<p>The article, from the January 18-19 2014 Baltimore Sun Sunday Edition, questions the explosion of AP classes in recent decades. High schools have pushed them as a means of rising in national rankings (begun by a Washington Post education writer). Colleges have used them as a means of ranking applicants. Students have considered them to be another part of the college applications checklist. </p>
<p>The</a> Baltimore Sun</p>
<p>As for ranking students on the rigor of their schedule, including taking into account for college acceptance is acceptable. Ranking high schools on AP enrollment numbers is a different thing entirely, in my opinion. I attend a high school in a rather large school district, and the schools around here are ranked partially based upon the number of students enrolled in AP classes. Consequently, guidance counselors and administrators shove students into every AP class they can. They put people who have no business being in an AP class in there. The ranking metric fails to take into account the percentage that actually pass the exam. My school offers 29 AP classes, and I would bet almost 1/2 the student body graduates with at least 1 class (we have ~3000 students).</p>
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<p>The proliferation of less rigorous AP tests like human geography makes it easier to place students into AP courses, even if they are really not ready for the rigor of some of the older, more rigorous AP courses.</p>
<p>But it may also be that such AP tests may be the only thing that gives many high schools incentive to offer decent quality high school level courses in the subjects. AP human geography appears to be a decent high school level course in the subject compared to what many high schools would otherwise offer. A poster on these forums noted that the local high school dropped the AP CS AB course as soon as the AP CS AB test was discontinued.</p>
<p>From the article:</p>
<p>My quote did not work… Here’s what I was linking:)</p>
<p>“The relentless marketing effort by many of the principals to place a greater number of kids into a greater number of AP classes - all in a single semester, as early in a student’s career as possible - is backfiring.”</p>
<p>“The admissions office for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is advising applicants that there is no advantage to taking more than five AP classes in high school. And a New York public high school has dumped the program in favor of what it sees as a better college preparatory curriculum.”</p>
<p>Regarding five AP courses being sufficient, it may depend on which five. There may be a difference between English literature, calculus BC, US history, a foreign language, and physics C, versus human geography, statistics, environmental science, psychology, and one of the economics ones.</p>
<p>The New York public school mentioned is Scarsdale, a school in a high SES area with high achieving students that probably qualifies as an academically elite school relative to the universe of high schools in the US.</p>
<p>Scarsdale’s catalog is here: [Course</a> Catalog / 2014-15 Course Catalog](<a href=“http://www.scarsdaleschools.k12.ny.us/domain/74]Course”>Course Catalog / 2024-25 Course Catalog)</p>
<p>While AP is not mentioned, it does look like some advanced topics courses are structured so that students can take the corresponding AP tests (though they may go more in-depth than a typical AP course in a typical non-elite high school might).</p>
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<p>I’ve been screaming about this for a lot of years.</p>
<p>Lets take a kid who is truly interested in history, to the extent that it’s possible that the kid’s dream of pursuing a Ph.D in it is a real possibility. Now, one of the best things that kid could do in high school is to start a second foreign language if (s)he has a fairly high level of achievement in one. But taking a beginning foreign language won’t boost the kid’s class standing in the same way as taking AP psych ( a known gut many colleges won’t accept for AP credit) or AP environmental science or any other AP class. So, the kid caves to the pressure and takes one of these instead. Then when he or she heads off to graduate school, this suddenly becomes daunting (From Harvard’s website, but this is typical):</p>
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<p>The kid either gives up the dream of getting a PhD in history, starts desperately seeking some program that only requires one or gives you more time to learn one or has to take a gap year to learn a language with his or her back against a deadline. </p>
<p>If high schools insist on weighting grades based on the difficulty of courses in determining class rank, then they should at least say that taking a second foreign language should get as much of a boost as taking AP lite and the kid who takes a year of college prep bio, chem and physics shouldn’t be at a ranking disadvantage vs a kid who takes a year of colege prep bio and physics and AP environmental science or AP psych. </p>
