I wrote today’s 9 a.m. post about the College Board capitulating to conservative critics. I wrote it without seeing the revised curriculum because I was in an airplane all day. Late last night, I opened an email and discovered that Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times had written a similar but more informative column, because he was able to do the comparison that I had not done. He pointed out that the rightwing attacks on the AP African American Studies course began in September, and the very names and topics that the right and DeSantis had condemned were either excised or made optional in the revised course.
He wrote:
One might have expected a leading national educational institution to have the gumption to push back against right-wingers like Florida Gov. RonDeSantis when they try to stick their noses into decisions about how to teach important subjects.
Sadly, no.
On Wednesday, the College Board issued its final curriculum for what should have been a ground-breaking high school course in African American studies. The College Board called the course “an unflinching encounter with the facts and evidence of African American history and culture.”
The final curriculum appears suspiciously to have been tailored to objections raised by DeSantis, Florida’s culture warrior Republican governor, and other right-wingers, after the board issued a draft version in December.
DeSantis, through his secretary of Education, called the draft “inexplicably contrary to Florida law” and forbade its use in Florida schools. The state’s education secretary, Manny Diaz Jr., attacked it for being “filled with Critical Race Theory and other obvious violations of Florida law.”
The arch-conservative National Review labeled the course part of “a new and sweeping effort to infuse leftist radicalism into America’s K–12 curriculum.”
The curriculum is part of College Board’s Advanced Placement program, which gives college-bound high schoolers exposure to university-level coursework.
The board says AP courses are “aimed at enabling students to develop as independent thinkers and to draw their own conclusions.”
To be fair, the board’s actions related to the African American Studies course are as good a workshop in allowing students to draw their own conclusions as one might hope. Any reasonably bright AP student is likely to see this affair as a demonstration of abject cowardice.
Disgustingly, the College Board released the final curriculum on the first day of Black History Month, as though trawling for praise for its unflinching devotion to truth. The board took pains to deny that the alterations in the draft curriculum had anything to do with criticism from DeSantis, the National Review or the right wing generally.
“No states or districts have seen the official framework that is released, much less provided feedback on it,” the board said. “This course has been shaped only by the input of experts and long-standing AP principles and practices.”
Raise your hand if you believe the College Board. Me neither.
The board said the final version had been completed in December. DeSantis issued his rejection of the course on Jan. 19. But criticism of the course outline had been circulating in conservative quarters for months — the National Review’s attack, for instance, was published on Sept. 12.
A preliminary, unflinching examination of the differences between the draft and the final version can only raise suspicions that the College Board refashioned the African American studies course to assuage the conservatives.
State Senator Manny Diaz Jr. posted a tweet on January 20 listing the state’s concerns about the AP course.
As a template, let’s use the list of “concerns” issued by Diaz on Jan. 20.
Diaz complained about the inclusion in the draft curriculum of writers and social activists Kimberlé Crenshaw, Angela Davis, Roderick Ferguson, Leslie Kay Jones, bell hooks , and Robin D.G. Kelley. Every single one of them has been excised from the final version.
Diaz’s list objected to the treatment, or even inclusion, of topics including the reparation debate, movements such as Black Lives Matter, Black Queer studies and “intersectionality,” which places racism and discrimination in a broadly social context.
Those topics have all been downgraded from required topics to “sample project topics” — that is, optional topics that fall outside requirements and won’t appear on the AP test. Those topics, the curriculum says, “can be refined by states and districts.”
Here’s a safe bet: None of them will be taught in Florida schools.
DeSantis has made no secret of his determination to turn Florida education into a shallow pool redolent of white supremacy by avoiding any hint that American society and politics have been infused with racism and class discrimination.
The shame of the College Board’s rewriting of its AP course is that it effectively places DeSantis and his henchmen in the position of dictating educational standards to the rest of the country.
There was scant political pushback against DeSantis when he rejected the draft curriculum, other than a letter from Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, warning the College Board that his state would “reject any curriculum modifications designed to appease extremists like the Florida Governor and his allies.”
