks as a college student and taking a class 5 days a week for an entire year as a high school student. College students are expected to do a great deal more work on their own. The ex AP students don’t always adjust well to this expectation.(A first semester college freshman may come to class and insist that I cover a topic again because they “couldn’t understand the homework.” A college sophomore knows that they should have come in for help during office hours or seen the tutor.). So, do I mind AP courses? Not really, as long as students aren’t using more than a few of them for college credit. Do I think that they are a true substitute for the experience of taking a course in college? No.
Thanks, M, for sharing your math perspective. I feel the same way about English. Also, the overall result of getting high school credit and college credit simultaneously is one less year of English, overall. In my opinion, these students need a full four years of English in high school as well as a great college English class as freshmen, when they are developmentally ready and can interact with other (more mature) peers and professors with doctoral degrees–away from their homes and parents. This is an amazing time to read and write and discover oneself.
M,
I think a better comparison would be compare students who take AP Calc versus whatever Calculus course their high school offers. Remember, elite private schools say their students are taking superior non-AP Calculus courses so the A their student receives should be the gold standard and not a 5 on a “lousy AP Exam”.
“My ex AP students are very proficient with the mechanics of calculus–they can compute limits, derivatives, and integrals and solve word problems quickly and efficiently, but, in general, they seem to have had little or no exposure to the theoretical underpinnings of the material.”
Is there a High School Calculus text book regularly used in pre-AP day when high school Calculus students were getting exposure to the theoretical underpinnings of the material?
I have had a number of students who have taken a non-AP high school calculus for college credit. In general, they do not do well in Calculus 2. The AP students are better prepared than this group.
Most AP calculus courses (and non-AP courses) use standard college textbooks. The difference in college vs non-college courses isn’t in the textbook, it is in the instruction and in the expectations of the person who teaches the course.