<p>I think AP’s are great at my kids school although I wish they had a tier between regular and AP for those kids who want more but not AP. Where I AGREE wholeheartedly with this article is 1) a school here is in a not great neighborhood and a school where the kids don’t go on to strong colleges. They pay and require kids to take AP’s so they’ve made it high on the Newsweek or USWR list. IT never states whether the kids have PASSED the test, just taken it.
2) my friend in Florida, her kids start in freshman year with AP tests and the schools pay for them. Again, it screws up rankings when everyone is commanded to take them. And their school wouldn’t let her D drop a class in August because it was already on her transcript. That has to be because it was an AP too.
I think the AP’s are great for the right kind of students who can benefit from it, not from schools trying to up their rankings or show that their kids can handle it and kids can’t pass the test.</p>
<p>The AP program was initially well meaning and well designed. It was a small program with a clear purpose. It represented a financial loss to TCB but a small benefit to a rather small number of students. Add decades of the typical high school mismanagement of resources and the misguided use of AP in college admissions, and you end up with an out of control program that has created PLENTY of harm to the students high school SHOULD be serving. </p>
<p>The debate should not be about the potential benefits --always exaggerated-- but about the negative impact of the redistribution of resources away from the students who need it the most, the allocation of the best teachers to the easy to teach students, the increased segregation in public schools with a school within a school model, and ultimately a financial expense that could be avoided. A financial expense that should include the wasted two weeks dedicated to the testing days. </p>
<p>The extended AP is a disgrace. And it will get worse.</p>
<p>“What it would indicate to me is that the standards for “mastery” need to increase. The course/test could go more in depth or breath. There is no AP test that tests all knowledge that could be considered in a subject. Increasing standards would be something that most of us call “progress.””</p>
<p>History is cumulative, and there’s no way to add breadth or depth to a history course without increasing the amount of reading and the number of assignments. I’d like to see reasonable limits on the number of hours we expect high school students to expend on one course. If students are showing mastery at learning one bucket of information per semester in history class, I don’t assume that means that we ought to squeeze a second bucket into the same time frame.</p>
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That’s fine at the college level.
What do you do for the students who are still in high school?</p>
<p>My D insisted on taking as many AP classes as were available to her because she could not put up with the slow pace of the regular classes, and other students who constantly do things in classes other in studying which require the teachers to spend half of their time trying to keep the class in order instead of teaching .</p>
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<li>Thank you, Pizzamom. I get so sick of people acting like STEM is God.</li>
<li>Another thing AP did for S1 (besides give him 28 hours of credit and put him on track to graduate in four years with a double major) is prepare him for college-level work. He went into his freshman year knowing how hard college classes actually were and how to study for them. AP has its faults but it serves plenty of kids well just the same.</li>
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<p>Agree wholeheartedly with xiggi in 42. I realize cc is a unique subset of families, but I don’t think we’re very tuned in at all the the realities of public school. It’s something we read about or know about second or third hand. </p>
<p>The state dept of education where I live does not allow a school to offer AP if a DE option is available. Since the majority of students head to the state schools, and they have to accept the DE credits, it makes far more sense to offer DE. Once a school has an agreement in place, it also broadens the offerings far more than sticking with AP. d’14 is currently taking a GD class for which she’s earning tech credit. The offerings aren’t limited to those appealing only to the “top” students, although those are available. Kids who aren’t heading for college can get a good start on/a taste of the surgical tech program, auto body work, graphic design, IT, etc. </p>
<p>Somehow, AP positioned itself as the gold standard for advanced high school courses, and in doing so, put a strangle hold on schools. Never been a fan.</p>
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<p>Oh, for heaven’s sake, is it okay for the good students and bright kids to receive what THEY need at ANY point in their education??? Does the emphasis ALWAYS have to be on the underperforming? The huge expenditure on special ed does not stop at the HS doors, you know.</p>
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<p>Well, that is all very well and good, but in my state it would be completely impractical because it would be physically impossible for most students to attend classes at any branch of the state university OR a CC. And the CCs are mostly filled with students who couldn’t cut it in regular HS courses, or non-traditional students looking for vocational training, not students who have surpassed advanced HS offerings.</p>
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<p>In our state, students who are interested in such vocational areas can study part time at regional technology HSs, and part time at their own HS. No such provision exists for academically-advanced kids. That is the need filled by AP, online courses in some cases, and IB in a few schools.</p>
