AP Juggernaut

NYT: Room for Debate

Advanced Placement classes, once open to only a very small number of top high school students around the country, have grown enormously in the past decade. The number of students taking these courses rose by nearly 50 percent to 1.6 million from 2004 to 2009. Yet in a survey of A.P. teachers released this year, more than half said that "too many students overestimate their abilities and are in over their heads." Some 60 percent said that "parents push their children into A.P. classes when they really don't belong there."

Does the growth in Advanced Placement courses serve students or schools well? Are there downsides to pushing many more students into taking these rigorous courses?

Kristin Klopfenstein, economist
Trevor Packer, College Board
Patrick Welsh, high school teacher
Philip M. Sadler, Harvard-Smithsonian Center of Astrophysics
David Wakelyn, National Governors Association
Saul Geiser, Center for Studies in Higher Education

"The original point of the A.P. program was to make college-level study possible for advanced high school students.... But now, the A.P. program has been transformed to serve many more purposes.... The new uses of A.P. are not benign..."

"Advanced placement courses and exams are appropriate choices for students who have developed the knowledge and skills to study at the college level in high school. Of course, advanced placement is not a silver bullet if a district or school merely parachutes an A.P. course into a low-performing school without having fostered academic rigor in the grades prior to the A.P.... [T]eachers are right to insist on adequate student preparation for advanced placement work. But studies have indicated that teachers' preconceived notions of student potential are often at odds with student capability...."

"The original purpose of the Advanced Placement program was a noble one.... In the last 10 years, Advanced Placement has become a game of labels and numbers, a public relations ploy used by school officials who are dumping as many students as they can into A.P. courses to create the illusion that they are raising overall standards.... [T]he College Board is shamelessly pressuring public schools by creating the impression that A.P. courses are the only ones worth taking..."

Posted by Larry Winkler at December 21, 2009 7:52 AM
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