<p>When S was in hs, there were two sections of AP Chem, one with 18 students and one with 12 (the second one had a teacher who was less popular), even though the cap for classes was 30. I think it had to do with labs.</p>
<p>Interesting as well that the school considered AP Physics easier than AP Bio. Ordinarily. AP Physics is taken last because it requires AP-Calc taken at least concurrently. AP-Bio is considered the easiest (because least math dependent), though many high achieving students don’t like it because it involves so much memorization.</p>
<p>S2 is in three AP classes this year as a junior. Originally he was not in any. When I floated this issue on this board in a thread a couple of months ago, I got GOOD advice and insight from all the wonderful and supportive parents, which motivated me to get my act together to work with the school authorities. S2 himself talked to the authorities first but it did not work, my husband tried, no luck either. Finally, armed with the insight gained on this board, I spent almost half a day at school talking to various authorities. It ended well with everybody smiling and the school authorities volunteering to help S2 with all future needs in his quest for ROTC scholarship.</p>
<p>It ended well for S2, but what about other equally deserving kids wanting to go to a selective college without vigilant parents? I wonder what would have happened if I did not get such support from this board. With S1, I did not have to do anything since the magnet school took such a good care of these 60+ uber smart kids without any interference or involvement from parents. So, I was not ready for the notion that I as a parent actually have to be vigilant with S2’s school. This is a well known and highly regarded school district. If this is the case here, I wonder what happens in a less privileged school district, or if the parent was not assertive and well informed even in this spiffy school.</p>
<p>Sigh, equality, justice, and all that, but some people are more equal than others… </p>
<p>I will take folks’ advice here and make sure that they do note on the school report that just being allowed to take APs in his school was a big deal so that his 3 junior APs are put in a context when compared with 6 APs taken by kids from other flexible districts even before hitting the senior year.</p>
<p>This is not unreasonable, though I think the numeric that should really matter is the grade in the particular field. It is possible for a student not to shine in math but to excel in humanities and social studies, for instance. It would be silly to hold the student back from taking AP-USH or AP-Language because of a lower GPA caused by weakness in math/science</p>
<p>Our school I know gave a test to determine which sophomores would be allowed to take AP World. That’s partly because there was no honors section for freshman history and they wanted to give everyone a chance beyond just the grades they had received. There was only one section in a big class of 700. However when they were juniors they basically offer as many sections of APUSH as they want. There’s less gatekeeping. In the sciences anyone who had decent grades and the prerequisites can take the AP. (Or in my older son’s case for AP Comp Sci he just had to persuade the teacher he knew enough Comp Sci to go straight to AP.)</p>
<p>In our school, even for honors classes, they look at the grade in previous class (needs to be an A), PSAT scores, teacher recommendations, sometimes a pre-admission test or writing sample. It’s not easy to get into honors or AP classes. </p>
<p>Parents can go down and push to get their child in a particular class. The school will generally give in, after all, people are paying a lot in tuition to be at the school but I have to say, that from what I have heard from teachers and other parents, those kids generally don’t have an easy time keeping up with the class and don’t always get the best grade or even pass the AP exam. I pushed to have my son placed in an advance class in 7th grade and I lived to regret it. He did okay but it was clear that he would have done better if he had stuck with the class that had been recommended for him. I never did that again. Mainly because I have faith that the school knows what it is doing. I know that would not have been the case had he been in public school. In fact,that was the reason we pulled him out of our public school in the first place. He was light-years ahead of his classmates but the school refused to work with him to keep him challenged… Not so at his current school. Even though he’s a good student, he is definitely challenged most of the time.</p>
<p>I’m sure it’s different depending upon the school. In a lot of schools, there is no honors track and kids are either stuck in the regular classes or have to be in AP to be the least bit challenged. For those of us with rigorous curriculum, the honors classes are often sufficient until 12th grade.</p>
<p>The AP exams only have about a 57% pass rate nationwide. Regardless of whose ‘fault’ it is - teachers or students, it does seem to suggest that we (society) are pushing a lot of kids into college level courses that are either too advanced for them or those classes aren’t really college-level classes to begin with even though they are called AP. </p>
<p>I doubt that many kids with parents here at CC would have a problem passing an AP exam but for a lot of kids it really is an issue. Even though the colleges don’t require the AP exam grades on the transcript, they aren’t stupid. They know that kids who get 4s and 5s are going to self-report and those with lesser scores won’t.</p>
