This is a really good piece of investigative writing by Alina Tugend on the value of Advanced Placement courses. It doesn’t answer the question posed in the headline of this post but it supplies valuable information and poses the right questions.
I was interviewed and what really bothers me about the demand for “AP for All” is the implicit assumption that taking a rigorous course and failing the exam will improve educational opportunity. As I say in the article, if this is the goal of the College Board, why not offer the test for free? It is easy to forget that the College Board is a business, not a charity.
There are other ways to reduce the achievement gaps instead of putting kids in a class where the reading level is far beyond their reach and they are near certain to fail.
Although AP was originally designed for elite high schools, some of them have dropped it because their own classes are equally demanding. And some elite college don’t give credit for AP courses.
So the strongest claim of the College Board these days is that their tests supply equity. No standardized test has ever increased equity. They are designed not to. If your primary interest is civil rights, fight for funding and desegregation, not a better standardized test.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“. . . some of them have dropped it because their own classes are equally demanding. And some elite college don’t give credit for AP courses.”
Although I was certified to be an AP Spanish teacher (and what a joke that certification was, basically a week long how to teach to the AP test) I refused to do the AP because I knew that hardly any student would score above a 2 or so on the test and I already taught as much if not more of what a supposed AP “curriculum” covered.
As far as the second part of that statement, my daughter found out real quick that those “5s” she got for AP courses were all dropped to “4s” by the colleges she applied to, ending up with her having a lower GPA for application to college purposes.
Your comment about the AP test scores interested me. I didn’t think AP test scores were used by colleges (or high schools) to calculate GPAs. My oldest received 2s-5s (and every score in between) on her AP tests, but the scores were sent separately from the high school transcript, and colleges didn’t seem as interested in the scores as the fact that she took the tests. (I’m still not a huge fan of the courses and tests, though.)
I did not mean to suggest that the AP test scores were used for GPA calculation. In many if not most high schools the grades in AP classes are such that for GPA purposes an “A” nets 5 points instead of 4, a “B” nets 4 instead of 3, however a “C” still nets 2 points and a “D” nets 1 point. The schools to which my daughter applied adjusted those AP class point 5s down to 4, the 4s down 3 to align them with a 4 point grade scheme.
Did that clear up my post?
“If your primary interest is civil rights, fight for funding and desegregation, not a better standardized test.”
If your interest is civil rights, then fight to eliminate the standards and testing malpractices that are state sponsored discrimination via mental abilities, discrimination through those completely invalid onto-epistemologically malpractices.
“Equity Shmequity”
Equity shmequity
Tests are biased
Toward the “equity”
That is highe$t
At the high school where I teach, we offer about 7 AP courses. We also offer college courses for seniors. Here the students pay a much reduced price for these college credits, while having the security of a high school setting. This not only saves students money on the credits, it saves them from being placed in remedial English and math classes once on a college campus. The credits are offered through local Long Island colleges and are transferable to all SUNY schools and most other schools as well. Students need to earn a C average or better ( I usually tell them a C+) to have the credits transferred. I have been teaching the English classes for 14 years, and this has been a rewarding experience offering students the opportunity to prepare for the rigorous course work while students still have the support of a high school.
Why would a student who has passed their high school classes need remedial classes on the college campus?
Because the university have the students take a placement exam. It also requires students to pay for courses they don’t get credit for.
Many colleges use another standardized College Board test called the Acc-placer to determine who needs remedial work. Of course, that test has all the same problems as any other standardized test – it primarily correlates to income. Despite its name, it isn’t accurate at all. The students have to pay the college for the classes they are assigned to, but don’t receive college credit for them. The costs and the inability to move forward can be enough to make young people decide they don’t belong at college.
In my small Washington community, HS students can enroll in The JC for free and earn an AA at the same time they get their HS diploma. The school is not known to be an easy JC. The “Running Start” students seem pretty bright but I have not heard how well they do when transferring to the 4 yr College. They are pretty young and perhaps immature to be juniors. They would have to attend college pretty far from home too.
As college mathematic professor, I have encountered a number of students in my classes who have gotten college credit for pre calculus or calculus taken in high school. In a few cases the credit is deserved. In most cases it is not. These students frequently have not learned enough to be able to pass the next course in the sequence and end up dropping back and repeating the course they supposedly passed in high school or failing. I tell prospective students to go ahead and take precalculus and calculus in high school, but not for college credit. It’s a waste of money.
My experience as well.
I took calc bc , got a five on the exam and placed out of the freshman engineering calc sequence and went directly into the higher courses.
Big mistake. I survived with B grades, but found myself playing catch up for quite some time.
I would also recommend that anyone who takes AP calc take the REAL college calc course freshman year.
That also goes for those who take AP science like physics, chem and biology because most high schools simply do not have the same lab facilities that colleges have and the lab is usually a big part of intro college science classes.
