A reader who calls him/herself “Democracy” writes a thoughtful comment on the Advanced Placement courses offered by the College Board, responding to the controversy over the College Board’s retreat from its AP African American studies course. The College Board excised content to placate rightwing critics.
Democracy writes:
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:
“The majority of high-achieving kids in my buddies' and my AP classes couldn’t have given less of a crap. 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.”
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.
Editor’s note: All standardized tests reflect family income. Those whose families have the highest income have the highest scores. Some rich kids score poorly. Some poor kids get high scores. They are outliers that do not change the overall trend.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
A different comparison might be between the AP class and the regular class in the same subject. Are the teachers equivalent? Are the students equivalent?
Is there research on this?
At least in my case, I teach AO and a grade level equivalent and I each that subject to most of the grade at my school. While I do have some kids that are high fliers, I have plenty of “AP ready” kids in my other classes and plenty of, um, slackers in my AP class. So I think it evens out.
I know the information is anecdotal, but that’s been my experience.
While I agree that AP is a mess, I wish the researchers had talked to my students. I get emails years later that material taught in my class has helped students through the rest of high school and into college. The students also become far better writers and more knowledgeable and interested about the world. Not a fan of the test, but the class experience has been extremely helpful for my students. And I teach in a high risk environment with plenty of kids struggling with motivation.
Thank goodness for Democracy and his common sense comment! I wish parents and school guidance counselors would understand how awful these classes are for most students. The problem is that the AP program is expensive for school systems to purcha$e so the school systems want it utilized to the max….even if that means it’s detrimental to the students. I live in an area where the HS’s are basically AP for All and those that don’t/can’t/won’t participate are left sitting in classrooms void of much learning and rife with behavior problems…..all the middle ground classes are gone. So many stressed out kids on ADD/ADHD meds and anti anxiety/depression meds. It’s a sin! And the parents go along with this because it’s important in social circles for one’s child to be accepted into expensive “name brand” colleges.
More nails in the coffin of AP-world.
Of course, AP-world is one of the many toxic sub-cultures that exist in contemporary America. Stupid, bad or old school evil, take your pick. There seem to be a lot of these groups out there.
Having said that, when I went for the AP “training” many years ago, I met some wonderful teachers, who could not have been more helpful to me and my students. Some of these educators certainly had mixed feelings about the AP system; others were ready to defend the whole regime. (Finally honed #2 pencils held like daggers.)
Luckily, I was able to extricate myself and my students from that rancid mess.
In hindsight, I would’ve been much better off from the get-go using my precious life moments learning about some other ‘tribe’ of my fellow humans. I could’ve joined a bowling league. Or, chased freight trains up and down the Delaware River, capturing photographs of them. Or, just plain talked to other teachers and my students without all the mumbo jumbo superimposed by the College Board.
Teaching a college co-credit class was a huge relief. And, made a lot more sense than AP test prep.
I never took an AP course in high school; didn’t know they existed, if they even did in the very large suburban school I attended in the late 1970s. Then beginning in the ’90s I taught high school for 23 years, 12 of those AP World History.
Much of the criticism Democracy levels at AP is relevant and I wouldn’t dispute:
-Mile wide and inch deep
-Grade-grubbing element for college admissions
-Student work overload trying to take too many AP courses
-Standardized tests are class biased, etc
And I’d add another problem: Work overload on teachers not up to the reading and content engagement required for teaching an AP course successfully.
A few years back the APWH course was modified, reduced in scale, not under the reactionary pressures faced by AP African American history, but to mitigate some of the mile-wide-inch-deep and workload problems raised. Unfortunately, in my estimation, these changes blunted some of the value of the APWH course as a true global history alternative to the Eurocentrism endowed by histories of Western Civilization. Which is to say, it is hard getting this stuff right.
Nonetheless, I never took a course in history or taught a non-AP course half as rigorous or content rich, nor a course that offered nearly as intensive of writing skills practice, as the APWH curriculum in its new or older versions.
Might some other non-AP courses offer better learning experiences? For some students, in some circumstances, surely. But as preparation for college, for an introductory college survey course, in my experience, more rigor, content, or skills learning is very, very rare.
College Board is another big bad corporation, profit seeking, and subject to political manipulation and pressures. Its standardized tests regime, in particular, is a racket and has already been eliminated as an admissions requirement in several states.
