Required by public hs to spend $658 on AP exams for which my son’s college will not give credit

Parents Forum
1

Just venting here, because my son asked me please NOT to write a letter to his public school district, which is what I would have preferred to do.

I just had to spend $658 signing up my son for AP exams for this May. It is the school’s policy that every student who takes an AP class MUST take the exam. It is stated clearly in the course catalog, and students who do not take the exam will not get credit for the AP class they took.

My son was admitted Early Decision to Williams College. So now we know exactly what those AP exams will do, or not do, for him. Williams does not give any course credit for AP exams. At all. Taking the exams won’t save him the cost of even one credit. Williams also gives very little placement benefit, so only a very few of his AP exams taken in high school will even get him out of intro classes (and sometimes that is true only if he gets a 5). Most of the exams, he will be taking for nothing.

That he will not get course credit is fine. We are prepared to pay top dollar for a top school. We knew that going in. Before he applied, I knew from the website that he would not get AP credit from Williams. (Only at SUNY Binghamton, of all his potential schools, would he have gotten a year’s worth of credit and saved a year’s tuition.)

BUT… it is stupid for my family to have to pay a lot of money for the several AP exams that will not do my son any good.

Also, my son also has to sit through all those long exams. But he says he does not mind that. He says AP tests are fun. Go figure. (Of course, he may have said that just to avoid the embarrassment of my writing to his school!)

Also, in another nearby public school district (the one where I work), the students do not pay for their own exams. Since the exams are required of students by the district, the district believes that by state law they have to pay for them. They are built into our district’s budget. Apparently, my son’s public school district either is not aware of or differently interprets the state regulation. Because in my son’s district, students have to pay for their own exams.

My husband suggested that we think of it like sending our son on vacation. We are paying the money so that he can enjoy taking an exam.

It is just stupid.

Don’t get me wrong. I am glad he took the AP classes for the challenge, and I am sure that having them on his transcript helped him get into Williams in the first place. I just resent having to pay money for multiple exams that the public school is really supposed to pay for itself, and that won’t be recuperated through course credit or, in some instances, even provide any benefit in being able to take more advanced courses.

2

It’s the rule set by the school before he took the classes. School districts often pay AP teachers more, send them to special training, have a cost to setting up the exams. They often have a limited number of spaces too, so a student taking an AP class might mean another is not. They want students to be serious about the classes, and nothing says ‘serious’ more than $658.

It was also the requirement for my kids to take the AP exams for all AP classes, but they were paid for by the state. Many kids signed up for AP classes they weren’t serious about and spent no time studying for the AP exams. My own daughter had to take the AP Spanish exam and knew she wouldn’t score high enough for to get any credit, so she spent zero time studying for it. None.

I’m sure taking those AP classes helped your son get into Williams as they were probably the most rigorous classes offered.

3

I agree with you on many points, @TheGreyKing. I also understand your son not wanting it in writing that his parents don’t want him to take the exams. What about a discreet phone call to a trusted counselor/administrator or even teacher? Who knows, you may be raising questions that the school would appreciate hearing.

4

Your son seems to be very level headed.

5

@TheGreyKing - I understand your frustration. You understand the counterarguments (you knew the rules going in, the AP’s helped in get into Williams, etc.) but that doesn’t take the sting out of the irrationality of your district’s policy.

One extreme approach would be to have your son contact Williams, explain the situation, and see if he can get an assurance that he can skip the tests without the resulting damage to his HS transcript triggering a rescission.

But my advice is to grin and bear it, especially since your son seems ok with it.

On the bright side, taking and passing the AP exams will likely earn him more and better AP Scholar Awards, which come in very handy if you ever run out of toilet paper.

Edit to add: Thinking back, I remember thinking that my kids AP scores would be virtually worthless at their colleges but it turned out that my son’s 5 on the AP Spanish Literature exam satisfied Princeton’s foreign language requirement. If something like this happens in your son’s case it’ll all be worth it.

