<p>I agree that most high school kids shouldn't be in college classes, but for my immature 16 yo I'm glad that he can be taking college level classes without actually having to go off to college. He took three APs this year as a junior and rarely did more than an hour of homework a night. I don't think he's overworked.</p>
<p>
[quote]
He took three APs this year as a junior and rarely did more than an hour of homework a night. I don't think he's overworked.
[/quote]
And then there's the AP Euro class at our public high school which warns students before they sign up to expect 2 hours of homework in that one class nearly every night. Massive amounts of reading and writing are involved in that course, and there is only so much students can do to cut down the time they need to spend to get it all done. </p>
<p>Our public high school's AP Calc teacher doesn't require students to do the homework. They can if they want and many do; but homework is not part of the grade and students who don't need to do it don't have to. My son never, ever did. That freed up a lot of time in the evenings to devote to the massive amount of homework assigned by the APUSH and AP Euro teachers. </p>
<p>That's the trouble with talking about AP classes; everyone's mileage seems to vary widely, not just from school to school but from course to course. It is just not possible to talk in generalities about AP. At my daughter's school, most top juniors and seniors are taking all AP's in their academic subjects. Meh. It's not that hard or time consuming. At her previous high school, <em>some</em> top juniors and seniors are taking all AP's in their academic subjects and it is quite difficult and very time consuming. I am stunned at the variance from one school to the next. I think this Newsweek ranking thing is huge BS and not at all a good thing for high schools to wrap their curriculum planning committees around.</p>
<p>I really do not think 12-16 AP's is that big of a stretch. Ive taken 14 throughout high school and if I knew about this website earlier in high school I probably would have graduated with more. I generally get 5's with an occasional 3 or 4 mixed in so its not like they are that hard. I am not ivy league bound, just a relatively average student in many respects. </p>
<p>I think testing is a little overblown, but if you look at international countries the pressure is much more intense. American universities are some of the only ones in the world that look at subjective factors like grade inflation influenced grades and these ambiguous "extra curriculars". Many international schools judge mainly on standardize tests and sometimes an interview. </p>
<p>I would like to see IB get more recognition, my sister did IB in high school and didnt do well on the exams but now she is a 4.0 student in college. It definitely prepared her well.</p>
<p>ill add that our school generally has open enrollment for AP classes and we still have a 90% pass rate. Its not like our high school is a magnet or anything either (I think our average SAT is around a 1150).</p>
<p>Ryan, the teachers at your school should be commended for the great job they're doing with AP's. A 90% passing rate is excellent, especially since enrollment is open. Teachers often hear nothing but complaints; I hope that students show their appreciation for the hard work that the teachers have obviously put in to help students reach their goals. </p>
<p>I would caution you, however, from drawing too many conclusions about how many AP's are "that big of a stretch." The workload in AP classes varies from school to school. There isn't necessarily a linear relationship between workload and exam results.</p>
<p>1down i understand, some of the AP's at my school are a lot of work(the reason i get a B in the class and a 5 on the exam). I have also taken the most in my schools history and our ivy kids generally take around 10-11 and that is considered absurd here. My counselors actually advise kids not to take that many but are not going to force you not to. It takes a lot of studying and I mean a lot to get straight A's at my school unweighted if you are taking 4 "legitimate" AP's at the same time.</p>
<p>This charming NYTimes piece brings home one of the most important themes of this thread - that a high school education ought to be measured in more than the number of AP tests taken. In this case, an imaginative "geek", coach Steve deCaro, channeled his love of physics into a positive learning experience. His star pitcher, enrolled in an AP physics class, was able to extrapolate lessons learned in order to understand the dynamics of motion and improve his baseball skills. </p>
<p>My high (Highly ranked) public refused to submit our stats year, on the basis of grossly inaccurate methods of ranking. The number one public in our state is known not only by students and local colleges as being an inferior institution, but so it's own students as well. The newsweek system is worse than worthless's, it's misleading and discouraging to schools focusing on their students instead of numbers.</p>
<p>I am coming late to this party, but I think there are a few things that people are missing:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>AP courses are not college courses (or if they are, they are college courses in a very impoverished sense). At best, they are challenging high school courses. We have gotten so used to the notion that the first couple semesters of college are really remedial high school that it is appropriate to use AP tests for placement in higher-than-introductory college classes. Giving actual college credit for AP tests is an economic decision, not an educational one. That's not to say it's not a valid, acceptable economic decision, but by no means is an AP class a substitute for a decent college class.</p></li>
