<p>I’ve been thinking a little more about this.</p>
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<li> How the heck do they match up the college data and the AP data like that? Wouldn’t they have to have the kids’ names? To figure out how many college graduates had taken but failed an AP test?</li>
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<p>I continue to think this is a great idea, but from a privacy standpoint I wonder how many of the students included in this data understand that their high school’s superintendent has access to important information from their college records, with their names attached?</p>
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<li> Of course, it isn’t completely clear to me that the data (which of course I haven’t seen) support a recommendation that more kids take AP courses in high school. Sure, kids who take AP courses in high school do better in college than kids who don’t, even if they don’t pass the AP test. But is that because taking the AP course provided important college preparation, or because the population of students who decide to take AP courses on their own, or who are encouraged to do so by their teachers without administrative prodding, is a generally more successful population of students than the population of students who don’t take APs at all? Anyone want to place a bet?</li>
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