<p>Years ago, I knew the father of a young man who wanted to take courses at the local state flagship his senior year in high school. His high school warned him that they would not be weighted and so taking them would cost him his val status and that would reduce his chances of getting into an Ivy. I told him the GC was nuts–there isn’t an Ivy admissions officer who wouldn’t be more impressed by a kid who took a regular college course in his field of interest at a flagship state U and did well in it than by val status–heck, they’d be impressed that the kid was willing to give up his val status to do it.</p>
<p>[Ranking</a> America’s High Schools - The Washington Post](<a href=“http://apps.washingtonpost.com/local/highschoolchallenge/]Ranking”>http://apps.washingtonpost.com/local/highschoolchallenge/)</p>
<p>Jay Matthews, an education reporter for the Washington Post, is responsible for the high school rankings lists published by the Post. Much of his ranking criteria is AP based. Schools are ranked, in part, according to the percentages of students taking AP classes. Some schools in the Washington area actively pursue rankings by going beyond encouraging, moving into pushing, kids into AP classes. </p>
<p>I live in the middle of all of this AP fever.</p>
<p>eastcoascrazy, that does seem to be the case. I see the two Corbett schools on the list, and they are currently pushing their kids into APs. They call it “AP for all”. If you wanted to move to Oregon and have your kid take a bunch of AP classes, then that’d be the place to land. They also wanted to make high school graduation contingent on an acceptance to a college or trade school, though they seem to have backed off on that one.</p>
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<p>Assuming that community colleges that that area are open admission, that seems like a trivial requirement to fulfill.</p>
<p>On the surface, yes. But this is a school located in a rural-ish area, and the idea didn’t go over too well with some of the parents. Military is an option for some, and some kids just plain don’t want to go to any sort of college. </p>
<p>Cynically, it could also been seen as a way to bump the school up in Newsweek’s ranking system that now takes into account college acceptance rates.</p>
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<p>A student can apply to a community college, get admitted, but then not attend, still fulfilling the requirement. Of course, that makes the requirement pointless beyond gaming a high school ranking system that is fooled by such shenanigans.</p>
<p>Our local HS doesn’t weight any courses, so there is no motivation for any student to take an AP or IB other than interest and/or desire for more challenge.</p>
<p>The lack of weighting does lead to some bizarre class rank situations, but it also has its advantages, obviously.</p>
<p>Jay Matthews never meant the challenge index to be the be all end all ranking like USNWR. Indeed, he omitted the elite, test-in schools because by definition, none of the students are “average”. The main point of his index was to see which schools allowed the “average” student into the AP/IB classes. The index is simply enrollment in these classes over total enrollment. Matthews said that an 1.0 index is good. </p>
<p>When he started the index, it was not unusual to see 0.2, 0.5 because the schools limited that AP classes to “top” students. He argued that everyone can benefit from an AP course. I think where this went awry is he didn’t cap the index to 1.0, so now it’s just another numbers game. Or better yet, the index should be the number of unique student enrollment over total school enrollment to see truly if the “average” student is taking at least one AP class in high school, not just the same cohort taking 10 AP classes.</p>
<p>Our public never weighted classes either since historically UofM our flagship unweighted GPA and we send a high percentage of top kids to UofM. In general I’m a proponent of not weighting GPA and ranking seniors. In general I believe that if a student has completed the pre-requisite classes and achieves a decent grade they should be allowed to tackle an AP or other rigorous class. I’m not a fan of AP for all minus some benchmark. As a data point there is enough information for colleges exclusive of turning GPA into an arms race. As far as ranking “high schools” there are too many socio-economic factors involved to get too deep into that game and the outcome benefits no one in any great way as in general if some family wants to buy or rent in a high performing school district follow the money.</p>
<p>There are public high schools in my area that actively seek to raise their rankings in the Jay Matthews Washington Post list. In the past, kids at those high schools were told by their counselors that they “had to” take AP classes. I have spoken to parents who were not aware that they could say no; that they could have their kids take an honors or regular level class if they felt it was a better fit. Those high schools have high rankings and some highly stressed out kids. (I haven’t had a conversation about this in the last two years, so this pushing may have changed.) </p>
<p>Other high schools (in the same district) counsel kids differently about AP classes. They encourage kids to “stretch” by taking one or two more challenging classes next year. “If you had success in a regular level class consider taking an honors level class next year. If you had success at the honors level consider an AP class next year.” But nobody is telling our kids they <em>need to</em> or <em>should</em> take an AP class.</p>
