<p>The CB's first massive AP Course Audit review process is starting to be felt by schools across the country. As of January 2007, the College Board has contracted with the Educational Policy Improvement Center (EPIC), a not-for-profit organization based at the University of Oregon, to coordinate the nation-wide AP Course Audit submission and review process.</p>
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Ambitious students in North Jersey's high schools have long flocked to Advanced Placement courses, but for the first time ever, their teachers have to prove their classes are as rigorous as the prestigious AP label promises.</p>
<p>The College Board launched the first massive AP audit after college and high school educators complained that too many schools slapped the AP label on courses that weren't sophisticated enough to make the grade. Last week, teachers in North Jersey and nationwide began submitting evidence that their classes truly cover college-level material.</p>
<p>Officials at the College Board, which runs the AP program, said they have heard of bogus pretenders such as AP Band, AP Journalism and AP Oklahoma History...</p>
<p>Andrew Dunn, who teaches AP English at Northern Highlands Regional High School, says he met a North Dakota teacher who assigned George Orwell's "Animal Farm" for an AP class. That book would be read in a regular 10th- to 12th-grade course at Northern Highlands. Dunn said the audit process will have value mainly if it persuades more colleges to give students college credit for work they've done in high school.</p>
<p>"We've been seeing over the last few years that some of our best students aren't getting college credit after they do take the AP exams," he said. "It's some of the more elite institutions that aren't granting the credit."</p>
<p>Robert Goodman, who teaches AP physics at the Bergen County Technical High School at Teterboro, welcomed the audit, but thought it would be easier to require all students in AP classes to take AP exams. That would force teachers to cover the necessary material. "If you don't take the exams but slap the label on transcripts who's to say what's in a course?" he noted. "I know specifically of cases where students taking courses called AP physics are studying things that have nothing to do with the AP curriculum."</p>
<p>The College Board says 74 percent of students in AP courses take the final exams.</p>
<p>The outcome will be key to motivated students, who love to pepper their college applications with APs to show their academic zeal.
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