<p>Rodney, what is the name of the court case? Would like to read how the courts could rule this practice legal in a state where local property taxes, the highest in the nation, almost entirely support public schools in the affluent districts. </p>
<p>Also, I don’t understand what this NJ Monthly ranking really does for public high schools; it is not anything like what USNews does for colleges. The only impact of high ranking would be to protect property values, or am I missing something?</p>
<p>My guess is that the teachers’ union might have an interest in keeping AP class sizes small, but couldn’t the district offer more course sections to satisfy demand?</p>
<p>Why can’t the kids self-study for AP exams?</p>
<p>I can understand the argument that they shouldn’t “have” to self-study, because, I supposed, NJ property taxes are high, all that money going to the schools etc, but I seriously don’t understand what’s to keep kids from signing up for and taking AP exams anyway.</p>
<p>My D’s conservative charter school doesn’t offer any APs at all. She just signed up to take the AP exams at other high schools, she studied and took the exams. No big deal. What am I not understanding here?</p>
<p>Yeah, what’s the use of schools and teachers? Kids can study on their own after all. Just get them an AP review books, sit them down somewhere and off they go, on their own. Terrific concept.
[sarcasm off].</p>
<p>Oh, my. Our school system is trying to get everyone to take at least one AP before graduation. There was a big push a few years ago to end gatekeeping to honors and AP courses. Some complain that the AP courses are watered down, but my feeling is that any challenging class that gets a kid interested and thinking about college is a good thing. (That includes non-AP.) Most of the high schools here offer 20-25 AP courses and have some of the best pass rates in the country.</p>
<p>I agree x13497347. At my school you can pretty much sign up, and as long as you have the prerequisites and it works with your schedule, you’re taking the class. We averaged a 4.1-ish on all AP tests taken. Public school too.</p>
<p>Yes, I believe at my school they are open to all. Although the teachers do sign a paper for approval. I have 11 all together and 2 community college classes</p>
<p>Why can’t the kids self-study for AP exams?</p>
<p>I can understand the argument that they shouldn’t “have” to self-study, because, I supposed, NJ property taxes are high, all that money going to the schools etc, but I seriously don’t understand what’s to keep kids from signing up for and taking AP exams anyway.</p>
<p>My D’s conservative charter school doesn’t offer any APs at all. She just signed up to take the AP exams at other high schools, she studied and took the exams. No big deal. What am I not understanding here?</p>
<p>unquote:</p>
<hr>
<p>I think this is a rather cynical view of education. If we follow this logic, everybody should take on-line self paced course for all higher education needs. Why bother with going to college? </p>
<p>There is much more to AP classes than just passing the AP exams.</p>
<p>S2 reported today (the first day of school) to me that he was surprised how much work the AP courses are promising to be. A lot of heavy duty reading, paper writing, projects, etc. He said this is a huge leap from the honor classes he has been in. He is even thinking that he may have to “scale down” some ECs in the spring semester he planned to launch. I don’t mind - I thought that some of the ECs he was talking about would be a bit too extreme anyway (he was planning on spending every single weekend in a wilderness camp in PA training for mountain search and rescue operation). He was not terrified or burdened. I sense him being challenged in a good way. He spent the whole afternoon and well into the late evening studying for these AP courses. </p>
<p>This is a wonderful thing to watch. He never had to do this so far in his other classes. It could well be the case that in his HS, AP courses are very selective because they do take it darn seriously with very high level of expectation on the part of the teachers for the kids’ dedication. After all, taking only 7-8% of the kids from an academically competitive school in a very prosperous district may almost guarantee the quality of the students to be that of a rather selective and competitive college.</p>
<p>That said, I think the district is wrong in making it so darn difficult for the kids to take AP courses and it hurts a lot of kids’ chances with the top colleges. My S2 further told me today that if a kid was not in an honor class, they were not even allowed to enter the competition to aim for the AP courses in Junior. This seems grossly unfair. They essentially blocked any second chance for the kids who for whatever reason did not get into the honor class. What would happen to kids who made a mistake of not being in the honor class in sophomore but really studied hard and excelled in a non honor class and demonstrated that their mastery of subject matter was better than that of some kids in honor class?</p>
<p>This is a red herring. There are some stellar schools that do not offer APs but have extremely rigorous curricula. Indeed, they choose not to offer APs because they want the freedom to tailor their curricula to what they perceive to be the best academic interests of their students. It seems that the poster’s D may be attending such a school.
