In my city, it has become increasingly common for the public High Schools to require every student to take at least one AP or IB class. The idea is to encourage a more diverse group of students to realize they are capable of higher level work. Have you heard of schools doing this? What do you think about it?
I think it is a great idea. In our district, kids get “tracked” into pre-AP classes at a very early age and as a result, some just come to believe they are not capable of the work. The reality is that a LOT of kids will rise to the occasion when challenged and encouraged.
I fear that having non-qualified students in AP level classes will cause frustration among students who have to struggle through the class and do poorly or it may force the level that the entire class is being taught at to be lowered so all can succeed. I’m all for encouraging qualified students to take the highest level classes they can succeed in, but decisions should made on an individual basis. I don’t think any set of classes AP or otherwise is good idea for EVERY student.
We have the opposite in our HS. Students have to pass a stringent qualification to take AP classes. Many graduate with no APs and do just fine in college.
Seems like such a rule would mean that, for the least academically oriented students, one or more of the “AP lite” courses like human geography will be watered down for them to get passing grades.
What on earth? No! Not everyone is at an AP level in high school. That is an absolutely ridiculous requirement and will lead to less students graduating.
We are up to 19% of low-income students taking at least one AP course, and there is a push to increase that number to match the overall percentage. However, only about 39% of our low-income students who take an AP class get a 3+ score on the test (vs. 66% overall). Putting all the low-income students in an AP class would make the pass rate very low. The students taking APs now are selected to have a chance of passing.
I don’t know the course grade passing rate, though most AP classes do have a number of students getting Ds and Fs. So, the APs are not (yet) watered down all that much.
I’ve heard that APUSH is one of the classes that they use for getting kids who wouldn’t normally take an AP class to take one. The homework packets (chapter notes) are 2/3 of the grade vs 1/3 for tests, so the idea is that the class is passable without doing well on the tests. However, this year the APUSH teachers discovered (in April) that ~1/3 of the APUSH students were copying the chapter notes and margin questions from the same website, and who knows how many from other websites or from packets of old notes from prior years.
I know of someone who tutors a special-needs student in remedial math at another school in the district. The student was placed in APUSH and has old homework packets to copy from a previous student. The student does poorly on tests, but can still get a C in the class by having old homework packets to copy.
(Our school doesn’t offer AP Hum Geog. They do offer AP Environ Sci, and I hear it is watered down–lots of field trips. I suppose AP Psych is another AP lite they could use, but I’ve heard the class doesn’t have a textbook at our school; no clue what’s going on with that.)
Just to clarify, anyone who is even remotely familiar with my posting history knows that I am 100% in favor of the vast majority of initiatives to help low income students. I was a low income student myself and then worked extensively with low income K-12 students while I was an undergrad and now as a PhD student, I work closely with low income and/or first gen students here at U of M.
This is not the answer. I love the idea of increasing diversity in AP classes but there are many students who are just not yet ready for college-level classes. By pushing students into classes that are above their heads, you’re drowning them, not helping them realize their potential.
Instead, students need to be supported at much younger ages. Teachers and other administrators need to have the tools and resources to identify whether a student is not reaching a high level because s/he is just not capable of working above his/her grade level (meaning s/he is really just an “average” student) or because there are other issues going on- no one to help with homework, no food at home, babysitting little siblings, etc. Once these issues are addressed and students are more supported, low income and/or other “disadvantaged” students will likely naturally work their way into AP/IB classes.
I basically agree with @romanigypsyeyes, I am all in favor of increasing diversity in advanced courses, and our District really does need to work on that, but I think sophomore, or definitely junior, year is too late to do that. In practice, schools have done things like drop AP Euro and replace it with a full year of AP Human Geography (a course which can be covered in a semester.) Students who would have taken Euro lose rigor and students who really don’t have the background or support to succeed flounder in Hum Geog. On the other hand, those schools USNWR rankings increase because more kids are taking advanced classes. 
(edit to add: Sophomore or Junior year is not too late to encourage more students to take advanced classes, but I think it is too late to require it.)
Many students are not capable of doing college work. That’s why they don’t go to college.
I strongly believe that grades for AP classes should be based in large part on the performance on the actual test. If slow-learners want to pack in the classes, fine, but they need to get an “F” or “D” for a 1.
I am also in favor of increasing diversity in advanced courses, but I don’t think it’s fair to kids who haven’t experienced course rigor before to put them into an AP class without some extra support.
Our school puts kids into AP classes if they got an A in the prior “college prep” class, but our college prep teachers are told not to give significant homework in junior high and early high school, because of the lack of home resources for homework help. So, it’s a big step up, and kids need some help making the transition.
The kids who have been in AVID have had some support along these lines, and many do well. But, that is not all the kids who need support.
@EarlVanDorn, how can grades be based on the exam when the school grades are due well before the IB/AP grades are posted? I also don’t think public schools can require students to pay to take an exam.