What do you think is the cause of students getting credit they don’t deserve? The teachers? The environment? The students?
FIolindy, part of the problem is “teaching to the test.” My son is in the top 2% of his class of over 800. The students HAVE to take AP classes because his school’s GPA game is skewed in AP’s favor (1.3 multiplier for AP courses vs. 1.2 multiplier for dual credit courses). I am NOT impressed by the AP tests. Much of it revolves around guessing the test writer’s bias or intent – for example, multiple choice questions asking which item was “most” or “least” something – and all five choices are at least possible while two or three that are probable. My son knows his US History. He may not, however, correctly discern the question writer’s idea of the “Best Answer.” AUGH. Six more AP tests to go in May. Will be so happy to be DONE with Dave Coleman and College Board.
Carol B. I agree regarding the AP exams, but I took M’s response towards students taking the college classes in high school.
As always, love SomeDAM poet’s contribution….
I’ve taught AP U.S. Government and I’ve taught an American government course that earns students credit at a nearby college.
On the positive side, the other AP teachers I’ve worked with (in and outside of my school) have been really helpful For example, I had a question and I tracked down high school AP instructors I’d met years ago….and they got back to me right away. So many people these days seem to blow off e-mail -assuming they get it. On the other hand…. it’s unfortunate that the College Board has hitched its wagon (and all of the AP classrooms) to such a rigid testing system. Of course, it’s all about doing well on that one big test. (A test that is closely guarded.) The reality is that I have a hard time recalling a college class I took that was so pinned to one exam. In fact, the best professors I worked with downplayed exams.
The college-credit class I’ve been teaching has been better. Yeah, some out of state schools might not take the credits. (At least that’s what I’ve heard.) But I know plenty of students who have transferred those credits to great colleges all over the place. And, the class has been more realistic and, I believe, just as helpful to the kids. Of course, the common denominator with AP is that the professor I’ve dealt with at the college near me has been fantastic, too.
So, who needs the big, clunky, AP bureaucracy? (Unless you’re someone who has a fixation on the letters A and P. or is caught up in the allure of the whole thing?)
Glad you like my goofy poems, John.
They often write themselves, especially when it comes to “Reformers” and “Reform”
Parody pales
Compared to tales
Of goofy norm
Of school “reform”
Let’s not forget who runs the College Board and his very profitable pay for an alleged non-profit.
In 2015, The Washington Post’s Answer Sheet by Valarie Strauss ran this:
How much do big education nonprofits pay their bosses? Quite a bit, it turns out.
“David Coleman, the president and chief executive officer of the College Board, as well as a trustee, earned for the 2013 fiscal year ending June 30, 2014: $690,854 in reportable compensation plus $43,338 in other compensation from the organization and related organizations. Total: $734,192. (Coleman, a co-author of the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts, joined the College Board in 2012, and was new in his job). [See the College Board 990 here.]”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/09/30/how-much-do-big-education-nonprofits-pay-their-bosses-quite-a-bit-it-turns-out/?utm_term=.e4fa37328298
And David Coleman is the fascist autocratic that said.
Coleman is a rat.
What’s worse than a rat – a cockroach, or a leech, or a vampire bat, or a malaria laden mosquito?
As a parent and a statistician I’d like to point out that (i) these tests are part of an untenable ratcheting of pressure on our kids, and any student of history can elaborate on the pliability of the panicked. And (ii) monkeying with denominators changes the structure of a population. These AP classes count for “5” in the denominator and not “4” as regular classes once did. So while they claim a “B” in an AP is like an “A” in a regular class, this is not true, an AP “B” = 4/5 = 0.80 while a regular “A” = 4/4 = 1.0 and an AP “A” = 5/5 = 1.0 (a regular “B” = 3/4 = 0.75). The whole distribution changes. And it doesn’t change equally among the population as not all kids in a school take these classes; not all schools offer these classes, etc.
They’ve introduced a distribution they cannot characterize. This is a problem. Though of course you can (and should) argue they never could characterize (accurately) much of this anyway.
There are so many other problems though. These classes are a travesty. Take, for example, Biology. This pedagogical travesty will do something like take a monster-textbook like Campbell, which was never, ever intended as a beginning->end instructive guide, and they’ll just tell kids to read it. All of it. That’s just educational malpractice and an abuse of its purpose as supplement to a planned, structured curriculum. And it most assuredly is not how or what is taught at the “college level”. Show me a college biology class that sits its kids in front of Campbell and intones: ‘Read This’.
I’ve made the college circuit tour with the rest. I encountered nearly zero colleges of the “most selective” variety that accept AP credits; they roundly ignore this bs as well they should. The disconnect, however, is that nevertheless the kids still jump through these hoops like they’re covered with fleas. To what end?
