<p>"4. The Constitution and its amendments expressly prohibit all of the following
except
(a) slavery
(b) double jeopardy
(c) cruel and unusual punishment
(d) unreasonable searches and seizures
(e) sex discrimination in employment</p>
<ol>
<li>In vetoing a bill, the president does which of the following?
(a) Rejects only a part of the bill without rejecting it entirely.
(b) Prevents any further action on the bill.
(c) Sends the bill back to conference committee.
(d) Rejects all sections of the bill.
(e) Decides the bill’s constitutionality"</li>
</ol>
<p>Most people havent the foggiest what double jeopardy is (the round before final jeopardy, right?) and may well think sex discr is IN the constitution, (I remember when it was expected the ERA would PASS). for 5, (a) is the line item veto, which gets discussed occasionally, (b) is how vetos work under some other constitutional systems, (c) isnt that far off in that congress can override, and for folks who are confused as to what a conf comm is and does (the health care debate revealed that few understood that) etc. </p>
<p>Now could you learn all that in a HS course, without college level reasoning. of course. Most things on multiple choice test can be learned without higher level reasoning - all that is needed is memorization of facts. So the issue I think is with multiple choice tests.</p>
<p>I do know that in my DD’s class they addressed issues of the role of lobbyists, bureaucracy, interest groups etc that were closer to a college intro American Gov class than to HS civics. I didnt read the test though.</p>
<p>Not to start an entirely different debate, but I also find some of the Subject exams harder than the AP exams on the same subject. That’s true for me now, and was true for me back in hs. I think many of the kids over on the “other side” of CC would also agree, at least based on some of the posts I’ve read.</p>
<p>AP Japanese was murder. DD worked as hard on that class as on anything (and she had done reasonably well in her first 3 years of Japanese). And then ended up only getting a 3 on the test.</p>
DS is taking Psychology this year instead of taking an AP science course. He is doing so because he is really interested in taking psychology, and wasn’t interested in pursuing Bio, Chem, or Physics further than he already had. It will be unfortunate if any admissions personnel take his choice as a case of “taking an AP-lite” course to avoid the hard stuff.</p>
That’s why I was careful to put “core” and “lesser” in quotation marks in my post.</p>
<p>I am suspicious not only of our tendency to equate math and science with rigor, but also of our tendency to equate rigor with value. Nothing is more worth doing than something else simply because it is harder to do. It’s important to help our students become capable of doing difficult things, because some of the things they will want and need to do will be difficult. But we too readily leap from this truth to the superficial falsehood that difficulty is a value in itself.</p>
You are right about this. Because in the case of question #5, if a person knows that the President rejects all sections of the bill when they veto it, none of the other stuff you mention matters. They don’t have to know anything else. They don’t have to know what a conference committee is. It would be harder if there could be more than one correct answer.</p>
<p>but you couldnt reason that out simply from being a moderately informed citizen. If you had read that particular provision, and memorized it, of course youd get it. But there is LOTS of stuff to memorize, including of course stuff that does not end up on the test -but you dont know what stuff WILL end up on the test - so you have to memorize it ALL. While studying for other AP’s, completing senior projects, etc. While catching up on work from when you were doing college apps And continuing with EC’s, making summer plans, etc.</p>
<p>Re: the Japanese AP exam. My HS Japanese teacher was (is?) on the AP development committee for the exam, so the year before the exam, my class beta tested some of the materials. I remember the listening comp being challenging, but then again, I was never very good at taped listening comp (I can hold a conversasion-even over the phone- pretty well, but for some reason, have never had much of a knack for taped listening comp). Fwiw, I think the introduction of AP Japanese did have the negative effect of eliminating the advanced Japanese translation/literature courses at my hs, though I am glad they introduced it. I also think it, like all the modern language APs, is hurt by the combining of native/hertitage speakers and non-native speakers when determining the curve for the exam. Congrats on the 3, by the way- certainly a respectable score! Does the exam include keigo?</p>
<p>The students here seem to struggle most with the AP foreign language tests. Someone told me that this is a national issue, but I can’t confirm that.</p>
<p>A GC told me that colleges are more impressed with AP Calc than AP Stats which is more impressive than AP CompSci. Just repeating what I was told.</p>
<p>“Also kids taking AP in their native language is a little different.”</p>
<p>Sorry. Its not different at all. Why do we give native English speakers a big pat on the back for getting a 5 on an AP English test (or an 800 on an SAT or SAT II) but pooh pooh that same accomplishment when a Spanish-speaking native gets the same scores on Spanish language tests, or a native Chinese-speaker gets them on the Chinese tests? </p>
<p>Its a big and unfair double standard. Mastering one’s own native tongue is something most people can’t do in ANY language. Many exams have a significant written portion and while the native speaker of another language can often find the oral test easy, learning the correct grammar, spelling, and sentence structure of your native language in writing does not always come naturally. It must be taught and learned. And most people, no matter how naturally smart, can’t learn it well enough to ace an exam on it.</p>
<p>Are all AP courses of equal rigor? Highly unlikely since the same AP curriculum differs substantially from high school to high school.</p>
<p>Does anyone really believe that Calculus A/B as taught at our small rural/suburban Upstate high school is as rigorous a class as the Calculus A/B that is taught at Stuyvesant HS in Manhattan? The APUSH course my wife teaches at an at-risk small urban school is not likely to be as rigorous as the APUSH classes at the big Westchester County schools. She typically has to spend the first quarter of the school year bringing the writing skills of most of her class up to the 11th grade level before she can really begin to worry about teaching them how to write a college essay. For many of her AP students APUSH is their first exposure to seminar-style teaching and it takes a significant amount of time for them to begin to feel comfortable participating in class discussions. I can assure you the kids in her APUSH class are experiencing something very different from what a friend’s son is experiencing in his wealthy New Jersey suburban HS (where the kids have to take a qualifying test to get into APUSH).</p>