But making AP course curriculum another either/or binary bogey of public education reform is, I think, misplaced and counter productive; just another distraction from the real perennial problems of class sizes and inadequate preparation and grading time for teachers.
Respectfully.
After having three children attend college, I believe the most critical characteristic for post secondary success is maturity. When I went to college in 1978, my school district was not yet using AP classes for college bound students. When I was accepted at my college of choice I was told by my counselor that I probably should attend a less challenging institution. I made it in 4 years. I wasn’t magna cum laude material, but I was successful. Perhaps the greatest condemnation of AP is that only 59% of students who enter college finish in 6 years. Student content knowledge doesn’t matter if they can’t balance social opportunities with the work required to study. According to the Center for the Developing Child at Harvard, executive function does not peak until between 25 and 29 years of age. We have known this for a while now, yet we continue to push 18 year olds into college pretending that their experience in AP classes insures their success at the university. The one magna cum laude of my three children did not start college until she was 23.
Oh yeah, that 23 year old is the one who didn’t take AP classes.
I’ll be honest, I never gave any thought to AP courses and what they meant until my son took one this year about a subject I understand well. I was appalled by what I saw, how and what he was taught, the test questions, and how deficient his knowledge of the subject was despite getting top grades. The whole DeSantis kerfuffle puts us in a position of exposing a wrong by trying to defend the opponent he chose. An opponent that, under any other circumstances, would not be worth any attention or support at all.
I think this is indicative of a larger trend that unites crazy ideas into a palatable ideology for many. One of very many reasons is how two words they often use are hollow and diverting: disrupt and innovate. Whenever those words are used, they are to obscure the concepts and meanings of the words create and invent. They want to confuse the two in order to blur their distinctions thereby letting the former claim to be the latter, which can not be further from the truth.
Disrupting and innovating is something done to manipulate existing systems and products. They claim to see inefficiencies in what exists and propose a new system that is supposed to be better. This covers up the fact that what exists might actually be good and need tweaking, not disruption or innovation. This distills the entire effort of public education privatization and all the forms it takes and goals it has. It is also analogous to the pharma industry practice of changing one molecule in a drug in order to get new patent protection. Travel apps are another great example. They don’t do anything someone can’t do for themselves easier and cheaper by just not falling for the hype. This is an example of the ideal business model for them: rather than build a business or idea on repeat customers, get as many customers once, charge them the highest price possible, and profit off them before they catch on. Quality doesn’t matter in this case. Neither does consistency. And it fits like a Lego piece in the plans of the devisers of American fascism.
Not going to get into the differences between what I describe above with the concepts of creation and invention as they relate to our daily lives. I think that’s obvious to all of you. But this also, in my mind, helps explain AP courses, the mindset behind them, and how they link easily with dumb political ideas to create a toxic agenda.
What are you comparing your kid’s AP class to? Did you compare it to the non-AP version of the class offered to kids in the same high school?
I have no doubt your criticisms are true, but that doesn’t make those classes worse than the classes that aren’t AP. I might be appalled at the AP classes my kid took if I already already had expert knowledge in the subjects. But since I didn’t, I thought they were very engaging and interesting. Most high school courses aren’t going to meet a very high standard. So sure, my first choice is for every public high school to have the small seminar style classes as the most elite private schools, but barring that dream happening, the AP classes are as good as the teachers who teach them. Some just want the rote learning and others use a creative approach. Just like the non-AP classes.
I compare it to any good undergraduate Intro American Government course. It was astoundingly bad. It was also a packaged course, meaning students throughout the nation got the same stuff, college credit, and become more fodder for obvious lies and disinformation. And it doesn’t have to reach a high standard, which luckily I had, just an average one so that students read a daily newspaper and make informed judgments.
GregB,
Reading a daily newspaper and making an informed judgement isn’t much use if the daily newspaper is lousy. Or published by a right wing billionaire who is pushing a specific agenda. I sometimes feel like critics of AP classes live in an alternate reality.
Kids hated DBQs but I’d argue that practicing how to analyze and make good arguments from sources is an excellent skill to teach high schoolers.