<li><p>I generally don't like the AP curricula, and think that they tend to be very content-driven and favor breadth over depth. In an ideal world, good high school classes would be much better than that. In the best schools they are. But in most schools they aren't. That's just the way it is. I like the IB curricula in theory a lot better, but I know that at my kids' school IB implementation has been very rocky, and the kids who signed up for the full IB program are desperately unhappy, so much so that the program may collapse.</p></li>
<li><p>I agree with most of you that the Newsweek single-factor ranking is, at best, silly, annoying, and deceptive. I doubt anyone takes it seriously. But I think it is important to recognize that there are some legitimate angles to it. There is a substantial body of thought among educators that schools have to challenge students a lot more, and not just the elite students, but all students. CB has been promoting the AP program, successfully, for that for a number of years. The educational-politics position of the Newsweek writers is that the test of a school's quality is the extent to which it is pushing its average students, not the top 10%, and that AP/IB tests per student is an acceptable metric for that (and perhaps the only available, validatable metric for that, although no one would argue it is perfect).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>That's not such a silly position. My kids go (or went) to public high school in a huge urban district. The district has some excellent magnet schools, but with one or two exceptions the neighborhood high schools (many of which are hardly less racially segregated than schools in the pre-Brown South) reflect a decades-long abdication of all moral responsibility to educate the kids who attend them. They are next to useless, except as a way to keep some (not all) of the kids off the street during the day until they are 16 or 17. The current district administration, which is fairly thoughtful, has made pushing AP and IB classes into those schools a key component of its commitment to reverse the neglect. It is using those programs because the programs give BOTH teachers AND students external standards for what they ought to be accomplishing. Otherwise, there is a tacit agreement not to work so hard. And the programs, with their branding, communicate respect to the students, give them an externally validated credential of accomplishment, and actually have economic importance within the state college system which is for all intents and purposes the only good higher-education option for 95% of the kids.</p>
<p>My point is that what the school administration is doing here is reasonable, and in good faith, and grounded in morality and commitment to education. It may not turn out to be "right", absolutely, but it is vastly preferable to the status quo, and there are lots of ways in which using the AP/IB programs make change and improvement more practical.</p>
<p>And that is exactly what Newsweek is trying to promote. Newsweek is trying to give recognition to schools that are doing that, and especially to schools in districts that support it economically by paying for the tests (and the external validation/evaluation that comes with having kids take the tests). AP/IB is probably not the right answer at all for a population of empowered kids who are already culturally disposed towards academic achievement. But it may be the right answer for kids who don't have have those advantages. Or at least ONE right answer. So I sympathize (some, maybe a lot) with Newsweek's agenda. It doesn't have a whole lot to do with most of the people in this community, but honestly I'm not so worried about us.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>That said, it's still a really silly ranking system, because it stumbles over itself. When they started the rankings, they excluded academic magnet schools, because they were trying to reward schools that were challenging average students. But there is a huge difference between "average" students in Scarsdale, Lower Merion, or McLean, and average students in the South Bronx, North Philly, or Anacostia. So Newsweek wound up ranking magnet schools with average SATs up to the (ridiculously high) Scarsdale High level, thus excluding exactly 7 schools nationally (including Stuyvesant and Bronx Science, almost certainly the top urban public high schools in the country). And what do you get at the top of the list? A bunch of academic magnet schools that push APs or IBs, something that undercuts the basic philosophical premise of the whole project.</p></li>