<p>I would add that I think that we need more and better vocational programs, starting at an earlier age, prefereably integrated with apprenticeships in areas such as plumbing and electrical work. (Here, kids cannot participate until junior year.)</p>
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. Your district has to think outside the box. Got a whole class of students who need calc? College sends a teacher to you. </p>
<p>When a high school class is called AP, it’s going to be college level, but if the college sends a teacher to high school (or approves the credentials of a teacher already there) people tend to take issue with rigor. So many ways around this. Have the kids take the college final.</p>
<p>That being said, I personally am not a fan of either AP or DE. If your kid is ready for college, send them and stop trying to make high school something it’s not (and shouldn’t be).</p>
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<p>Are APs really the only way to serve the needs of tge good students? Aren’t some of the very best HS in the country not able to tailor a superior curriculum without drinking the AP or IB KoolAid? </p>
<p>Do good students really need AP courses such as … Chinese Language, a course almost universally taken by students who mastered what is tested by the time they started middle school. Do we really need dozens and dozens of courses that are a parody of REAL college courses.</p>
<p>It is time to be honest about why we have this explosion of AP courses, and it has little to do with offering what good students need in term of … education. </p>
<p>If the AP rat race needed a logo, it would be one of a guinea pig running on an endless drum. A rat race that is now reaching … middle school, as students start to jockey for AP courses as freshmen. Do we really believe that 13 years old routinely handle true college level courses as opposed to the diluted rote based weaker versions? </p>
<p>Can we use advanced courses in high school? Absolutely! But the scope should one of depth and breadth and not one of volume. The choices should be confined to basic and necessary subjects that could, hopefully, raise the overall level of education for the majority of students. We need high schools to be high schools, and not pretend to be junior colleges. That might stop colleges having to dedicate plenty of resources to remedial courses for woefully unprepared students who cannot read, write, let alone think at a reasonable level.</p>
<p>It looked like one of the “hardest” exams in 2013 (as in smallest percentage of exam takers getting a 5) was AP Environmental Science this year, which is a big change.</p>
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<p>Having AP/IB or academically accelerated tracks/programs are one of the few viable ways to ensure high academic achievers…or any student could hope to gain enough preparation to be ready for actual college level work in our current educational system Especially at a respectable/elite college considering the current local educational cultural environment in many school districts/American society at large. </p>
<p>It doesn’t help that there’s many school boards, educrats, some teachers, and local parents/adults at large who harbor suspicions or contempt for students who are keen about academics/high academic achievers…and G & T students are even worse off with those types of “adults”. </p>
<p>Many of those students…especially the G & T end up dropping out in such stultifying local educational environments. I encountered many during my undergrad years who were lucky enough to find a “second-chance” college program which admitted them into college with a GED or no HS credential, gave them support to make up for years of educational neglect/abuse at hands of those “adults”, and they thrived and leapfrogged over classmates who were regular admits. Many undergrad classmates also recounted being socially ostracized or bullied by classmates and even adults like the ones above because they were merely high academic achievers.* </p>
<p>It made me angry to hear about how they were ill-served and mistreated by their local educational systems and adults who were supposed to be providing for their educational needs.</p>
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<li>Such stories combined with my own experience in public middle school in NYC are some reasons why I am thankful I attended a public magnet HS and not the traditional standard American public/private high schools those classmates attended. At least at my HS…being a “nerd” or “high academic achiever” wasn’t considered a serious negative by the local school culture. Heck, to be dubbed a “nerd” at my HS was considered high mark of respect indeed.</li>
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<p>Yes, people laugh at AP environmental calling it a joke but it is a very hard and comprehensive exam. In my daughter’s class it was the only time I remember her completing every page of a textbook and this was a 600-700 page book!</p>
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The percentage of 5s in ES had little change from 2012 and 2011. I expect much of the score distribution relates to self selection of which students choose to take the class. For example, Calc BC had ~twice the 5s as Calc AB. This doesn’t mean that Calc BC is far easier than AB, only that different pools of students take the two tests, with a greater percentage of stellar math students choosing the more advanced class. Similarly having few 5s in environmental science doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a more difficult class/exam. It may mean a larger portion of persons taking the class are not great students in science and/or memorization.</p>
