<p>thats really interesting
D high school has 3 levels of classes- regular , honors and AP in many subjects. I am not familiar enough with them to determine what the difference is.
Older D never had AP classes in high school, her school didn't offer them, but she did mention that she felt that the amount of material that the AP classes present would have better prepared her for college, even though her high school classes were quite rigorous.</p>
<p>No surprise here. Just compare a HS science lab to a college lab. Compare the background of most of the HS teachers to what one finds in a good college. Most TAs are better prepared, and probably have more enthusiasm for the subject to boot. </p>
<p>Another issue the globe article did not discuss was the survey nature of the AP courses in the sciences. Many colleges have more focused courses, even at the intro level. So a good score on the AP exam may reflect mastery of material never covered or later used (in higher level classes) at that college. That's why a lot of better colleges strongly recommend that one not use AP credit to skip intro courses in one's major. It makes for too tough a go in upper level courses.</p>
<p>You will also see AP courses corresponding to a lower level track than the track required of majors, and for good reason. Take physics as an example. Good intro physics makes heavy use of calculus, but AP physics does not.</p>
<p>d school has Ap calc but several of their classes aren't AP
her marine science class for example isn't AP and it was very rigorous
they also offer three levels of physics- practical based- algebra based and calculus based.
I realize this is probably unusual
They also have three calc course Calc a-b, AP calc ab and APcalc bc</p>
<p>Hmm, newmassdad, that's interesting what you say about AP Sciences. Though I must say, if you ask around the students here, most of our AP Physics classes use a fair amount of calc.</p>
<p>There are two types of AP Physics classes. Physics B does not use calc, while Physics C does. We have conceptual physics (no math), level physics (some math), honors physics (lots of math), and AP Physics C (calc-based and taken after honors physics).</p>
<p>Actually, the core AP science classes (bio, chem, physics) as well as calculus are the most aligned with first year college curricula.
Most schools have two (or even 3) intro physics tracks, with differing levels of calculus...</p>
<p>I've taught physics & math classes at the university level, and in my opinion, ONLY scores of 5 are really worth anything... a score of 4 might qualify you for an honors track of the SAME course, and a 3 or lower means you really need to take the course again.
At the universities with which I am most familiar, they no longer accept scores less than 5 anymore... I think with good reason.</p>
<p>I concur with newmassdad:</p>
<p>even tho kids in our HS receive 5's in the sciences, the labs are woefully inadequate, IMO. But, the simple fact of the matter is that good science teachers are hard to find, either at the middle school or HS level, so it's not surprising that science classes are not strong everywhere.</p>
<p>Statistically, CB has a point - if all the research data was presented in the article, then it fails as a scientific paper bcos it DOES ignore kids who place out of the intro classes. If those kids are receiving A's i teh next level classes, then AP has served its purpose. Moreover, I would not call anyone scoring a 87-90 "struggling" in a college premed class, which have many grade grubbers. </p>
<p>small nit: the title of the article s/b: Study Indicates AP SCIENCE classes over-rated.</p>
<p>I would like to see more studies like this one. College Board, which refuted this one, has an obvious economic and vested interest in promoting "AP mania." </p>
<p>Our own school district provides an interesting look at this phenomenon. With a very rigorous curriculum, it is a top public district by any measure that counts and has long retained a rational approach to the craze, limiting APs for the most part to a very few before senior year. It is an understatement to say that it hasn't hurt our students : %college bound, % 4 year college bound, college acceptances, SAT average and national awards are among the highest in the country. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, in my opinion, now the district seems to be bowing to the pressure of some parents (and colleges?) to add more of these classes in the younger grades. It is my guess that this is due to the feeling that our school "should" place in the top 25 or 50 in the country in the Newsweek rankings of high schools (which are done strictly by average # AP classes/student). And everyone knows that when it comes to rankings, people leave common sense at the door, but that's another topic!</p>
<p>I believe that while general conclusions can be made with respect to the quality of AP classes, many individual HS situations can be far different.</p>
<p>For instance our hs allows only junior and senior students to register for AP classes and limits them to 3 AP classes per year. There is room for exceptions but none were granted during our son's 4 years, so they are rare.</p>
<p>The rational is that the sylabus will not be crafted to teach to the test but be as rigorous as a comparable college course. All courses require a major research project/paper which counts as the final examination grade. His APUSHistory class was assigned 2 primary texts, 2 supplemental reading texts in addition to requiring 5 reviews of historically based books(both nonfiction and fiction were included in the reading list)-one during the summer and one at the end of each marking period. In addition, the APUSHistory research paper required students to use original source material, so many papers had some legitimate research value. Our son used cemetery records to investigate the prevalence of slavery in our county in the early 1800's.</p>
<p>In his APCalc class his research project was about Green's Theorem defined by line integrals and he had to prepare a class lecture for 1/2 class block(40min) with a short problem set(and solutions). For CompSci a 3 dimentional intergallactic "Battleship" game which was interesting because of a 2-D detection device he called gondar. I cant remember the porject details for his other AP classes.</p>
<p>At Rensselaer hs has gotten mostly A's in the subject areas wh took AP creedit in, something I partially attribute to the quality of his HS AP classes.</p>