The students in such schools are not being short-changed and are ordinarily well prepared to take the AP tests.</p>
<p>I say this is a red herring because this is not the situation in the OP’s school. It offers APs but it severely restricts admission into APs. One has to think that AP classes are of a very different caliber from non-AP classes. AP classes in schools that do offer APs are designed to prepare students to take the AP tests as well as to teach the subject matter at a much higher level than say, an Honors class, and especially a College Prep class. So restricting admission to AP classes significantly limit a student’s ability to learn the material at this more advanced level and to do well in AP exams. </p>
<p>We don’t really have official gatekeeping for our HS’s AP classes. We always seem to have the threat that if not enough sign up, some AP classes won’t be offered. Then, the district sits on their hands, disadvertizes (yeah, not a real word but sure applies here) the existent of such classes … highly annoying.</p>
<p>Depending on the skill set of the student and the type of work involved with a particular class, the time a student spends will vary. My S took three APs as a sophomore. At first, the AP coordinator (who taught AP Euro) was skeptical, because that usually wasn’t done at the HS. However, when she learned that two of the three classes were just next in the logical progression (AP Calc BC and AP Spanish Language), with the other being her own class, she really had no choice but to shrug her shoulders and buy in.</p>
<p>As it turned out, S spent more time working on her AP Euro course than he did for the other two APs combined, because the work required was quite a bit different in style from anything he’s done previously. I silently cheered for what this learning did for him. It set up for a much easier junior year with AP US History, too. That year, the hardest class turned out to be AP Physics C.</p>
<p>AP’s really aren’t bad at all in my school. A lot of the kids don’t take the AP tests, and the teachers usually have really good review sessions at the end of the year for the test specifically. I would say in a class of 350 students, 40% are enrolled in an AP of some kind, usually language and composition.</p>
<p>My school requires you to have teacher approval and a certain average in honors (85 minimum, although some teachers have higher unofficial cutoffs) to get into AP, but it’s not a curve–if you meet the prerequisite, you can take the class, assuming that scheduling works out. And getting into honors only requires an A average in the level below (we have two different non-honors tracks) + teacher approval. Certain APs also accept students with an A average in the higher non-honors track.</p>
<p>We are required to take the AP test for all AP courses, or risk auto-failing the course, so students mostly don’t push themselves beyond what they can handle. This year they did start scrutinizing the waiver requests to take more than 3 APs per year. And to take AP Chem, you must have taken honors Chem first, etc.</p>
<p>At my daughter’s school, 100 percent of students take AP courses. All students take the same courses, and the take an increasing number of AP’s. By senior year, all seniors courses are AP, with the possible exception of their foreign language, if they’re not at AP Spanish level yet. Students are required to take at least one AP test per year, and encouraged to take the test for all of them. The school pays for the tests for any students that would not be able to afford them otherwise. Teachers also hold weekend study sessions for the exams in the month before they happen, and students get together to prepare for them, too. The school was one of the highest rated in the entire state on the recent US News thing in part because of the success of the student body on AP coursework.</p>