Phantom AP Study Lurks

Jay Matthews:

We yearn so much for data on the Advanced Placement program -- a powerful influence on high schools today -- that one of the most cited pieces of recent AP research actually does not yet exist, at least in any published form.

This is the report on AP and college science courses by Philip M. Sadler and Robert H. Tai. The only publicly available account of what they found is a Harvard News Office press release with the headline: "High school AP courses do not predict college success in science." They argue that students who took AP science in high school do not do as well in college science courses as AP advocates say they should, and that taking AP science in high school may hurt science education by letting more students avoid college biology, chemistry and physics.

I might have left this issue alone until Sadler and Tai had their work published, but their conclusions are so provocative that the Harvard press release, and the powerpoint slides they used at a February meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, have already been cited in several news articles and at least one book, Alfie Kohn's "The Homework Myth." Kohn is one of the most fastidious writers I know, always checking and footnoting his sources. If he thinks it is okay to cite this study before it is published, then it is time to discuss it in this column, which claims to be on top of all things AP. The Sadler-Tai work deserves close attention for many reasons, one of them being I think it is being given more credence than it deserves, at least in its fetal state.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at December 1, 2006 4:46 PM
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