I was quite surprised to see no AP courses in our high school’s program of studies for next year. We live in Northern New England and our school district is fairly wealthy. While some attend private middle and/or high schools, our high school has our fair share of high stats kids who could easily afford a private boarding school.
The last couple years have resulted in kids attending SLAC like Bowdoin, Colby, Middlebury, Macalester; the occasional Dartmouth, Yale or Tufts; BU/BC/NU. Many more attend the New England Flagships, the Jesuit institutions, Simmons, Emerson, Emmanuel, Merrimack, Endicott…
My understanding APs are being replaced with Dual Enrollment. I’m not pleased. Anyone else encounter this is their local district?
The question to consider is what quality the college courses used for dual enrollment are.
Also, will they be taken at the college, or will they be a “college in the high school” arrangement?
Note also that the acceptance of credit, subject credit, and advanced placement for dual enrollment courses likely differs from AP scores, and differs from one college to another. Subject credit and advanced placement may not be known until after a student matriculates, unlike with AP scores.
Some at the college, some at the HS. My take is that the better choice for demonstrating rigor is AP not DE. While DE will transfer easily to our Flagship, they are less likely to transfer to highly selective schools. I’m wondering why anyone thinks is a good idea.
It seems like these things are almost always about cost. Does it cost more to certify and pay high school teachers to teach the more rigorous courses, versus offloading that to local(?) community(?) colleges? Or is the cost of certifying the course as AP compliant high? Are dual enrollment courses subsidized by the state, but not AP courses?
In my (lower income) MA district there has been a push to get more (especially lower income) kids who might not traditionally go to college to take DE classes. The stated purposes are getting kids college credits at no cost to them, and getting kids on connected to a college and on a college attendance path while they have support of high school. But our district has not said anything about eliminating AP classes. And in fact, the types of kids they encourage to do dual enrollment are different than the kids they encourage to take AP classes.
Our HS only offers one DE course, Calculus, thru the local Cal State Uni. It’s taught in the high school classroom, with full Cal State credits and transcript. The Cal State Math Dept approves of the teacher and also subsidizes the teacher’s salary. A few kids do take the BC test, but they have to self-study a couple of items that our HS course does not cover. AB test is doable, but it seems no one wants to take that test.
fwiw: The HS offers ~10 AP courses. Upper middle class community.
I disagree that cost is the primary factor. Our district - a relatively wealthy district, in fact - offers very few AP classes. I have found this frustrating at times because the APs that are offered are pretty much all STEM, with almost no APs in the humanities at all. But…The district’s reasoning is that the AP curriculum - especially for the humanities - is too canned and stifles teachers’ ability to design their own courses, covering the material they deem important (rather than deemed important by the College Board and having to teach to the test). This is essentially to untie teachers’ hands - the teachers are encouraged to develop challenging classes, but using their own judgment and creativity, rather that the College Boards. With the right teachers in place, this can actually greatly enhance the classroom experience. And it has nothing at all to do with cost.
Many of our AP classes are also dual enrollment with the flagship state U, and are mostly just as good, even better, as anything there, since the class is much smaller than a large lecture class. I told my youngest to not bother taking the AP exam for anything that was dual enrollment, since they would already get a grade on a transcript from a U with a strong reputation.
I wouldn’t have a problem with the school dropping the AP qualification, and teaching many more dual enrollment classes with our flagship state U. If the future college wouldn’t take transfer credits from a reputable flagship state U, they’re not going to take AP credits, either.
exactly. Cornell, for example, will not accept DE credits if that class is taught in HS with HS students. But Cornell does accept some AP credits from that same HS. (Note, Cornell CAS will accept some DE for transfer credits if that course is taught on the college campus with regular college undergrads.)
Our school offers the exact same course as both DE with the University of Pittsburgh and for AP prep. My older daughter paid for DE, got an A on a Pitt transcript ( PHYS 0174: Physics for Science and Engineering 1 - same one first year Engineers take), my younger passed on paying for DE and got a 5 on the AP exam instead.
They both attended Purdue. Older didn’t earn credit and had to take PHYS172. Younger did get credit.
Both are clearly defined.
Transfer Course Guide: Credits: 4 Subject:PHYS Course: 1xxxx “Undistributed courses are marked with XXXX in the course number.”
CB AP Credit: AP exam score / Corresponding Purdue course
5: PHYS 17200
Our school isn’t dropping AP courses, fortunately, but they are adding DE courses. Most new ones are early courses, with the local CC. So they cost money but are quite unlikely to earn usable college credit, IME.
We can now pay to earn “credit” in Algebra, Trigonometry, Algebra 2, PreCalc, 1st year Chemistry, Intro to Statistics, Microsoft Excel, Ballet, and others. How many colleges will give you useful transfer credit for a DE CC Algebra 1 class in 9th grade? Money making, IMO.
Just fyi: Our local school is small with many scheduling conflicts. Rather than do DE, when an AP conflicted with another class, I found online AP classes for them at vhslearning.org, with the approval of the school. We then told the high school about the quality of the classes and the local education foundation funded membership for the school, which enabled 25 students to take classes each semester, including AP’s. The VHS Learning organization offers a very wide range of subjects so it basically enriches the offerings of a school. Latin, philosophy, world religions, epidemics, Amerian popular music- you get the idea- plus AP’s in all areas.
This is not necessarily true, since some colleges are more restrictive on credit from college courses taken while in high school than AP credit. Also, subject credit and advanced placement for college courses may not be known until after matriculation, unlike for AP credit.
Of course, some AP credit may not be accepted while the college course may be at some colleges.
Having both the college credit and AP credit for the course gives double coverage in case the college accepts one but not the other, though the student should not expect double credit.
I think, on average, a DE course is less likely to be accepted for college credit (other than at the college that gives the credit, and other in-state publics) than an AP course in the same subject. AP courses and the corresponding exams are standardized so colleges are more familiar with them and know how they relate to their own courses than courses offered by other less familiar colleges.
Honestly, I think that this makes sense, that schools would give credit for a high AP score, rather than a dual enrollment grade. The grade on the AP exam proves a level of achievement that is standardized, a better yardstick than a dual enrollment grade.
Some of the most selective schools with the highest standards will not give credit for any AP or dual enrollment classes no matter what grade or score they achieved; they just offer that a person can place out of the intro level class IF the person takes that college’s own placement exam or final for that course, with no credit issued, just the ability to register for the next level class in the sequence. My kid’s college’s only option for placing out of the lowest level of Freshman Comp was sending the kid a few academic papers/articles/books on a subject and then having the kid write a paper in response to some queries, using the academic resources provided. They still had to take the second level of Freshman Comp, despite having placed out.
The majority of public school students, even in UMC schools, attend an in-state public university or community college. For those students, I expect DE courses are useful and may permit them to graduate early or double major. I prefer AP courses for the standardized content, but this may fill a niche for many students.
Some prep schools and wealthy publics are turning against the AP, but even then , I strongly encourage those students to take the AP test in the relevant area if they can. Some schools care, and much to my surprise at some places it can matter for everything from course registration priority to housing. One of my kids ended up with sophomore standing when she entered and thus got all her first choice courses ahead of others.
That’s essentially the same reason why many prep schools abandoned the AP curriculum ~15 years back (albeit they were mostly replaced with school-designed classes). Interesting that it’s spreading now.
Spreading is perhaps an overstatement. 95% of students do not attend a school where teachers have enough time and resources to devise their own course. And when they do, there is no guarantee it is of sufficient quality. Admissions officers may trust the courses offered at PEA, but how about West Magnolia Public High?