I know of one district that pays for exams as part of such an initiative. Not sure everyone would be excited about doing this, but I would guess that if it were only one AP that was required , most people could find one that was interesting and played to their strengths.
Many students find they can do what is expected of them, particularly when the support is there to help them succeed. The class might have to be taught differently.
In our district all students at these schools are required to take the SAME AP or IB classes. One school has every kid take Human Geography and AP Lit. Two others require IB Lang and Lit. I think it would be better for everyone if students could chose the one class they have to take. Apparently the schools think that would be difficult to schedule and to support.
Our District does not pay for IB or AP at all. Coordinator and TOK teacher salaries and AP training come out of the Gen ed budget. The state covers FRL students’ test fees, but not other students’.
I think requiring an AP/IB class is a stupid idea. Many kids are not ready for that level of work. Teaching these AP classes is hard. I know one of our AP teachers is the only one in the department willing to teach AP. So where would all the new AP teachers come from? How much harder would it be with more than half the class not capable, disruptive, and/or completely disinterested in doing the work? Those kids had 9 years of education in the same classrooms as the honor/AP students. They weren’t interested in rising to the challenge all those years, and they aren’t in high school either. My kids were very relieved to be out of the same classrooms with them. And even some of our AP students are copying off the web, palming off group project work on others, etc. so how much worse would it be if all students, even those headed to drop out of hs, or not headed to college, are forced into these classes?
I think schools should just get rid of AP courses. My kids’ rigorous prep schools don’t even offer them because the course curriculum is so narrowly tailored to the test.
@PNWedwonk I’m aware that the tests take a while to grade. I don’t see how it would be the end of the world for students to wait until July to get their final grade. Obviously this would not apply to seniors. Also, my children’s school pays for all students to take the test.
@GMTplus7 I do wish the AP courses could be reworked so that they resemble a college course. This would mean about 90 percent (or all ) of the final grade would be based on tests and 10 percent on homework. My son has taken both AP and college classes, and without question the college classes are easier. Also, for schools that accept AP credit, a single course can cut the cost of a college education by a couple of thousand dollars, at minimum. Nothing is gained from getting rid of these courses, which give the brighter students a chance to do advanced work in the company of other bright students.
I’m all for making access to AP classes (and IB/AICE/DE) classes easier for students, without limiting them by which academic track they got put on in 6th grade, or how they did in a math test in 4th grade. If they have the grades and show the inclination, let them take some of the AP classes. However, forcing unprepared students who do not want to take the class, into an AP class is a horrible idea. For all the reasons already mentioned.
The school district can better use it’s money by improving it’s elementary and middle schools. That would lead to better prepared HS’ers that can take more rigorous classes. But that’s easier said than done.
Our school does not pay for AP tests. How is it fair between juniors and senior in the same class if the juniors are being graded on their AP scores and the seniors aren’t, or if some juniors are taking the test and others aren’t?
Getting rid of the AP classes would be a disaster for honor students. We aren’t all lucky enough to have schools that would just offer rigorous classes if they weren’t getting those brownie points from having that AP label. If you believe otherwise, then why, when the college board discontinued the AP computer science AB test a few years back, did our school immediately drop that course, which had been the most rigorous CS course in the school. I am not confident that our AP teachers have the background, motivation and support of the school to develop their own better-than-AP curricula. (And where would the money come from to pay for their time to do this? They get very little planning time during the day). And I think our AP teachers are generally teaching the AP well, certainly better than most.
That said, the college board should do more to ensure that the level of the AP classes is more equivalent to college classes. It’s not just a matter of how grades are assigned. The fact is that the level of the AP classes is not at a good college course, and students who choose to take their AP credits often don’t do well in the next class because their AP background is really not equivalent. Our humanities and social science APs don’t require anything like the major papers that my college classes had. If the college board can’t grade the papers for the money they are charging, then they could at least make it a course requirement to call the course AP. And it shouldn’t be hard to better align the content and difficulty of the STEM classes.
My school (where I teach 6 sections of AP each year) certainly “encourages” all students to have taken an AP class by the time they graduate to help them feel genuinely prepared for college- but I think “requiring” it would be a poor idea. The problems that arise when a kid is forced into a class that isn’t appropriate for them (happens every year - I’ll have someone whose mom is “making” them take APUSH- when they aren’t ready, or willing to do the work) can be real, and challenging to come back from
Universal AP is a terrible idea.
While there absolutely needs to be incentive snd support for a broader range of students to have access to education, the idea that everyone is suited to, would enjoy, or needs higher-ed is ridiculous.
It’s like claiming that because Olympic athletes are very successful in their fields, therefore absolutely every citizen should be on the Olympic gymnastics team. Ludicrous!
As it is, we have serious strain on our colleges because of the number of admits who can’t handle the work. Graduation rates already average below 60%, meaning between 1/3 and 1/2 of the people who think they’re colle material turn out not to be, for one reason or another. Telling everyone to go to college is disastrous policy.