<p>This is a topic of current debate in our district. </p>
<p>This proposal CREATES stress in my household. My kids like their APs and the inspirational teachers who teach them. </p>
<p>I'd be interested in a discussion.</p>
<p>Would the teachers be let go if they decided not to pay for the AP branding? If not, then the students might have an equal or perhaps even better experience. Some of the best and most beloved teachers in our school teach rigorous classes that are not AP branded. In fact we just had an English Teacher who taught the college prep senior English class retire. They “replaced” him with an English AP curriculum and younger teacher. Now this teacher might turn how to be fabulous but in general the students don’t “gain anything” from having the AP designated class except perhaps the credit hours that they might get from the college.</p>
<p>I am all for limiting so that the AP arms race is slowed down a bit. If your school limits your AP’s to 2 a year the colleges can’t fault you for taking that many. My kids best teachers were largely their AP teachers.</p>
<p>No the teachers would not be let go. </p>
<p>But don’t you think that the curriculum of alternatives would have to cater to a lower common denominator or what would be the point.</p>
<p>Reddoor, why not just discourage students from taking more than 2 so that kids who want to still can? Doesn’t your proposal hurt the top students who can handle the challenge? Who cares what the colleges think?</p>
<p>ClassicRocker, why is this proposal under consideration? Cost? Something from the teachers’ union? Student burn out? Poor test results?</p>
<p>Regardless, I think APs should be available without limit. In our district, any student can take any class. The only catch is that you’re not allowed to decrease rigor. You can only increase rigor. So, if a kid gets over his head in AP, he can’t switch out. Watch your GPA rise or fall according to how well you place yourself. It’s actually rather fair, clever, and motivational.</p>
<p>One of my kids went to a public school with no limits on AP courses. The kids compete with each other to take 4 and 5 AP’s in a year. Second child went to a private that limited AP’s to two. Very rigorous curriculum and kids can still take the test but are limited to 2 AP’s for the courseload. I suppose the argument is that AP’s are a mile wide and an inch deep and the amount of outside work is onerous. If you can get a five in a class with more depth then you can eliminate some of the workload. </p>
<p>I think you are assuming that all AP classes are more challenging and I don’t believe that to be the case. In my older child school they were often the best taught courses. Presumably the same teachers could still teach the material with more discretion.</p>
<p>I don’t think harder classes should be limited or eliminated at all. The problem I have is having to pay an outside company to be able to offer AP and IB courses. The money spent on these programs is what makes me mad. I am also mad about the out comes on many of the AP/IB tests in my kids school system.</p>
<p>In our district the AP classes have come at the expense of honors classes. The few honors classes left are far more enriching than the fact crammed AP classes. The AP classes have created a de facto educational Apartheid, with the college bound kids all on one track and the ESL/first generation kids in another track of “regular” classes. The honors classes provided an opportunity for bright traditionally underperforming kids to test the waters and gain confidence in a higher level class. The “regular” classes have become a warehouse for moving the kids along with no challenge and no expectation, while the AP classes are churning out studyholics with skills for taking tests but not much time for deliberation on the subjects.</p>
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<p>It appears to be a direct response to the movie Race to Nowhere by well meaning people to improve the lives of our children. </p>
<p>I appreciate the discussion. It’s interesting to see the contrasting opinions. </p>
<p>I know there are challenging AP classes, and there are easy AP classes. The proposal doesn’t distinguish. </p>
<p>Reddoor, why do you feel that kids “compete” with each other to take 4-5 APs? Where do you think that comes from? Do you think it’s fair to eliminate opportunities for the top students so that others don’t have to “compete”? Might there be kids who want those classes and can handle them? Where does the pressure come from to take more APs than a kids wants to? Might that source be the proper place to look for a solution?</p>
<p>Momof3greatgirls, I feel your pain!</p>
<p>DougBesty, your school’s approach seems harsh and discourages risk taking. I don’t care for that approach either. Not even colleges do that.</p>
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<p>That’s actually not what I see, but I can see your point if they are coming at the expense of honors classes. In our school honors classes are far less challenging than AP classes.</p>
<p>Classic rocker dad, pressure comes from the kids. Public school was a top one and kids were trying to make themselves look more competitive for college. We limited junior AP’s to 3 and senior year to 4. </p>
<p>You would know better than I about the consequence at your school, but at our school if there are limits on AP’s then the great teachers will be freed up to teach honors courses with just as much rigor as the AP ( and many would argue, more).</p>