Pritzker observed, properly, that “ignoring and censoring the accurate reporting of history will not change the realities of the country in which we live.” (Like DeSantis, Pritzker is being talked up as a potential presidential candidate in 2024.)
Now that the final curriculum has been published and its dilutions can be closely scrutinized, perhaps the scope of the College Board’s capitulation will become clearer.
But the College Board has already flunked this all-important test of character. As we’ve noted before, acts of cowardice in the face of DeSantis’ goonish bullying won’t appease him, but will only encourage him.
As he works to destroy the independence and quality of the Florida K-12 and university systems, parents elsewhere around the country can take perverse satisfaction in knowing that students will emerge from Florida schools without the skill to compete with their own kids in intelligent society.
But if institutions like the College Board continue to let DeSantis transmit his virus of ignorance beyond Florida’s borders, no one will be safe from the contagion.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Appeasement. But I guess you can’t have one without the other when it comes to enabling.
There are a number of forces at play here. DeSantis doesn’t really care what is in the AP curriculum only that he stirs up reactionary protest from liberals that gives him street cred for Trump’s base. Also, it is important to remember that the College Board develops courses to make money. So, it makes sense that it would cower to the demands of a Governor in a populous state, because, heaven for bid, the free market is the free market. One of the first serious political lessons I learned in regard to education was when North Carolina introduced its legislation called the “ABCs” in 1993, precursor to and one model for NCLB, I was appalled at the accountability measures and poor tests put upon schools and naively thought no educators in the public school establishment would fall for such hokum. They did for much the same reason College Boards is bending over backward to please DeSantis: Money. When it comes to the bottom line, or threats thereof, government entities often jump higher, or in this case dive lower, than corporations just to procure dollars. Companies like College Boards and ACT see the handwriting from universities that are using alternatives to their tests for admissions, so they have to create another market. As promising as AP became for preparing students for success in college at its inception, it eventually went the same way as other education products focused on the bottom line. Keep the funding streams happy, to hell with student learning.
“Also, it is important to remember that the College Board develops courses to make money.”
Exactly, considering that Florida has the third largest number of high school students behind CA & TX, ahead of NY (stats from 2020).
Yeah, I would like to see how many parents push their students into this course if they believe it will give their kids a better opportunity to get into college. I have a niece who completed her degree at Florida State in three years because she tested out of most of her freshman year. Given that Florida universities are so invested in AP I think this will all die down pretty quickly once DeSantis sees his poll numbers rise as a result. Numerous grifters here.
“Heaven for bid.” Perfect.
Spot on analysis.
In NJ, some high schools chose to coordinate w. local colleges (rather than offer AP) so that students would have transcript credit that wasn’t subject to a college refusing to accept an AP 3 test score.
I had an up close experience with the push for AP for All, which generated so much income for the College Board. Here’s a long twitter thread I posted. There are lots of Texas connections. (A certain education historian from Texas might appreciate it.)
Everyone should understand that “non-profit” denotes a tax status. It does not confer some kind of noble intention. The College Board brought in more than $1 billion in 2019, before covid impacts to testing. David Coleman’s compensation was $1.4 million. Here’s a link to a ProPublica article showing the College Board’s 990’s. The dropping of SAT’s as a requirement by many colleges in the wake of Covid has them seeking other revenue streams.
https://t.co/JVkcYUYNN3
That AP for ALL push not only generated a lot of $$$$ for the College Board but it generated a lot of unneeded stress/anxiety on the students pushed into that mess. The number of kids/young adults on medication for anxiety and depression is out of this world. I saved 1 kid by putting him into private HS, but the older sibling coaxed by teachers and counselors to take numerous AP classes at her public HS is anxiety ridden even though we fought to keep the AP classes to a minimum. The College Board should not be allowed to be the “gateway” to a higher education…it needs to be flushed down the toilet like the crap that it is.