Remember, the test doesn’t matter and the scores come out long after the student has received a final classroom grade for the course based on what their teacher decides. It sounds like your kid didn’t have a good teacher. Classroom teachers grade the writing of their own students throughout the year. And the colleges often don’t give credit for 3s and some don’t for 4s either. I don’t really get the issue — it’s not like every undergrad in every college has a required Intro American Government class. They don’t. So not sure why it matters that students who took AP Government — AND TESTED HIGH — could elect to start with a more advanced class. Or they could elect not to. What’s the problem? Are you thinking that a student who scores a 5 might elect to take a more advanced level of a subject because they believe the hype from the College Board that they are ready when they aren’t? I just don’t understand what downside there is.
If the class is better than anything the high school offers and worse than an Intro to Government class in college, that’s still a win-win for the kids, isn’t it?
How many public high schools offer their students a course that is exclusively about African American history and culture? If so many more public school students got a chance to take that class, does it matter if it isn’t as good as a college level class would be?
It would be great if “Democracy” could provide links to some of the studies they cite. Here are some I’ve quickly googled:
NRC, 2002, https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/10365/learning-and-understanding-improving-advanced-study-of-mathematics-and-science-in-us-high-schools
Klopfenstein, 2009, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27751419
Here’s a summary with a bibliography: https://challengesuccess.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/ChallengeSuccess-AdvancedPlacement-WP.pdf
But still I’d like to see links to his sources.
I was very glad to read this take-down of the AP enterprise (i.e. scam). This latest controversy over the AP African American History Studies Curriculum clouded the issue of the actual value of AP courses, or lack thereof. I tutor a high school student who is at the top of his class. My experience with his 10th grade World History course (WHAP) is excruciating. These statements by other students resonate with me: “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.'” For another thing, the coverage is at a dizzying pace. I don’t understand why a 10th grader, even a highly motivated one, should be supposedly doing the work of a college level course, especially when even if placing out of the introductory course via the test score, the student will not have had the advantage of an actual college level introductory course. The teacher is a slave to the AP curriculum and is apparently not free to be creative. The writing assignments require a type of cognition that I don’t believe is preparation for any real historical research or understanding, only preparation for the AP test. My student told me that this was the only World History course available to him. Why not offer Honors or College Prep World History? On the other hand, he is also taking an AP English course. For some unfathomable reason, the teacher is confined to using StudySync, and the level of work is almost insultingly easy. For English, a College Prep course is also offered. My student told me that he has a friend in that course, and his assignments are more challenging than his. What is the rationale for this? The idea that racking up AP courses to bolster college admissions chances, despite the negative result on real learning, must be challenged and defeated. (And David Coleman can take his Common Core State Standards for ELA and his “in the adult world, no one gives a shit what you think and feel” to hell. Please read Gayle Greene’s Immeasurable Outcomes: Teaching Shakespeare in the Age of the Algorithm.)
During the last 14 years of 30 as a public school teacher, the staff at the high school where I taught/worked/slaved, talked about the fact that AP and Honors courses often didn’t challenge those students with a higher quality of lessons designed to enrich critical thinking and problem solving, but only meant more work since most of the teachers that taught those courses had little or no training on what it meant to teach students in those classes.
They just three more work at them that was on the same level as regular classes. Those teachers had those classes because of their seniority and the fact that in AP and Honors courses there are not as many behavior problems to deal with, and parents were much more supportive.
Most of the other, earlier, 16 years I was a public school teacher was at a middle school that was so poor and in such a dangerous neighborhood, there were few AP or Honors courses.
I recall one student I had that was an honors student who transferred out of honors to escape all that extra work and after a few weeks, she returned to the honors class because she discovered the work my students were doing in regular English was tougher and more demanding than the honors class she’d fled.
But for some students, “tough and demanding” can be a teacher assigning a lot of busy work in a non-AP class.
AP classes seemed to have LESS work once my kid started taking them. It wasn’t that they weren’t demanding,but it demanded a different kind of work than some of the so-called “easier” classes that had a lot of homework.
Memorizing is a lot of work,but not always necessary. It can be tough and demanding to memorize pages of facts and regurgitate them. And while I can see that memorizing a lot of facts could be a good thing under some circumstances, many AP classes don’t require as much of that kind of classwork. They require student to be able to analyze readings that contain those facts.
I taught AP US History for 23 years and was an AP essay reader for 11.
