It is ironic that in a country that has echewed a national secondary school curriculum and revered local control of education, a private entity, the College Board— answerable to whom?— has managed to establish a defacto national curriculum for an increasingly large number of college bound students. This latest development makes this point clear. I do not necessarily oppose a national curriculum, but I am concerned about leaving the development and now enforcement of content and standards of performance for a national curriculum to a private entity that seems to operate without transparency.

Mommy, at 6:04 am EDT on August 15, 2005

National Standards set by whom?

Would “Mommy” prefer to have the Government set the standards??? It seems to me that entities such as the College Board are in a much better position to promulgate such standards, as they are more immune from political pressure. Furthermore, standards set by an outside entity can properly punish districts and states that choose to teach things like creationsim (or “intelligent design” as it is now fashionable to call it).

Eric, at 9:48 am EDT on August 15, 2005

Earning the AP Name

I am afraid that we had something to do with this.

The perception around the country has been that somehow AP courses are the apex of quality and often get a greater academic weight (for calculating class sanding) that do dual credit classes. It can out in a meeting last year that other than an initial training, teachers had no real guidance as to what content actually went into those courses and there was no back up verification process in place to ensure that the courses were, in fact, a college level course.

We were told that if students could pass the test, that was verification enough. Unfortunately most students who take AP courses do not, for some reason, ever take the exam. So where is the quality assurance on these courses.

I don’t think that this is an attempt to create a “national curriculum” but rather just a check that the course is at least designed to contain college level material.

Rob Franks, Grants Director at Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, at 10:40 am EDT on August 15, 2005

AP

I think Mommy raises some valid points. The College Board has made two major changes this year to the AP program. The first has been to report mastery/passing (3 and above) scores to the states as a percentage of the state’s entire population of graduating seniors. In the past, the College Board reported these as percentages of students who took the test and passed. Because the AP program is expanding in every state (it grew by 66% in the last 5 years according to Thursday’s WSJ) every state can claim that more students are passing AP than five years ago while parodoxically, the overall percentage of students passing the tests (when measured against test takers) is declining. The College Board claims that this is an equity change- that schools should be rewarded for encouraging kids to take the classes and tests. However, the new method hides the fact that as the AP program has expanded beyond its initial goals of challenging an elite group of students, more students are failing. Is the failure benign? Well, according to Newsweek Magazine, which developed an horrendous single index of ranking high schools according to the number of AP and/or IB tests they give, even students who fail AP exams are benefited when they get to college. The evidence for that proposition is at best shaky (see Geisler and Santelices UC Berkeley study from last year which found no college benefit from AP unless students also passed the test). I point that out because I believe that there should at least be a national discussion and some input from interested stakeholders outside the College Board about AP policies. The second change has been the College Board’s tightening of requirements for programs to denominate themselves AP. On its face, this is a common sense proposal for strenghtening the program and insuring some uniformity. The problem is that it is one more way for the College Board to dictate high school policies according to their whims. The Board will train over 80,000 teachers this year at a cost of over $500 per teacher to teach AP. They gave over 2 million AP tests this year at a cost of $82 per test. Yeah, they may be non-profit but they sure are playing with nice stacks of money. The spectre, as Mommy raises, is that the CB is now moving even closer to national AP curriculums which they alone will control. While Mommy’s critics are right to point out that our schools haven’t necessarily done a good job in developing educational programs, it’s not clear that the job should be ceded to the College Board either.

Patrick Mattimore, AP Teacher, at 11:42 am EDT on August 15, 2005

The merit of APs

Some of my brightest students have told me that they did not enjoy the AP classes (e.g. AP Calculus) because the class moved too fast, there was not enough time to discuss and digest the information, and in the end, the grade they earned in class did not correlate with the grade they earned on the exam. For example, my student was in an AP History class with two others, and one was getting As, the other Cs, my student was getting Bs. All three took the AP US History exam. The student who earned the highest grades in class got a 2, my middle-of-the-road student earned a 3 and the student who was at the bottom of the class earned a 4 on the AP exam. Go figure!

Should we have AP teachers teach to the exam — since that’s a measure that colleges seem to trust more — or should we give students enough time to process and reason through what they are learning, so that hopefully, it may stick? I think for the majority of the students the Honors classes are sufficiently challenging, and teachers are the best gauge of whether the students can be pushed more or less. Let high school students be high school students and let them build their foundations of knowledge rather than to rush rush rush through volumes of information leading to a high-stakes test at such an early age of development. Let’s foster a love for learning, not a love for high scores on standardized tests. Claire Law, M.S. Educational Consultant, E. Greenwich, RI

Claire Law, Educational Consultat at Educational Avenues, at 12:19 pm EDT on August 16, 2005

Measurement

How would we measure such things as the spirit of learning? How would universities identify good students?

Outside of AP (and IB), grades vary widely; different teachers have different standards, likewise for different schools and districts and states. The courses don’t cover nearly the same material (just look at the different reading list for two high school english classes, or the list of mathmatic concepts in a calculus class; it is often different from one year to the next with the same teacher in the same school).

Universities need to know their students’ capabilities for placement, as well as admissions.

The AP standard makes it possible to make a quantitative, and I might add, accurate, estimate of a student’s knowlage and ability in an area.

Kevin, Undergraduate, at 4:59 am EDT on August 17, 2005

Bob, Google “Saul Geiser” and the report should be the 4th or 5th entry.

Mommy, at 3:20 pm EDT on August 17, 2005

Is an AP course necessary?

An interesting debate. At the school where I teach we encourage our honors students to take the AP tests in subjects that interest them. We do not offer AP courses. A high percentage of the students who attempt the tests earn a 4 or 5. Why exactly would a separate course be necesssary? Parents sometimes incorrectly believe students can’t get into college without them, but that hasn’t been the case at all.

Denise Granniss, Reading High School, at 9:18 pm EDT on August 18, 2005