Yes. if you look about halfway through my twitter thread, you see the parallels when my school was taken over by that nonsense:
“The program turned the school upside down. The AP offerings in English, Math and Science took priority in the scheduling. Kids began to believe that if they weren’t taking 4 AP’s they’d never get college scholarships. There were after school classes and Saturday classes.”
This ironic thing is my own kids were finishing high school and beginning college in this time frame. My oldest was able to use her AP credits to graduate from Wellesley in 3 years instead of 4, saving her a full year’s tuition in student loans. When my twins started looking at colleges four years later and AP’s were being monetized, officials at college fairs told me “that credential has been devalued”.
The scam is pervasive with AP and IB designations. I insisted my kids take no more than three AP courses and since my oldest was an athlete I told her IB, and its time demands, was out of the question. The grade inflation that resulted with this also devalued the college acceptance opportunities. Another organization that monetized its involvement with public education, US News and World Report, used AP participation rates as a standard to rate high schools. AP is a virus.
When I took the SAT many decades ago, students also had the option to take SAT subject matter tests. The colleges I applied to required me to take three. No syllabus, course, just a multiple-choice test of content. At some point, the subject matter tests were replaced by AP, which includes a course of study and a test.
History is such a contentious subject that i can’t imagine how one private organization can be expected to define what is in and what is excluded.
I’ll tell you a really sleazy move in my district. They wanted all the kids to take the AP classes because our district was ranked high in the US News & World Report because of the AP program, but they didn’t want the students in the poorer schools to take the exams because they knew that those kids wouldn’t score as well. So, in the wealthier schools, the school system paid the test fees for the students, but the poorer parents (in the poorer schools) would have to pony up the money for their children to take the test….and we all know that poor/low income parents don’t have an extra $300-$400 floating around in the savings account. The school system really didn’t think that parents wouldn’t find out about it? All for “rankings” on Niche and Zillow.
Man, they is well and truly sleazy
Christine Langhoff says:
“My oldest was able to use her AP credits to graduate from Wellesley in 3 years instead of 4, saving her a full year’s tuition in student loans. When my twins started looking at colleges four years later and AP’s were being monetized, officials at college fairs told me “that credential has been devalued”.
I don’t like APs being monetized, but as someone who attended a typical midwestern public school that offered nothing but “US history x 4” and “English x 4” for 4 years and nothing else (and whose kid took AP classes), I don’t understand Christine’s point.
Your daughter graduated from Wellesley in 3 years, but she did not HAVE to graduate in 3 years. She could have used her AP credits the way many students did as simply being requisites for taking more advanced classes in college for 4 years. Presumably you are glad she could save a year of tuition and loans.
So why are you belittling the AP courses now by implying they are watered down when that is not the case and insulting to the advanced students who take them and get high enough scores on the AP exam to count? Even Harvard counts AP credits now. Look it up – it’s true. The only difference is that at Harvard, a student might have to score a 5 on the exam to get credit where a less supposedly “elite” university will give them credit for a 4.
(If I misunderstand what you are saying, then I apologize).
You seemed to respect Wellesley for accepting AP credits when your daughter attended. Has Wellesley stopped doing so? No – they accept APs for both placement and credit! It’s true that the AP credential has been “devalued” but that is NOT because the students who get 5s now are not as good as the students who got 5s in the past. AP exams were started as a program for for “challenging high‐achieving students at high‐status schools” (and that included the most elite private and boarding schools). I never even heard of an AP class or AP exam in my midwestern public high school in the very early 1980s – I heard of them when I got to a selective college and I associated it with the students who had attended elite private and boarding schools and some highly selective public magnet schools and very affluent suburban public schools.
But once AP exams became widespread, and the most motivated and academic public school students across the country were scoring 5s, it was a problem for elite private schools who expected not just their top students, but their students who got 4s to also be admitted to highly selective colleges at disproportionately high rates. Those very good students could certainly do the work — but so could all the public school applicants who got a 5. And it became harder to justify rejecting a lot of public school students who got a 5 on the same AP exam that private school applicants got a 4 on, because the evidence now undermined the myth that the classes in the private school were more rigorous and thus the private school students who applied more deserving even if they were only in the middle of the class. It should surprise no one that elite private schools where APs began suddenly “devalued” them. I am sure that if 90% of their students all got 5s and only a handful of public school students got 5s, they would still find them worthwhile.