My senior attempted to refuse to take the actual $93 test and was threatened with non-graduation. I told the kid to tell the school then they should pay for it. They did not. I supported the kid’s decision, which was to cave and take the test. The whole thing was beyond-absurd.
Same kid happens to be skilled at the test-taking game and actually did get a “5” on the AP Spanish. Kid is not a native speaker and is not fluent. Kid is good at studying and taking tests. Most in the class are native speakers but they did not get “5”. So … neu? What is all this about? Stupidstupid and disgraceful. And completely tangential to Education.
Here’s the monster-elephant in the room: why would you want to take fewer college classes? Ever? This is a unique and should be protected time of your life to devote to the luxury of learning. It is an oxymoron(? Or maybe just internally inconsistent) to strive for college-level studying and then seek to do less of it. If you don’t want to go to college then don’t do it. If you want to learn to think more critically and evaluate evidence – these are the skills that boost earnings, not the paper associated with the effort. Honestly, this bs just goes on and on….
Why would you want to take fewer college classes?
Good question.
“Placing out of life”
Placing out of life
Has now become the goal
Testing for a wife
Has now replaced the soul
SDP,
Four years of college is a gift. Time to explore new interests, deepen old ones.
Except, Diane, that most kids can no longer afford that “gift.” It’s why most of my students take AP, Concurrent enrollment, and even get their associates’ degrees before even graduating from high school.
I loved my five years of college (I changed majors, so it took a little longer), but it was the early 90’s, and I had a tuition waiver and small auxiliary fees. Scholarships are harder and harder to come by these days, and tuition is ludicrously expensive. Those who can truly have a four year experience at a university these days are lucky, and probably pretty well-off.
For the rest of the world, though, it’s important to get as much of their degree as possible before graduating from high school. Having only two years of college to pay for is worth it.
TOW,
Best of all these days is to accumulate enough credits in high school and skip college. Who needs it? Only the children of elites.
My older daughter took 5 AP classes in high school, before the current AP for All mania took hold. They were classes that matched her interests and were taught by faculty who had been doing AP for a long time. I don’t remember her stressing out about the academic load, but that’s just her ability and personality. It worked out for her because she had 5’s in all the tests, and her college allowed her entry into upper level classes in those areas of study as a result. By combining credits earned during intersession and summers, she was able to graduate in 3 years instead of 4. Her motivation largely was saving a year of tuition, no small matter as she graduated with some $90,000 in debt, despite scholarships which paid about half of tuition and fees.
Four years after their sister, when my twins began their college applications, the situation with AP’s had changed. My younger daughter had taken 3 AP classes, with scores of 4’s, which placed her into 2 upper level classes in her major. My son took no AP’s (had I made that suggestion, he likely would have considered matricide a viable option). On our rounds at college fairs, I made it a point to ask recruiters about AP credit, less for my own kids than for my students, because my school had been entered into AP mania by the district via NMSI.What I consistently heard, particularly from elite schools, was “that credential has become devalued”. By then, AP for All was being touted as the best thing since sliced bread.
Here’s the wikipedia entry for NMSI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Math_and_Science_Initiative and here’s the website:http://www.nms.org/
You can see that it’s essentially a corporate move, funded by ExxonMobile, BillandMelinda, Dell, Texas Instrument and IBM, with its origin story in Dallas by businessman turned assisstant secretary for education under Bush II. They have also had their oar in the Common Core.
I’d say AP’s were a good deal for my oldest, a small advantage to my younger daughter and of no import whatsoever for my son. Like so much in education, it’s a program that depends on the student – and on how twisted it’s gotten to be under coporate watchdogs.
Project Lead The Way is not identical to AP, but can result in college credit, at least at some of the nearby community colleges. PLTW at least helps students know if they have an interest or not in tthe field.
Why take fewer college classes? Do you mean on the campus or in high school? If you are referring to to taking less on campus, the answer is, as always, money. The savings is beneficial to many of the lower to middle class families. Here in New York we now have free college to families making less than $125,00. The state universities will now be more competitive and this allows students to show the colleges their care about their education and are willing to take rigorous classes.
Yes, to save money, since the students can enter with the credits towards graduation. Not every state offers free college.
As the parent of a college and a hs student in NY, I know that the “free college” thing isn’t really free at all. It only pays for tuition and only kicks in after TAP and other scholarships are used, so doesn’t help the lower income kids. Or even lower middle income kids – I know people with professional jobs like physical therapist who did not qualify for free tuition because they make too little money. But they still have to pay all the other fees.
My spouse works at a SUNY, and although he does agree that the program will likely make the campuses more competitive – it will attract middle and upper middle income families that might have chosen private – he also worries that this also means that the lower income kids that he teaches will once again be pushed out because with more applications from kids from richer high schools, those from poorer high schools may not be admitted.
Magnet schools fight for equity and desegregation. You never mention us..