<li><p>My kids attend (or attended) a large academic magnet school in our city. Their school uses AP and IB classes as a tracking system, restricting access to them to the most successful students. (Lots of schools do that, something Newsweek is fighting against; their school fell just short of the expanded online ranking cut-off of one test per graduating senior.) My older child initially resisted the idea of taking a whole bunch of AP classes, but quickly found that the non-AP classes were next-to-useless, because many of the students simply chose not to do a lot of work. My younger child bought into the whole AP system from the start, and will wind up having taken 8 AP tests and one HL IB test. He has had a great learning experience, not because the AP curriculum is so great, but because the classes attract students who want to learn and are willing to compete with one another. (Only a couple of his favorite classes, though, have been AP classes. The school -- it it a pretty good school -- has a good assortment of challenging electives outside the AP system, too, where the teacher-generated curriculum is far superior to the AP curriculum.) </p></li>
</ol>
<p>But when Adcoms look at kids from this school, they are not wrong at all to value a high number of AP/IB classes. In general, it's how the kids sort themselves into those who are willing to work hard and to challenge themselves (and others), and those who aren't, or aren't as much. It's not a perfect indication -- there are kids who challenge themselves in other ways, of course, and I hope the Adcoms look at those, too -- but it's pretty meaningful.</p>
<p>I have an idea to reform the Newsweek ratings. Perhaps it's not perfect, but it would help some.</p>
<p>The author's main focus was to reward schools for encouraging AP widely. The problem with this, as has been mentioned, is that performance on the exams is ignored. The author's response is that he feels schools would be restrictive in allowing who takes the AP exams.</p>
<p>A potential solution? Have a point system, where an AP "5" gets 5 points, an AP "4" gets 4 points, etc. Then, add up all the points & divide this by the number of graduating seniors. For example, let's take three imagined schools:</p>
<p>School A: 500 Seniors, 250 exams, 50 5's, 50 4's, 50 3's, 50 2's, 50 1's
School B: 500 Seniors, 200 exams, 100 5's, 60 4's, 20 3's, 20 2's
School C: 500 Seniors, 375 exams, 25 5's, 50 4's, 75 3's, 100 2's, 125 1's</p>
<p>School A: 750/500 = 1.50
School B: 840/500 = 1.68
School C: 875/500 = 1.75</p>
<p>It is worth noting that there is a heavy emphasis both on offering many exams AND on performing well on the exams. For example, School B performed better on less exams than School A and scored higher; School C performed worse on more exams than School A and scored higher.</p>
<p>Maybe it's not perfect, but it seems a much better alternative. Any complaints?</p>
<p><<i know="" that="" at="" my="" kids'="" school="" ib="" implementation="" has="" been="" very="" rocky,="" and="" the="" kids="" who="" signed="" up="" for="" full="" program="" are="" desperately="" unhappy,="" so="" much="" may="" collapse.="">></i></p><i know="" that="" at="" my="" kids'="" school="" ib="" implementation="" has="" been="" very="" rocky,="" and="" the="" kids="" who="" signed="" up="" for="" full="" program="" are="" desperately="" unhappy,="" so="" much="" may="" collapse.="">
<p>Please tell me more about this. The IB program in my area is running into trouble, also. I also think that the high level of college acceptances that were promised IB students is not materializing. (I have my reasons for believing why this is so.)</p>
</i>
<p>CTTC, please elaborate. Don't be a CC tease :)</p>
<p>Is it just me or do I have to pay to view the NY article? I registered, but it says I have to pay to see the whole thing.</p>
<p>It's all about money these days......... sad.</p>
<p>Try this link - hope this one works for you for free - there always seems to be more than one way to skin a cat! ;)</p>
<p>"Maybe it's not perfect, but it seems a much better alternative. Any complaints?"</p>
<p>I hate my laptop. I answered this post and it just vanished...</p>
<p>Anyway - I like your proposal. </p>
<p>As to the poster who say AP courses aren't college level I beg to differ. I think they are quite comparable to AVERAGE college courses at AVERAGE colleges. Most of us are sending our kids to above average colleges. :-)</p>
<p>That said breadth vs depth argument is true. And the AP Bio teacher pointed out that because he doesn't write the exam he has no leeway in choosing what to emphasize - he has to prepare the kids for everything that might be on the exam. But my kid learned a lot of Bio. More than dh did in his first year bio course at Harvard. I don't think the BC Calc course covers less than a typical one year calculus course either. And as for English and History - in some ways I think our high schoolers are better off getting the material in small classrooms than large lecture courses.</p>
<p>To the posters that think you have to take 10-12 APs to hope of scoring four 5's, I disagree.</p>
<p>I think if you study hard (independently of whatever your teacher is teaching in class) and take the courses you have a fair chance at suceeding at (e.g. if you are terrible at languages, don't take AP Spanish!) you have a fairly good chance of performing well.</p>
<p>I recently graduated from college, but when I was in high school I took several AP's, including Modern Euro History (score of 5), English Lit (score of 5), English Language (score of 5), Comparative Govt & Politics (score of 5), US Govt & Politics (score of 5), US History (score of 4), AB Calculus (score of 4), and Biology (score of 4).</p>
<p>And no, I wasn't some dorky kid who studied all the time - I was super involved in sports, extracurriculars, community service, etc. </p>
<p>I got five 5's and three 4's and I would say that I am not particularly brillant either. </p>
<p>It's all in the preparation.</p>