In other words, the fact that there are now lots of college applicants from public school with 5s on the same AP exams that many elite private school students only get a 4 on is not a reason to devalue the exam. But if the goal is to justify giving elite private school students admission preference based on “perceived superior merit of their education”, then one would certainly want colleges to say AP scores are meaningless (when it comes to admissions).
I am not advocating for every kid to take AP classes. But the devaluing of AP classes is not because they are being monetized but because the elite private schools that used to be the only schools offering it learned that suddenly there were lots of public school students who could get 5s and it made it much harder for them (and the elite colleges that gave them admissions preferences over high achieving public school students with higher AP exam scores and grades) to justify why a college was giving admissions priority to very wealthy private school kids who got 4s on AP exams over middle class public school kids with 5s. The motivation to “devalue” the AP classes was also about money.
There is no reason for Wellesley or Harvard to use AP scores for anything but placement in a more advanced class. I seem to recall that decades ago that’s how those scores were used and only the so-called lesser universities gave college credit for them. But that has changed. Wellesley gave your daughter credit and Wellesley gives current students credit. And if an elite college’s representative is implying that the degree a current Wellesley student has is of less value than your daughter’s was, then I think that representative should be fired. It isn’t true.
Slow your roll, a bit, please, NYCPSP.
My oldest choose to use her AP scores, summer classes and carrying a larger than normal class load so she could graduate in 3 instead of 4 years because A) she was academically able, B) she hated Wellesley and C) she was rightly concerned about the cost she was inflicting on herself with student loans. (She later took a year’s hazardous duty assignment in Afghanistan to pay off her student loans.)
Wellsley set the parameters, not me, and she worked within them to her benefit. I do not think it was a course of action that would have worked for most students. It would not have worked for her siblings.
The hard push for AP’s made itself felt in the 4 intervening years between my oldest and her twin sibs. Because AP’s had caused an uproar in my own school, at college fairs I made it a point to ask reps about AP’s. Many, at selective schools, told me that it was a credential that had been devalued because of its ubiquity. They were all about a more wholistic view of the student, which I saw as a healthy development.
My interest was not just for my own children, but for those I taught. For many years, my Latinx students had SAT and ACT scores which weren’t reflective of their abilities. Scores for poor kids whose first language isn’t English don’t show their strengths. I developed a two year curriculum for my native Spanish speakers and then in their third year, a colleague taught the same group of kids AP Spanish. Nearly all of them scored 4’s or 5’s. Over the span of 6 or 7 years, none got lower than a 3.
It was a way for us to game the system. It worked. We opened up a pipeline for our school’s students to selective admissions universities that had money for scholarships and wanted to diversify their campuses – places like Smith and Brown and Dartmouth and Hampshire and Mt. Holyoke. Admissions officers began to see that our school turned out kids who were well prepared for college classrooms, that they were student leaders on campus, that they were passionate learners. The AP credential worked to tip the balance against the other scores. Big win.
I have zero regrets that we played that game and our students were the winners. I feel a lot of pride when I see their Linked In profiles and they’re living good lives, many of them still in the communities where they grew up. They have jobs in which they contribute to their communities and they mentor young people who were like themselves.
But I can still rail against the College Board for its enormous – and profitable – contribution to the idea that a students’ abilities are measured by a standardized test, or that those courses are rigorous or that those tests should be considered an imprimatur of quality or intellect or value. Because that just is simply not true.
“it was a credential that had been devalued because of its ubiquity.” Yes, I got that. It’s much more common now to take an AP class. My problem with that statement is that it suggests that in the past the AP had more value because it wasn’t ubiquitous. Why does limiting access to AP classes to students who fewer students who are supposedly considered worthy (who just happened to be much richer and whiter than the average public school student) give that AP course more “value”? How does an AP class being “ubiquitous” means that it loses value? Because too many public school students can take the class and the exam?