<p>It’s because the College Board attempts to write the tests up to the level of a native speaker–the AP Spanish exam, for instance, contains a “synthesis” essay just like the one on the AP Lang exam. I think it’s silly–there should be a different test for native speakers–but what can you do? (Latin is also very hard, I hear. I don’t know why exactly.)</p>
<p>And I do think USH and Lang (I never took Lit) are easier than Calc BC, Bio, Chem, Physics C, just because USH is so much about memorization of facts, and the rubric they use for grading students’ essays on Lang (and most other AP essays) is laughably generous. A significant percentage of AP exams, IMO, are just too easy: Comp Sci definitely, Enviro from what I hear, probably also US Gov. (I learned a lot in my US Gov class, but the teacher went way beyond what was required.)</p>
<p>"Why do we give native English speakers a big pat on the back for getting a 5 on an AP English test (or an 800 on an SAT or SAT II) but pooh pooh that same accomplishment when a Spanish-speaking native gets the same scores on Spanish language tests, or a native Chinese-speaker gets them on the Chinese tests? "</p>
<p>English as taught in most High schools, well AP english at any rate, is supposed to be about composition, literature, etc. Its NOT a TestofEnglishasForeignLanguage (there are TOEFL tests, but they are NOT AP tests). The for language tests are supposed to mainly be about command of the language, aimed at students who have only learned the language for three or four years.</p>
Because you’re talking about apples and oranges. Instruction in the dominant language for the school and the culture that surrounds the school–the language in which school business is conducted and all non-language classes are taught–is an inherently different animal from instruction in a foreign language. The background, purpose and expectations are different, and so is the curriculum.</p>
I consider myself to be only a moderately informed citizen. I’m certainly not obsessed with politics or government, I’m not involved in a political party or anything like that. I work for a State Government agency, but doing primarily technical work. I haven’t taken a Government class for 35 years - and I remember very little of that. I can answer almost every MC question on the sample exam, and make a good stab at the free response questions. Just from listening to the radio on the way to work, watching a little TV, and reading a paper or two, and some stuff on the web. I just don’t think the test is very hard. Maybe I wouldn’t get a 5, but I’m fairly certain I could get a 3, which gets you college credit some places.</p>
<p>I will admit I base this on my own perspective and level of knowledge. I have no data about the typical citizen. Do other posters on this thread think the question I posted are tough? I suspect not, at least here on CC.</p>
<p>I also admit I am basing this on the one sample exam on the CB website. But I think my opinion is echoed by many of the kids on the student forums. They think there are some tests that are just easier than others.</p>
<p>I’m also not working on college aps and ECs. Thank God.</p>
<p>The nice thing about AP is they all the kids take the same test. The whole idea of for-profit companies creating and administerin tests and having their finger in public K-12 curriculum kind of makes me sick in the pit of my stomach but to now debate whether some are “better” than others is silly. I’d just as soon they get rid of the entire AP concept.</p>
<p>I think this is why high schools report their AP data on the school profile they send along with the transcript and counselor’s report. (we offer x number of APs, X # scored 5s, etc)</p>
<p>I can’t comment on AP Spanish or AP Chinese for native speakers, but I will say that there is a considerable difference in the level of challenge of AP German Language for a native German speaker vs. AP English Language for a native English speaker.</p>
<p>The AP German exam is suitable for a student to test out of a few courses in college German, starting from a blank slate (no knowledge of German). The AP English Language exam demands a much higher level of analysis and rhetorical skill.</p>
<p>For example, the first part of the free response on the 2010 AP German Language exam consisted of a simple narrative (probably 4th grade reading level in Germany), containing 20 fill-in-the-blank questions. In the second part, the student had 40 minutes to compose an essay of 150 to 200 words, on the proposition that the school week might be shortened to 4 days, but with each day lengthened by 2 hours. Students were asked to include assessments of the impact of this change on free time, sports, work and the economy, the family, the environment (um . . . I think . . . maybe), and Schulalltag (not sure what this is–but the students only had to address three of the aspects, so this one could be skipped). In the oral part, students were asked questions such as: “My favorite holiday is Valentine’s day. What is your favorite holiday?” or one that boils down to “Why did you use my laptop again without asking?” There were six of these, with 20 seconds to answer each, followed by a set of six pictures that told a story, which the student had to relate in 2 minutes after studying the pictures for 2 minutes. I think that any native German speaker could score a 5 on this exam by age 10.</p>
<p>Then compare this with the Free Response questions on the 2010 English Language Exam (available on line). It would take a truly extraordinary native English speaker to score a 5 on the exam by age 10–I’d estimate that not more than one per 2,000 could do this.</p>
<p>S1 took Comp Sci AB as a soph and thought it was a fairly low-level exam. OTOH, he is not one to use as the average student interested enough in CS to take an AP.</p>
<p>AP Euro is the one around here that has the rep as the toughest of the humanities-related exams.</p>
<p>S1’s program used the AP curriculum as the bare minimum for the course they taught, so by the time APs rolled around, they knew multiple ways to solve any given problem. AP Stat at his school was one semester and calc-based. S1 and S2 both got 5s in AP Stat, but S2 didn’t get anything approaching the same level of instruction as S1. S2’s school focused on the IB exams as the baseline for their teaching, so if you wanted to take AP Euro or Lit, one either covered what was on the AP as self-study or went in cold and got a 4 just using what was taught in IB.</p>
And continuing with EC’s, making summer plans, etc.</p>