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Hmmm. I never thought about it that way. Since I haven’t heard a student or parent complain about it, I always assummed it works. </p>
<p>But, come to think of it, one of D’s bffs stuck with honors because she thought 4 years of straight As would look better than a “blemished” transcript with a few Bs. With her weighted 4.x she’s now ranked near the bottom of the second decile. So, did her strategy backfire? (Rhetorical question. It’s really something we aren’t qualified to decide. Just one of the risks of choosing to avoid risks, I suppose. lol)</p>
<p>At our school, APs have a 5 point grading scale and Honors have a 4.5 point scale. There are ample sections of whatever level a student wants. So, I suppose we’re fortunate to have options for the kids that seek a moderate challenge.</p>
<p>I do not think that it’s the AP’s themselves that are time-consuming for strong students. The amount of effort required to achieve a 5–and in fact to have a high level of understanding of the AP curriculum–is not really too high. In QMP’s experience, the time-consuming assignments in high school tended to be the group video projects, construction projects only vaguely related to the AP curriculum, and art projects masquerading as academic projects–also one analytical assignment (over the summer) that asked students to comment on characterization, diction, imagery, symbolism, plot elements . . . page-by-page in a 400-or-so page novel.</p>
<p>Does your school district propose anything to will fill the void for students needing more rigor, or for “advanced learners”? </p>
<p>Is the district also going to limit services for underperforming students?</p>
<p>I’m probably in the minority, but I’m in favor of reducing/eliminating or limiting the number of APs. I don’t see tham as opportunities to challenge kids but as a way to look good on a college application. Kids take them because they know they need them to get into a ‘good’ school, or practically any college these days, not because they really want to. (Saying this knowing that there are kids who actually want to take them for the love of the challenge.)</p>
<p>Let’s be real: what is the honest reason kids feel they need to take dozens of AP courses, overload themselves with a multitude of ECs, be the best at this or the president of that? Do we really think it is, for the most part, because they love it, or because they know they must to be ‘successful’? Right now APs are considered ‘table stakes’ for college entrance, not a route to knowledge. Why do we see kids posting to CC their litany of activities, grades, etc and then asking if it is ‘good’ enough? </p>
<p>Isn’t it time we took away some of the stressors we are putting on our kids at such a young age? Why are we building a generation of over-worked, over-tested kids? I feel so sorry for my kids and the pressures they have.</p>
<p>OK, I’ll step off my soapbox now! :)</p>
<p>Our private school got rid of AP’s four years ago and replaced them with teacher-designed Advanced Studies classes, all with a competitive selection process for enrollment, and usually limited to 2-3 per semester per student. </p>
<p>In eliminating the AP’s, the administration followed the lead of several top independent schools. They told parents that not only were kids stressed by AP’s, but teachers were bored with the curricula, which was “a mile wide and an inch deep.” </p>
<p>The new advanced studies courses include Organic Chemistry, a Philosophy/Physics course, Middle Eastern History, BC Calc and Great Books. The students - and colleges - have been fine with the change. Kids still have the option of taking AP exams for college placement, but most choose not to. </p>
<p>PROS: The program was instituted four years ago and the kids are definitely less stressed. The teachers love the opportunity to design courses they are passionate about. Even the most concerned parents are happy that their kids are studying provocative material, and not just being taught to the test. Also, since the APs were eliminated four years ago, a higher percentage of grads have been accepted to top schools, including all of the Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Northwestern, Duke, Georgetown, WashU, Williams, Pomona, etc. </p>
<p>CONS: Students are not as well prepared for the SAT subject exams in certain subjects, and many are not able to place out of/get credit for courses once they are in college. Also, I’m not sure whether the program would work as well in a much larger public school where there would not be as much oversight of teacher-designed courses.</p>
<p>My kids attended both a private school with a strong reputation for academics and a large public academic magnet.</p>
<p>The private school offered no AP courses, choosing instead to control its own curriculum. However students regularly took, and did well on, Calculus BC, lab science, and language APs.</p>
<p>The public school offered lots of AP courses, starting in 10th grade (no 9th graders allowed, except by exam placement for math). It was normal for ambitious kids to take 2 in 10th grade, 2-4 in 11th grade, and 3-4 in 12th grade. Kids could also take college courses, both at a small Catholic college next door to the high school and, with some difficulty, at Penn or Temple, which were both accessible by public transportation (but scheduling was a pain).</p>