Your story of what you and your colleagues did with the AP Spanish class is amazing! You guys were incredible! You did NOT “game” the system. On the contrary – your students were given the chance via an AP exam to prove that they were outstanding in Spanish instead of hoping (often in vain) that a highly selective college admissions officer would take the word of some random public school teacher that they weren’t just handing out As to any student who showed up.
Holistic admission is also the way elite colleges admit very privileged students over more qualified middle class and low income students. After all, if they can all handle the work, why choose the one with better test scores when you can choose the one whose parents will donate money and always be able to say that it was for “holistic reasons”?
You and your fellow teachers didn’t “game the system”, you were great teachers who recognized exactly what the AP classes and exams should be about:
“We opened up a pipeline for our school’s students to selective admissions universities that had money for scholarships and wanted to diversify their campuses – places like Smith and Brown and Dartmouth and Hampshire and Mt. Holyoke. Admissions officers began to see that our school turned out kids who were well prepared for college classrooms, that they were student leaders on campus, that they were passionate learners. The AP credential worked to tip the balance against the other scores. Big win.” I agree!!
As I mentioned above, I didn’t have the opportunity to take AP classes in my no-name public high school. But my SAT scores did the same thing. Told admissions officers I was well prepared for college and it wasn’t just that I went to some public school that handed out As to every kid that showed up for class. But I think we both agree that standardized tests are problematic. That’s why I happen to think it is fine that students like yours ALSO have an alternative way to demonstrate their academic strengths. An AP Exam is not the SAT. It allows students from no name public schools to demonstrate that they do actually have a very strong grasp of the material. An AP class shouldn’t be required and presumably it isn’t. If an unqualified kid wants to take that class — who cares? Just like I don’t care whether an unqualified kid takes an honors class. I am just happy that academically strong kids can challenge themselves and when they do, there is a way to prove that their academic strengths are at least as good as more privileged students. But the fact that now lots of strong public school students get a chance to demonstrate that they can score as well as an supposedly “elite” student seems to be the real driving force in those who have “devalued” them. Because the AP exams have primarily been “devalued” by the elite private schools where those exams started, and I believe that movement is entirely self-serving to the most privileged.
Your students were so fortunate to have a great teacher like you!
The whole, pervasive attitude that no child can be “left behind” and everyone must be “college and career ready” is the perfidious work of myopic billionaires and their neoliberal, lapdog politicians. College should be tuition free as it used to be in New York and California. Instead, we push students to take out loans that guarantee payment to the banks that “provide” them, with no ability to get out of debt by declaring bankruptcy by the debtor. And we push them into STEM careers, with only half of STEM graduates finding work in STEM jobs and tech companies laying off thousands for churn and burn destabilization of collectivism, thereby suppressing the wages of STEM workers. We are harming the students to benefit the wealthy.
Boycott the College Board. The College Board aggressively markets AP courses, they are the major source of College Board revenue. College Board avers, “If you wanna get in to a “good college” take as many AP courses as possible,” not true.
David Coleman, the head of the College Board, and the father of the Common Core, is an entrepreneur who has successfully, very successfully, monitized education.
Time to use our power, school districts should drop AP exams, contract with local colleges, smooth the transition to college, smooth the K-16 pathway locally
Well said, Peter!
Second that.
Do arguments centered on
“forbiden fruit” ignore
a basic?
It is desired all the more
because it is not allowed.
The wrongwingers can feign
poutrage ’till the cows
come home. Pretending
a book-study-essay has
“agency” to effect
meaningful change, all
but IGNORES reality.
To wit, TESTSCORES.
Has any book,study,or essay,
persuaded professional
educators to STOP
giving tests?
