<p>At many of the larger, well funded public schools that I am familiar with relatively weaker students are routinely screened out of the AP program. Usually this is based on meeting GPA requirements, sometimes a combination of GPA and rigor of prerequisite courses, sometimes with Regents exam scores (in NYS) thrown into the mix. There are some schools that even administer pre-AP examinations to determine which students will be permitted to take a course. These schools almost always have a significantly higher percentage of students scoring a 3,4 or 5 on the exam than tose schools with an open enrollment policy. Open enrollment is, last I heard, the preferred approach of the College Board (lots more tests to be sold!). Most of the school districts in my part of NYS do indeed practice a modified form of open enrollment. If a student pursuing a college prep degree wants to take an AP course they can. Yes, this means a lot of kids who are not really ready or committed to working hard end up scoring a 2 or even a 1. But some of them – even students who had mediocre grades prior to taking the AP course due to lack of being challenged – end up with a 4 or 5.</p>
<p>ready2011 – The NYS Regents exams have no correlation whatsoever with the AP exams. A 98 is a good score, but considering the way the Regents exams have been “dumbed down” over the past several decades it is not an exceptional achievement.</p>
<p>At our school very few students get a 3 or above on the AP exams. I believe there were only 13 ap scholars, class of approx 400 students. I know several of the students and am familiar with the teachers. Unfortunately, many teachers are not qualified to teach the class. The AP chemistry teacher took a refresher course because she had never taught the class and was not able to teach some of the coursework. I had my son take the class because the elite universities are looking for rigorous coursework. It just reinforces my belief that the quality of student’s education is dependent on wealth.</p>
<p>The math and science AP classes do tend to be more self selected, and so those students have more potential to score in the 4-5 range. However, one must still have a good teacher. S took Calc BC as a sophomore and scored a 5. The math teacher suggested he move on to more rigor by taking linear algebra/multivariable calc (which he did), rather than the AP Stats class… Now here was a teacher who knew his stuff, knew what the other AP math class required, and knew how to motivate students.</p>
<p>S attended a Spanish language immersion elementary school. He took AP Spanish Language as a sophomore and scored a 5 on the exam. Of the 9 AP test he took, he said the Spanish exam was one of the easiest. (We are not native speakers and H took Spanish ages ago in HS himself.)</p>
<p>I think that’s incorrect. Each exam has a different pass rate. The teachers at our high school are pretty obsessed with knowing what the national average is and what their own personal pass rate is. They use those stats to see how well they are teaching the course. The school uses those statistics to assign teachers. If a particular teacher is well below the national average year after year, they try to get someone else to teach the course. For some tests, the national exam is about 50% and for some it’s higher than that and for some lower. But I’ve heard these stats quoted enough to know that 16% is not accurate.</p>
<p>Consolation: and that assumes that sophs/juniors take AP classes; some HS’s restrict to senior year…and allow juniors to only take a couple</p>
<p>and then there are the non-common app schools</p>
<p>Why would I love a teacher who made the kids work harder? </p>
<p>Because they learned. </p>
<p>They learned the material for the test.</p>
<p>They learned material deeper than the test.</p>
<p>They learned the discipline required in lab work and documentation.</p>
<p>They learned (at least a little bit) about what a good college/university will expect of them.</p>
<p>They learned.</p>
<p>My S now has A’s in his AP courses this year. His study habits and attention to documentation have improved in ways that will absolutely help him in college.</p>
<p>He’s grown up a little. And he’s learned.</p>
<p>As for the teacher and him, well, it gets even better. At the start of this year she told him how proud she was of him - and that if he’d applied himself properly sooner, he would have gotten a 5 (she’s still a tough one). He spoke to her class this year about the importance of keeping up on their lab work - from his experience. And ultimately, he asked her to be one of his science/math references when applying to schools - yes, the only teacher to give him a high school C recommended him! </p>
<p>He learned Chemistry, yes, but more importantly, he learned to up his game, get deep and work hard, and rise to a challenge. And if it took a C on his high school transcript to do that, and he’ll be a better college student because of it, I say that teacher did her job well. Very, very well.</p>
<p>
Because it will still help them if/when they go on to college.