<p>“I have spoken to parents who were not aware that they could say no; that they could have their kids take an honors or regular level class if they felt it was a better fit.”</p>
<p>Sorry, but I find this hard to believe. The only thing kids “have to” do is take classes which fulfill graduation requirements. No high school requires AP classes to graduate. A parent who doesn’t realize this simply isn’t paying any attention and hasn’t bothered to look at the graduation requirements listed in the course catalog, or to look at whether equivalent courses are offered at the honors or regular level. Most likely, they were told they “have to” take AP classes to be in the school’s most rigorous program. No one is forced to make that choice.</p>
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<p>I should have added that technically they do not rank, either, but they do declare a val and a sal and a “top ten,” which seems to be a local newspaper-driven custom. At least one year, the val had never taken a single honors or AP course. Most years, most of the “top ten” wouldn’t be in the top ten if courses were conventionally weighted. That, and the games we hear of at other schools, where a kid can be knocked out of the val spot for taking a REAL college course, for example, makes me even more convinced that the who class rank thing is a load of hooey.</p>
<p>Our GC department does calculate class rank by decile for kids who need it for scholarship programs or whatever. Of course, given the lack of weighting it is utterly meaningless. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Mathyone, I found it hard to believe, too, except that I had that conversation with at least eight people over the years, all of whom had kids at one of two local public high schools that have actively sought to rise in the WaPo rankings. Their kids were told there was a specific sequence of classes that needed to be taken. For example, if a tenth grader was in English 10-GT (“Gifted” level of English 10, as opposed to “Regular” or “Honors”), that they <em>had to</em> take English 11-AP. Of course this isn’t true, there is nothing stopping a family from opting to take whatever level of English 11 they feel is best for their child. But parents didn’t even consider opting dropping down a level, even for kids who deeply disliked the subject. </p>
<p>I think these are highly competitive families, with kids that are generally headed for applications to "top"colleges. Many of these are also families whose cultural background would not make them likely to challenge advice coming from the school, particularly advice about taking the most difficult classes available.</p>
<p>And then, within each of our district’s high schools, what happens is that weighted GPA’s are used for class rank. AP classes are weighted higher than honors, and honors are weighted higher than regular. In the very competitive high schools, any kid who hasn’t taken every single available AP class, and earned A’s in every single class, is automatically bumped out of the top 5-10% of their graduating class, just because there are so many kids who <em>have</em> taken every available AP, and earned straight A’s. For kids applying to colleges that take class rank into consideration, this is an issue.</p>
<p>As I said, it has been a couple of years since I have had a conversation about this with any parents whose kids go to those high schools, so maybe the kind of guidance given when choosing classes at those schools has changed a bit.</p>
<p>“He argued that everyone can benefit from an AP course.”</p>
<p>I really don’t think that’s true. Why would the below-average student benefit from taking a college-level class? Such students need to focus on getting a solid preparation for college (or employment), not be thrown in to a class which isn’t designed for students like them and in which they will probably flounder. Pushing students of lesser ability into an advanced program just dumbs down the program. As does offering “AP” classes aimed at high school freshmen (eg. AP Hum Geo). There are already very many students who cannot pass the AP exam. What is the point of expanding the ranks of students scoring 1 or 2?</p>
<p>There is no fair or objective way to determine the top student in a graduating class. Everyone should stop pretending that there is, and stop paying much attention to the title of Valedictorian. Schools should acknowledge that any method to determine this is too seriously flawed to be taken seriously. I am thankful that our school doesn’t announce ranking and so we don’t have that horrble cutthroat atmosphere I’ve read about on here from students where everyone knows who is “#1” and who is “#14” and kids are celebrating each others’ stumbles instead of each others’ achievements. </p>
<p>We also have to acknowledge that students differ in ability and efficiency. That article cited a student who was taking 5 AP’s and was only sleeping 3-4 hours a night. My daughter was able to sleep 9 hours a night while taking 4 APs and a post AP college-level class (plus 3 other classes), and no one should be trying to take that opportunity from her and other students like her simply because their child cannot handle it and they aren’t willing to acknowledge that their child is not among the top students at their school.</p>