Democracy’s criticism doesn’t
1) specify which AP courses D is criticizing: some, all, which?
2) differentiate between students by their AP scores;
3) say when in the history of AP courses, tests, etc. D is criticizing. The recommended content coverage and format have changed several times over its history.
The one linked article does not refer to the SAT, not AP courses.
When I started teaching APUSH in 1987 and for many years, I could say with fair confidence that a score of 4 or 5 and maybe a 3 would be accepted by many fairly demanding colleges for advanced standing, first year college credit – depending on the college and the department. Students & parents confirmed. Starting in the early 2000s, Jay Mathews began to rate high schools by % of students taking AP courses and the test, but not on their test scores. By then, a few schools, then more and more, began to enroll all students in AP classes. Some districts call it “AP for All” and AP courses were now called college prep., not equivalent to a first year college US History survey.
At some point after 2010, the multiple choice questions were no longer stand alone; rather all now, in clusters of 2 to 4 multiple choice questions that refer to a primary source. Each question offers 4, not 5, answer choices. That makes the MC questions easier. I would guess, but don’t know, that this requires students to do less background reading prior to a class.
“differences in student motivation, academic preparation, family background and high-school quality.”
One prerequisite of academic preparation is reading. As Diane has reemphasized recently, one obstacle students face is not being taught to read efficiently by learning to decode in K and gr1.
If public colleges and universities were tuition free, would people still take AP courses trying to shave off the top of the insurmountable mountain of student debt they accrue with the payments guaranteed to the banks and the ability to declare bankruptcy stripped of the debtor? My question is either off topic or the true heart of the matter.
“he College Board continues to perpetrate the fraud that the SAT actually measures something important other than family income.”
Well, it doesn’t measure anything. Scores correlate to family income/wealth. A correlation is not a “measure” but a statement of the relationship between two variables. As far as measuring goes:
The most misleading concept/term in education is “measuring student achievement” or “measuring student learning”. The concept has been misleading educators into deluding themselves that the teaching and learning process can be analyzed/assessed using “scientific” methods which are actually pseudo-scientific at best and at worst a complete bastardization of rationo-logical thinking and language usage.
There never has been and never will be any “measuring” of the teaching and learning process and what each individual student learns in their schooling. There is and always has been assessing, evaluating, judging of what students learn but never a true “measuring” of it.
But, but, but, you’re trying to tell me that the supposedly august and venerable APA, AERA and/or the NCME have been wrong for more than the last 50 years, disseminating falsehoods and chimeras??
Who are you to question the authorities in testing???
Yes, they have been wrong and I (and many others, Wilson, Hoffman etc. . . ) question those authorities and challenge them (or any of you other advocates of the malpractices that are standards and testing) to answer to the following onto-epistemological analysis:
The TESTS MEASURE NOTHING, quite literally when you realize what is actually happening with them. Richard Phelps, a staunch standardized test proponent (he has written at least two books defending the standardized testing malpractices) in the introduction to “Correcting Fallacies About Educational and Psychological Testing” unwittingly lets the cat out of the bag with this statement:
“Physical tests, such as those conducted by engineers, can be standardized, of course [why of course of course], but in this volume , we focus on the measurement of latent (i.e., nonobservable) mental, and not physical, traits.” [my addition]
Notice how he is trying to assert by proximity that educational standardized testing and the testing done by engineers are basically the same, in other words a “truly scientific endeavor”. The same by proximity is not a good rhetorical/debating technique.
Since there is no agreement on a standard unit of learning, there is no exemplar of that standard unit and there is no measuring device calibrated against said non-existent standard unit, how is it possible to “measure the nonobservable”?
THE TESTS MEASURE NOTHING for how is it possible to “measure” the nonobservable with a non-existing measuring device that is not calibrated against a non-existing standard unit of learning?????
PURE LOGICAL INSANITY!
The basic fallacy of this is the confusing and conflating metrological (metrology is the scientific study of measurement) measuring and measuring that connotes assessing, evaluating and judging. The two meanings are not the same and confusing and conflating them is a very easy way to make it appear that standards and standardized testing are “scientific endeavors”-objective and not subjective like assessing, evaluating and judging.
That supposedly objective results are used to justify discrimination against many students for their life circumstances and inherent intellectual traits.