I do not understand why there isn’t a movement afoot to “just say no” to AP courses. period. In my limited empirical exposure to them, they tend to be very watered down college level courses for the most part. Granted there are high schools that have built their reputations on how many AP courses they offer, the passage rate, etc., but in my never-ending belief that high school is a time for exploration, who needs AP courses anyhow? It seems to me the whole industry is just another money making scheme. And I often would say, I wouldn’t send my kids to any college that gave them college credit for their high school AP classes (inferring that college was not very rigorous). That was a long time ago and I know garnering college credits in high school reduces the exorbitant cost of college, but still we shouldn’t be giving any importance to such a terrible organization.
Colleges aren’t “taking” AP credits anymore in the sense that one can finish early and save $$$$. Colleges will take the score and give the credit but will make the student substitute another class. Colleges are $$$$ making, for profit institutions and they were losing $$$$ by accepting the AP score as “credit”. It’s all a game so that the College Board keeps making $$$ and is allowed to keep its status as the “gateway” to higher education. I absolutely hate/abhor/detest the College Board.
That’s not true! I just checked the Wellesley College website:
“New for Spring 2022, students can now see their AP and IB test scores in Workday.
To see your test scores in Workday:
……..
To request academic credit for your scores:
If you have eligible scores (AP, IB, A-Levels, German Abitur or French Baccalaureate) you would like to receive credit for, you must fill out this AP, IB, and other test scores Google Form. Even if you have already sent us your scores, you still need to fill out the form. Students may only receive credit for up to four units; you must specify each test you would like to receive credit for on this form.”
4 credits is one semester of tuition.
What college do you think won’t give students a diploma after only 6 or 7 semesters if some credits are AP?
I agree that the most affluent families I know have their kids spend 4 years in private college taking other classes. But for some middle class families (or students who prefer not to prolong the “college experience” if they don’t have to), students can graduate early IF THEY WANT.
I personally don’t get the big deal but mostly because I don’t really get why anyone thinks that a typical public school AP class is somehow far worse than a typical public school non-AP class. There isn’t much difference. Some students treat the AP exam as a joke or don’t even bother to show up because getting credit for a course is unnecessary knowing they either have a full ride to college via financial aid or a scholarship or their parents are so rich they are happy to pay $75,000/year for 4 years so their kid can have the full 4 year college “experience”.
I have NEVER heard a high school principal telling students that the kids who take the most APs will be the ones who get into the best colleges. (In fact, many public high schools intentionally limit the number a kid can take each year.)
On the other hand, I have heard multiple representatives from highly selective colleges tell potential applicants and their parents that they expect students to take the “most rigorous” schedule.
But I don’t get how any parent believes that if only their kids’ high school offered “the most rigorous” classes and called them “High Honors” in every subject instead of “AP” why their high achieving students who want to go to top colleges will no longer have any pressure. Seriously? Do you think non-AP classes for advanced students don’t require work? Do you think they are easier? I don’t get it, but I can tell you that the pressure on students isn’t less because a high school calls their most advanced courses something other than an “AP” class. The irony is that there is NO pressure when taking the AP exams because they scores don’t come out until the middle of summer and they don’t have to be reported to anyone! There is a lot more pressure on a kid taking a final exam for their non-AP “most rigorous” Honors class.
AP is grossly overhyped. I have a lengthy comment on this pending.
If Dangerously Deranged DeSantis ends up being the GOP’s fascist presidential candidate in 2024, will the Democrats take advantage of all of those photo ops designed to attract votes from MAGA RINOs?
If so, 2024 may also see another increase in voter turnout from new voters that want to keep fascist DDD out of the White House.
Sickening, but not surprising. College Board should have had their tax exempt status taken away years ago, and this just cements.
They are political, obviously
DeSantis puppet David Coleman is fascist-curious.
Well-established myths die hard. Very hard. Scientific evidence doesn’t always sway minds. Parents and students and educators – and reporters – assume that Advanced Placement (AP) courses are inherently superior to other high school classes. The assumption is that AP are more rigorous, offer deeper conceptual knowledge and lead to better performance in college. The problem with the assumption is that it is largely perception; there is little research to support it.