6

That is frustrating. My gut feeling is that he probably doesn’t want to be singled out as the only one in the class not taking the exams. It used to be the policy at our HS that students agreed to take the AP exam if they enrolled in the AP class. However, the curriculum and policy at our public HS has been changed and now AP tests are optional. My D opted out of all but one AP exam senior year saving her time and us money.

I might have placed a call to the guidance counselor or principal to confirm that the exams were required, but since you already paid I guess just tell him to have fun with the exams!

If you have other children who could find themselves in a similar situation in future years, you may want to write a letter to the principal and/or school board after your son’s HS graduation asking that the AP exam policy be re-evaluated.

7

On the bright side, he doesn’t have to sweat the exams themselves and can enjoy the end of senior year. Might be good closure for him to see how he does, from his attitude, he may like that.

We paid about $90ish a test, so I had a multiple years where one student took 5 or 6 APs while another took 3, etc., so we were spending $700+ some years, ouch. What are they charging per test where you are? Just curious if it varies per state, etc.

8

Been there and feel your pain! I appealed to the principal and D got permission to not take the exams senior year which wouldn’t help her. I also asked him to intercede for her with certain teachers, who asserted that if you didn’t take the exam they’d take that to mean you didn’t care and would lower your grade. Sure, because kids are in the habit of taking the hardest courses and working to get A’s in them because they don’t care about academics. It helped that D was the first student from the high school to get into Stanford, so the principal was hard pressed to believe she was a slacker!

After that, though, they tightened the policy to look like the one at your school so we had to needlessly fork over the money for the youngest. The school has a vested interest in having everyone take the tests, since it helps with their rankings.

9

@sherpa

quote o’ the day.

lol. Nothing more worthless than these things, particularly when you get them summer after senior year!

10

the exams provide important feedback to the high school as to whether the teacher and the course are doing what should be done. High schools need those exam results to understand whether they really are offering AP level classes. The public paid for your son’s enrichment thru these classes so I’m not very sympathetic to foisting off the cost of the exams as well. The college board probably has fee waiver if you can demonstrate need.

11

I actually think that there are two issues here. The first is whether a student who is taking a class (AP or IB) should be mandated to take the exam. At my son’s school, it varied from course to course but the requirement was clearly stated in the course description. In most AP/IB classes, the exam was required, but there were a few in which it was not. The arguments for requiring them included:

• It is very hard to teach a class, particularly one in which students need to work with each other and/or participate in class, at a pace and with the goal of a year-end exam when some of the students do not have the motivation of the others to truly master the material.

• In IB classes, there was work to be submitted during the year, and it was hard to incorporate that into the curriculum if everyone wasn’t going to be doing it.
• Teachers often have their own biases. These may determine what they think is important in the class. Alternatively, they could influence how they feel about a student’s work (positive or negative.) An exam which is administered by a third party can be a great equalizer on this front, and as the head of our IB program said, “it keeps us honest.”
• This is also a great way for schools to get feedback on a number of things, from the quality of the teaching to the screening they may use to determine who gets into a class. That feedback doesn’t work so well when all the students don’t submit to the same testing.

• The AP/IB exam is part of the course – it’s an assessment – and if you’re going to take the class, you’re going to take ALL of it. The value of the exam is in assessing how well you mastered the material, not in whether it gets you credit or placement in college.

• Many internal assessments at school focus on the last quarter or semester. AP and IB exams focus on the last year (or 2 for some IB) of material. This is GREAT preparation for college exams when you really need to review a lot of material and pull everything together.

So I’m with your son on this. He has taken the class, done the work, and should submit to the assessment. Frankly, if you want to start talking about whether or not an AP test matters, you could end up on a slippery slope of asking why pretty much any final matters for a senior if they’ve done well up to that point. So what if it drops the final grade? – If they were getting the grades just to get into college and that has happened, … you see where I’m going. This is all about finishing strong, making learning about learning rather than credentials and seeing the value in the course as educational, not a shortcut in college.