<p>Personally I had a completely different impression of AP classes, prior to joining this website. My HS only offered 3 AP classes – calc, computer science, and english. I took 2 of the 3 in my sophomore year of HS and found them to be easier than my other sophomore classes, including the AP exam vs class finals. I suppose much of the perceived difficulty depends on the student and how talented they are in that field, like the score distribution I mentioned earlier. However, none of the AP classes I took were on par with classes I took at colleges in those fields (comparing to SUNYA, RPI, and Stanford). I think APs have become more of a way to provide a more standardized curriculum and exam for advanced students than a way to take true college level classes in HS.</p>
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<p>No doubt at all, at least if we are talking a reasonably good college. There are plenty of “colleges” where the courses are less demanding than an honors/AP/IB class at a good high school.</p>
<p>Xiggi, our HS actually does–or did–a better job of creating its own more challenging course content than most. In science, for example, there was a science research option that a student could pursue for up to three years. The English Dept, instead of offering standard AP classes, offered semester electives–such as British Novel,Poetry, and Shakespeare–which could be taken at the honors level, thus forming what they called the “AP thread” of courses. The heads of the History and English Department devised and taught an innovative senior year course called Humanities, which included a Master Project of the student’s choice. (Everything from building a wooden canoe to writing and illustrating a graphic novel or learning how to play a new musical instrument.)</p>
<p>The APs offered were pretty much in core subjects: Calc BC and Stats, French and Spanish, Physics, Chem, Bio, US and European History, Art, Macro.</p>
<p>For their pains, they were consistently dinged in the ratings by other local HSs that offered AP English Comp junior year and AP English Lit senior year.</p>
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<p>Are you really suggesting that students could not be prepared for college work without having taken AP courses? Are you suggesting that foreign students who have never seen an AP test are de facto unprepared? How about the many students who accumulate Dual Enrollment credits at local … colleges? </p>
<p>PS I realize you hedged your statement by adding accelerated programs to the AP/IB list.</p>
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<p>The reality is that the vast majority of high schools won’t tailor a superior curriculum without any external guideline (e.g. AP or IB) or pressure. Nor would they try to pull up all students into completing the superior curriculum, unless they are high schools with academically elite admissions policies.</p>
<p>Sad as it is, in the absence of AP “mission creeping” into defining a college prep high school curriculum, the typical high school would probably serve average students just as poorly as it does now, and the best students worse than it does now.</p>
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<p>Chinese is not the only AP taken by a lot of heritage speakers. According to [2012</a> AP Exam Score Distributions](<a href=“2012 AP Exam Score Distributions”>2012 AP Exam Score Distributions) , the heritage speaker fraction is:</p>
<p>Chinese: 80%
Spanish: 2/3
Japanese: 50%
German: 1/3
Italian: 1/3
French: 1/4</p>
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<p>Most foreign students who come to the US for undergrad don’t need AP/IB because their academic track HS curriculums have much higher academic standards…sometimes even higher than AP/IB. </p>
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<p>Depends on the quality/academic rigor of the community college. Some with high academic standards, yes. </p>
<p>Some…including some I know of in the NYC area…no way. This was a factor in why HS classmates whose academic needs go well-beyond even the enriched curriculum of my HS tend to be enrolled at 4-year universities…not community colleges. In their case, it wasn’t only due to lacking sufficient academic rigor…but also the high likelihood they need to take upper-division/grad-level courses…especially in STEM.</p>
<p>For me, the problems with the current AP program are well encapsulated by the Calculus AB course.</p>
<p>In the 2002-2012 time frame (stats for 2012 are the latest available), the number of students taking the AB test has gone from 158,000 to 267,000, an increase of about 70%, way more than the increase in the high school population in the same period. Meanwhile, the fraction of students failing the test (scoring a 1) has roughly doubled (from about 15%-17% to 30%-33%). The 2013 failure rate looks to be above 30% as well.</p>
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<p>Well, don’t you think that this supports what I have been saying about the …negatives of the AP. Why can high schools that are focusing on being a high school can reach higher standards? How do those foreign schools accomplish that without that great AP crutch? I guess that it speaks volumes about the standards when a program designed as a remedial catchup for diplomats such as the IB reaches cult status in the US! </p>
<p>The bottom line is that our misplaced selfesteem and high opinion of our system stand in the way to recognize that our education system is subpar, and that we are lulling one another in pretending it works. The reality Is that it fails the overwhelming majority of students, and this from top to bottom in academic aptitude.</p>