The Times recently ran a video about the pressures of high school advanced placement courses. This video questions the value of cramming an extreme amount of content into one high school class, and explores the motivations students have for taking these high-pressure classes.
I do not know a lot about advanced placement courses, other than the fact that high school students who pass them are eligible for college credit (?). From the video it appears that quality is definitely sacrificed for quantity in terms of learning, and this leads me to wonder what exactly the learning objectives of these programs are. Are they to challenge bright students who might be otherwise under-stimulated by their curriculum? To provide early exposure to college level material?
I’m also curious about college professors’ experiences with students who have taken AP courses. Are these students actually more prepared? Do they have an “edge” over other students?
The issue of AP courses is particularly salient to me at the moment, as I am teaching a “College Now” course. These courses are held at CUNY campuses and the form, content, and expectations are all the same as with any other college course. However, the students are all in high school. I am only into my second week of the first semester of this experience, and so far things are going very well. Of course it’s too soon to have formulated any opinion, and I look forward to posting more about this innovative program later in the semester.
In the meantime, please share your thoughts about AP work and similar programs. I also hope this post opens up a discussion about the differences between high school and college level teaching and learning.
At the risk of sounding like a real old-timer, my experience with AP classes (as a HS student at Murrow in Brooklyn) was very close to the way one of the teachers describes AP classes in their ideal form (at the end of the clip). Taking one or two AP classes in the subjects you’re passionate about is a great way to immerse yourself in a subject area that goes beyond the usual HS-level fare, and with very different expectations. I learned incredible discipline (and study skills) from my AP European History class (lecture sessions at 7am with requisite trips to the bagel store before), and while it was a lot of work, I certainly wasn’t taking five AP courses at once and no one around me was, either.
This is just a positive academic memory of mine, but doesn’t begin to touch on the complicated questions regarding tracking, achievement gaps, college preparedness, and whether colleges are even accepting AP credit now and how they go about doing it. But judging from this little video clip, it’s spun out of control in the last decade or so– if these problems really are found across the board. Why would a student need to take *every* AP class offered to them, as the admissions officer admitted she had counseled many students to do? (Whatever happened to joining the newspaper?) There’s a good chance too that certain school environments already amped-up and crazed about college admissions in general would provide a dangerously fertile ground for dysfunctional AP testing.
I, too, have heard recent concerns that not all students who take AP classes do well on the exam. I do think there’s value in having some classes that move at a much faster (college-level) pace. I remember, like Hillary, taking AP US History as a junior and really relishing the intensity of that course in high contrast to many of my other HS experiences. That said, I am now the parent of a HS junior who’s taking a couple of those courses and I think the reasons are complex, ranging from peer cohort to competitiveness of college applications to interest to the need for challenge.
AP courses let colleges know that a student can sustain momentum and interest and learning capacity at a higher level – but college courses are 14-16 weeks and an AP course is something like 35 – and that’s a long time to run at sprint pace!
To address the question mark in your original post – students can earn college credit only for a grade above a 3 (out of 5) on the standardized AP exam (regardless of their HS transcript grade in the class itself). This arguably helps college admissions believe that all students who have done this have some common foundation in that subject matter. In practice, it tends to concentrate a year of effort on one high-stakes test (with single-digit scoring!) – which is really not the educational experience we necessarily want students to take as their model for college-level learning.
AP classes like all else in life has many benefits and drawbacks. One of the problems that students face is the idea of learn and dump. They enjoy the idea of getting ahead on their college education, and do so at the expense of receiving a full understanding of the course material. However, the testing requirements do help with ensuring that students have learned sufficient to receive college credit.
A positive factor AP classes play in the life of high school students is the idea that they have achieved something unique. They are able to take special responsibilities and grow in personal discipline. These characteristics don’t count toward college credit, but they certainly do count in life, which should be the true goal of education.
I wonder how across-the-board this trend is. Is it a suburban phenomenon? Are students in NYC public schools expected to take a million AP courses? When I was in a NYC HS a million years ago, taking AP courses was the exception, and not the norm.
Oh, and Diana, the college we both went to only gave credit if you earned a “5″ (the top score). I actually think that was a smart rule. Even though I didn’t get credit for a number of AP courses that I had ostensibly “passed,” in retrospect I don’t think they were equivalent to college courses. The one AP course I did get credit for was like an extra special bonus.