[Studies</a> Find Benefits to Advanced Placement Courses - washingtonpost.com](<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/28/AR2007012801238.html]Studies”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/28/AR2007012801238.html)</p>
<p>Erin’s Dad – Thanks for that link. I’m going to pass that along to our school superintendent and BOE as our district is currently contemplating eliminating many electives, including APs, in order to accomodate cuts in State aid.</p>
<p>Erin’s dad: no vested interest anymore but I should have hired you 10 years ago when I argued for more open access to AP courses here…</p>
<p>I tend to agree with Rodney. At my kids’ suburban public high school, there are prerequisites to many of the AP courses (such as an A in Chemistry 1 or a B in Chemistry 1 Honors as a prereq to AP Chemistry, or an A in both semesters of Honors English 3 as a prereq for AP English Language/Literature). Freshmen can’t take AP courses, and there is only 1 AP course available to sophomores. So even though the school offers 20+ AP courses, most of them are not really available to any given student. Even so, nearly half of the seniors who graduated last year took at least 1 AP class. The AP exam is required of everyone who takes an AP course, and according to the most recent school profile, 93% of students received a 3 or higher, and over 75% received a 4 or higher. 5 is the most common grade. My SIL works at another public school where AP class admission is not as restrictive, and their passing percentage is much lower. The AP test is not required of those who take an AP course, and the most common grade is a 3, followed by a 2. I have to think these courses are being taught much differently at one school than the other.</p>
<p>From your link:</p>
<p>“The College Board, which paid for both studies, is expected to announce next week that nearly 2.3 million AP tests for 37 courses were given in 2006, a 200 percent increase since 1995. Some college admissions experts speculate that the college-level exams, written and graded by independent experts, will eventually supplant the SAT and ACT as the country’s most important tests.”</p>
<p>“The larger of the two studies, by University of Texas at Austin researchers Linda Hargrove and Barbara Dodd and Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board researcher Donn Godin, also concluded that AP students do better in college than similar students who have taken college courses in high school. This finding confirms the view of several selective college admissions deans that the local college offerings, called dual enrollment courses, are often not as challenging as AP. But it is not likely to be welcomed by the thousands of high school educators who prefer dual enrollment courses to AP and IB.”</p>
<p>I would like to see the data and, particularly, a breakout of dual enrollment course by community colleges and four-year universities. I personally prefer the dual-enrollment approach but only if the college provides appropriate rigor. There are lots of community college courses that are at the high-school level or below.</p>
<p>^^ and to add to what beth’s mom explains, these schools that have restrictive AP requirements usually do not have a blurb on the school profile that explains how difficult it is for kids to “get into” the AP classes…so in college admissions process, unless you have a very “in tune” guidance office, your HS is compared to local public HS down the block where the kids take oodles and oodles of AP courses whenever they want, get A’s in them and get 2’s on the tests (which the colleges, of couse, don’t know about because it’s not part of their admissions process)…</p>
<p>I’m not even talking about tippy top schools with tippy top kids necessarily (although I’m sure it has a strong effect there)…</p>
<p>Sorry don’t know how to do the blue box quote thing but Kayact asked: I wonder why so many high schools are letting students that are not ready to take college level courses take AP classes.</p>
<p>Answer:Jay Matthews … first as noted above he has written many articles about the benefits of AP exams. Second, Mr Matthews writes articles and books ranking high schools and one of his main criteria is how many students take AP exams. It is a national ranking. The number of AP exams has increased exponentially since he began publishing these rankings. He doesn’t care how well students do on the AP exams. He actually does not like it if a school limits the number of students eligible to take AP exams or asks students to take a qualifying exam to show they are ready for AP course level work or if the school insists the students take the AP exam at the end of the year. At my children’s school 98% of students taking AP’s score 3 or higher on AP exams, 90% of the students score 5s. Frequently students score a 5 on the AP exam and get a grade of B. The teachers have much higher expectations for learning than the AP exam. Yet, this school does not rank in the top 100 nationally according to Mr. Matthews because the school limits access to AP classess to those students who exhibit readiness to take an AP curriculum. Ironically, my nephew’s school, in a different state, is ranked by Mr Matthews in the top 20 nationally and yet my nephew once told me “he has never met anyone who scored a 3 on the AP exams let alone a 5.” (Well I didn’t have the heart to tell him my children’s scores when he made this comment to me and i know which family by far got the better public education.) I won’t argue with Mr Matthews that offering an AP class (hopefully) raises the achievement bar for every student so exposed but increasing access to AP’s also leads to gaming his ratings game.</p>
<p>“There are lots of community college courses that are at the high-school level or below.”</p>
<p>That is a serious problem in our area. I would say that the same applies for some SUNY courses at certain high schools.</p>
<p>I think anybody should have serious reservations about a “scholarly study” published on the College Board website. I’m also suspicious about the universal applicability of a study that includes only Texas high school graduates.</p>
<p><a href=“http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/pdf/08-1574_CollegeOutcomes.pdf[/url]”>http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/pdf/08-1574_CollegeOutcomes.pdf</a></p>
<p>My main question is - did they consider grades in the dual enrollment class at all? Because what I will say about community college is that it is probably easier to slide by without learning anything than it is to fake an AP exam or even an AP class. But for students who wish to learn, there are some very good community college classes around here.</p>
<p>The second study is at <a href=“http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/pdf/08-1574_CollegeOutcomes.pdf[/url]”>http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/pdf/08-1574_CollegeOutcomes.pdf</a></p>
<p>The study does lists problems with the study but those wouldn’t make for good newspaper articles. It also doesn’t provide a breakdown by community college/university. Furthermore, it doesn’t cover students that went to private universities or cover students that took dual enrollment courses at private universities.</p>
<p>One other thing: this was a 2007 article and these were 2007 studies.</p>
<p>Here’s an article about the Harvard/UVA study:</p>
<p>[Harvard</a> Gazette: High school AP courses do not predict college success in science](<a href=“http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/02.23/05-ap.html]Harvard”>http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/02.23/05-ap.html)</p>
<p>Here’s their funding source:</p>
<p>Sadler and Tai’s four-year study was funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Department of Education.</p>
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<p>No. At least not according to the study. It’s pretty interesting that AP Exam Grades are discussed all over the article but dual-enrollment isn’t broken down by anything.</p>
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<p>It’s only Texas high-school graduates that went to Texas public higher-education. They were able to get the data for their state which is reasonable. Getting the data from other states or private schools would be much more work and some private schools could balk over privacy issues.</p>
<p>Anyone have a link to the entire Harvard/UVA study? The summary leaves too much out.</p>