<p>In general, I thought the intellectual/academic quality of the courses at the private school was much better than the AP courses at the public school. (The quality of the students at the private school and the students taking AP courses at the public school was very comparable.) Some of the best AP courses at the public school tended to depart most from the AP curriculum, and ironically to produce some of the lowest average scores on the AP tests because no time was spent teaching to the tests. The public school also offered a range of interesting, focused, challenging non-AP electives (e.g., biochemistry, astrophysics, pharmacology, international crises), but these were clearly being hurt by the race for more APs (and for the class rank advantages of taking overweighted AP classes), and only a few with the very best teachers were continuing to attract enough students to make them viable. The APs also had real economic value for a school population where all but the very top students tended to go to public universities that gave them full credit for all or most of their AP courses.</p>
<p>I am all in favor of offering strong students challenging courses, and I think the dangers of boredom in school are at least as bad as the dangers of stress. But in general I lack respect for the AP curriculum, on the mile-wide-inch-deep basis, and on the anachronistic emphasis of fact-content over method and critical thought.</p>
<p>Our school district limited the number of AP classes a student could take to 3 per term and did not allow frosh or sophs to enroll in any AP’s. Both these restrictions could be appealed by an individual student but none did as far as I knew.</p>
<p>The rational was simple. The district wanted the AP sections to be taught at the college level and as a result the daily homework load was quite high. Insofar as the students were in school from 8am to 3pm, taking as many a 6 academic classes and then staying as late as 5pm with an after school EC, it would have been extremely difficult to take more than 3 AP’s from merely a time perspective. If a student had been allowed to take 4 or 5 AP classes as some students have posted here, they would have been busy from 8am to past midnight 5 days a week which is an impossible schedule to keep for 6+ months of school days. I do not know many adults that could put in an 80 hr work week for month after month.</p>
<p>The upside of the policy was that it did not seem to hinder college admissions in the least, our AP test scores were extremely high and our students typically did quite well in those college classes where AP credits allowed them to advance to the next level. Our son had a higher math GPA at RPI(3.75) than he did in his hs classes(3.25)!</p>
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<p>No. My sense is they view these kids working so hard as to be driven to misery, just like in the movie, so they think that replacing the rigor with something easier will make them happier and healthier.</p>
<p>My sense is that not too many administrators or teachers would have been happy taking 4-5 APs and can’t see how some kids could be happier and healthier doing so. Those who are happy taking 4-5 APs tend not to become administrators or teachers. </p>
<p>My kids are happy with APs. D1 took a lot and ate them up and is now happy, healthy and doing well in in a really hard college. D2 has taken 1 sophomore year, 1 junior year, but wants to take a lot senior year. What she wants to take is not an unreasonable workload. She’s not getting straight As, hasn’t taken the most rigorous curriculum but doesn’t care, and she’s not gunning for the most selective colleges, she just likes the subjects and doesn’t want to have to wait until college to learn them. Also, if she gets some credits from APs that are great classes anyway and satisfy some requirements, she can take more electives in college. It seems silly to her to not be allowed to take them because they say AP.</p>
<p>Originalong, not all of the yearlong AP classes are equivalent to a full year of college. Some are about equal in difficulty as honors courses, the college courses not being that hard anyway.</p>
<p>I’m talking about taking an AP math, science, psych and a foreign language for a kids who excels at math, science and foreign language. I don’t see lost sleep here.</p>
<p>Not only is there a revolt of sorts against APs from the high schools, there is also a growing revolt at the colleges that accept them. Academic departments at several colleges are petitioning their administrations to stop accepting AP credit for prereq courses in certain majors because many college faculty do not believe that AP courses in high school are truly equal experiences to college-level courses. They find that the AP-credit students are not prepared to do the work if they have not taken the prereq at the college. In addition, AP tests do not measure process-based learning and writing very accurately, which limits their usefulness as college-level assessments in certain subjects.</p>
<p>I’m not anti-AP per se, but I do think they are overused and it’s time to prune.</p>
<p>NJSue, you don’t think it’s possible, or even likely to get more out of a yearlong course in AP Psychology with a class of 25 kids then out of a lecture with 250 kids that uses the same books and covers the same material? Both offer the same credit.</p>