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[quote]
But, Mr. Packer says, the College Board supports the idea of schools’ placing limits on the number of A.P. classes students can take.
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<p>At $80 a test?</p>
<p>sure they do.
How many AP courses does your high school offer?</p>
<p>The College Board has revamped AP Biology as well as another giant-killer, AP US History. These changes are to take effect in the 2012-13 school year. Rolling out this year is new curriculum for AP French and German. More revisions are coming for physics, chemistry, European history and world history.</p>
<p>My daughters high school didn’t offer AP Biology- they offered Marine Science or Genetics.
She did take Euro & World Ap history however- and Am govt, Lit & something else that is slipping my mind.
:o</p>
<p>AP US History wasn’t that bad. I got a 5 and I don’t feel like it was impossibly hard to begin with. To be honest, while AP US/World were both crammed with facts (World moreso than US, simply because there was more time covered) I felt like I learned a lot and that the things tested were usually broader concepts anyways. </p>
<p>The new APUSH questions look…easy. Considering how many kids I know with a poor idea about US History, I’m not sure I’d be excited by that one.</p>
<p>Parsing down Bio might help though, as we had to cram too much in based on when labs could be done or couldn’t be done, and if you don’t do specific labs you’re unprepared. I only ever took 8 APs though, so maybe it’s different from my perspective of a ‘lighter’ load. </p>
<p>Still, it can’t hurt to make things a little more manageable.</p>
<p>Edit: </p>
<p>I feel like the work load also may feel like more or less if you’re been steadily getting more and more work over time. Those of us in HS who were in the Honors program (and had been since at least junior high) were used to getting more and more work every year, culminating in 3 or more APs a year. Those who had made the jump from regular classes straight to AP at any point usually dropped because of the amount or work or the lack of prep for the class in terms of quality of work/writing ability, or earned mediocre grades. A small handful of them stuck it out and did just as well as the rest of the class, but our Advanced classes were largely populated with gifted students who were used to writing 2 papers a week, reading thirty pages, and then doing a lab and math problem sets.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure this was posted a few weeks ago…</p>
<p>Anyway, I have mixed feelings about the Bio renovation. I certainly agree that the curriculum was excessive, but many people don’t seem to get the concept of a curve. You don’t need to know everything in the AP Bio curriculum to get a 5. You just need a basic grasp of the big-picture concepts and then a strong working knowledge of a few of these. I speak from personal experience.</p>
<p>However, I definitely agree that the labs are horrible.</p>
<p>* pretty sure this was posted a few weeks ago…*</p>
<p>Oh you are probably right, I didn’t notice it- but our local education blogger just posted something.</p>
<p>Our district is doing things like- taking Euro out in exchange for Geo & schools that have written their own curriculum for challenging classes, like Marine Biology ( which can earn you college credit), are forced to only offer elective credit for those classes, not subject credit.
It seems calculated to increase # of AP courses, but lowering the rigor.</p>