Michael Hiltzik’s column ought to be one of the final nails in the coffin of the College Boards Advanced Placement courses. But it will not be. Hiltzik’s criticisms of the College Board are sound, and calling the College Board “cowards” is more than just a little bit accurate. It’s spot on. But Hiltzik perpetuates the College Board mythology.
A 2002 National Research Council study of AP courses and tests concluded that they were a “mile wide and an inch deep” and they did not comport with well-established, research-based principles of learning. The study was an intense two-year, 563-page detailed content analysis, and the main study committee was comprised of 20 members who were not only experts in their fields but also top-notch researchers who wrote also about effective teaching and learning.
The main finding of the 2004 Geiser and Santelices study was 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.”
Klopfenstein and Thomas (2005) found that 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, they write 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.
College Board-funded research is more than simply suspect. The College Board continues to perpetrate the fraud that the SAT actually measures something important other than family income (for perhaps the single best read on this, see: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/11/the-best-class-money-can-buy/4307/). A favorite of mine is the College Board-produced “study” that claimed PSAT scores predicted AP test scores. A sidebar comment in the study, however, undermined its validity. The authors noted that “the students included in this study are of somewhat higher ability than…test-takers” in the population to which they generalized. Upon further scrutiny, however, that “somewhat higher ability” actually meant students in the sample were a full standard deviation above those 9th and 10th graders who took the PSAT. And even then, the basic conclusion was that students who scored well on the PSAT had about a 50-50 chance of getting a “3” on an AP test, the most common score. Holy moly!
In the ‘ToolBox Revisited’ (2006) Clifford Adelman noted that “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.”
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). 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.”
The Sadler- and Klopfenstein-edited book, “AP” A Critical Examination” (2010) lays out the research that makes clear AP has become “the juggernaut of American high school education,” but “ the research evidence on its value is minimal.”
A 2013 study from Stanford noted that “increasingly, universities seem
to be moving away from awarding credit for AP courses.” The study pointed out that “the impact of the AP program on various measures of college success was found to be negligible.” And it adds this: “definitive claims about the AP program and its impact on students and schools are difficult to substantiate.”
But you wouldn’t know that by reading any of the current articles — including that by Michael Hiltzik — about the “controversial” AP Black History course or by listening to the College Board, which derives more than half of its income from AP.
AP may work well for some students, especially those who are already “college-bound to begin with” (Klopfenstein and Thomas, 2010). 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.” The Texas, College Board-funded studies Mathews salivates over 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.
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.”
So, why do students take AP? Because they’ve been told they have to. Because they’re “trying to look good” to colleges in the “increasingly high-stakes college admission process,” and because “high schools give extra weight to AP courses when calculating grade-point averages, so it can boost a student’s class rank.”
One student who got caught up in the AP hype cycle –– taking 3 AP courses as a junior and 5 as a senior –– and only got credit for one AP course in college, reflected on his AP experience. He said nothing about “rigor” or “trying to be educated” or the quality of instruction, but remarked “if i didn’t take AP classes, it’s likely I wouldn’t have gotten accepted into the college I’m attending next year…If your high school offers them, you pretty much need to take them if you want to get into a competitive school. Or else, the admissions board will be concerned that you didn’t take on a “rigorous course load.” AP is a scam to get money, but there’s no way around it. In my opinion, high schools should get rid of them…”
But what do students actually learn from taking these “rigorous” AP 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.” And another AP student related how the “high achievers” in his school approached AP tests:
An AP reader (grader) noted this: “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.”
Students, parents, teachers, and school leaders –– not to mention politicians and reporters –– would do well to heed the research and ignore the propaganda and lies spewed by the College Board.
Belief is a powerful thing. Sadly, people too easily believe things that are not true. And public education — not to mention American democratic governance — suffers for it.
As I watched the media fall over itself, first over Desantis ruling, and second, over the College Boards capitulation, I couldn’t help but think of Pieter Breughel’s painting, “The Blind Leading the Blind.”