The second issue is whether you should have to pay for it. At least to me, $658 is a lot of money! Personally, I think that if your public school requires students to take the test, they should pay for it. It would be wrong if students who couldn’t afford the test—or whose parents didn’t see the value – didn’t take the class. This seems to me to be a matter of access. So I DO think that while your son should take the exams without complaining, you would be doing everyone a service by bringing this up with your school’s administrators and working to change the system for future students. I will guess, given some of what you’ve said about your work that you have better knowledge than most on how to work within that system.

12

I agree with@roycroftmom, the exam also provides feedback about your school especially at the state education level. It demonstrated if your school is offering s college readiness curriculum anove the standard courses and if students are successful in achieving this metric.

The results are also of the same school profile that Williams looked at when assessing your child in context of what his school offers.

I know at every school I have been at there is a contract signed by the student and parent that if you are admitted into the class, you stay the school years, you sit for the exam. If you do not sit for the exam you get a ding on your grade. The GC will also contact the college to let them know you skipped the ex when sending the final transcript.

13

And from Williams website , he may be pleasantly surprised and get some
benefit after all! Check out this link https://registrar.williams.edu/course-registration/first-year-students/ap-placement-guide/

Here’s an excerpt from the Economics department:
“Can I Get Credit for Coursework Done Elsewhere?
Credit for AP, IB and A-level exams
The Econ 110 requirement will be waived for students who earned a 5 on the microeconomics AP exam, and the Econ 120 requirement will be waived for those who received a 5 on the macroeconomics AP exam. Students satisfying either criterion will receive major credit for the course and may complete the major with either eight or seven additional courses, depending on whether they place out of one or both introductory courses. These would include the introductory course for which no advanced placement was granted, the three core classes, and four electives.
Students who received an A on the A-level exam in economics or earned a 6 or 7 in the higher economics IB exam will receive credit for both Econ 110 and 120, and may complete the major with only seven additional courses. These would include the three core classes and four electives.
A score of 5 on the statistics AP exam, a 6 or a 7 on the statistics IB exam, or an A on the A-level statistics exam will satisfy the statistics prerequisites for ECON 255.”

14

I have serious ethical concerns with this policy, which was the same at our daughter’s first high school. Those exams are expensive, and requiring kids who take AP classes to take the exam effectively shuts out poor kids from an AP education. This is unfair, and it is on these grounds that I would send a letter to the school board asking them to reconsider. Many schools, including the high school from which my kids eventually graduated, make AP exams optional for this reason.

If you can afford to do so, do have your son take the tests. It will give more credence to your objection if you follow through with your commitment while fighting for those who can’t afford it.

15

@gardenstategal , while Williams and other schools like it do exempt you from certain classes with a score of 5, they don’t give you any economic breaks. You still have to take 4 years’ worth of classes to get your degree. You just start at a higher level.

16

Students who are economically disadvantaged get fee waivers for the exam from CB

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@Massmomm , you are right. At most of the selective LACs (at least all the ones my kid considered), that is the practice. So if the OP’s son was taking the AP exams to avoid the cost of college courses, it is unlikely that would ever have been the case. In which case, there would never have been a reason to take the exams.

18

I think schools should do away with AP classes if they aren’t going to follow the entire program and require the exams. I think they should do away with them anyway, because I don’t think a private company should have such a monopoly on AP, SAT, study guides, etc., but I’m not going to win that argument.

Somehow all students in Florida get to take the exams at no charge. Why don’t other states make that same arrangement?

19

And last I checked, high schools get a little kickback for tests you pay for.

20

@TheGreyKing -

When you have an opportunity, take the issue of paying for the exams to the school board. It makes no sense torequire that students pay for exams that are arbitrariy required to be taken in order to have the course grade posted on the transcript. This would be the gift I would want to see made for future students. Are there other programs in your school district where students are obligated to pay for, and take, exams in order to get a final grade? For example, must they pass a driver licensing exam in order to also pass driver’s ed, or must they pass the state CNA licensing exam to pass the tech ed course that covers the material in the CNA exam?