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AP Classes
Please realize that I'm making a generalization based on a certain demographic. This is not absolute nor can it be applied elsewhere.
Basically, the Advanced Placement system is very flawed. AP classes are supposed to offer classes for students who are especially interested or advanced in a certain subject area the opportunity to take a college-level course. This is not happening, as is obvious from fewer and fewer colleges accepting good AP test scores as grounds to skip a class.
The main cause of this problem is a parent/student problem. The parent and the student see AP classes as an avenue for the student to get into better colleges. The problem is that when you have parents who are pushing for their children to be allowed in AP classes who aren't necessarily ready, the system breaks. When a teacher has a class where a few of the students are capable of AP level work and the rest aren't, it creates a dilemma. Do you let the kids who aren't ready fail, or do you lower the bar so that they can pass? On the one hand, failing half a class doesn't look good politically. On the other hand, lowering the bar harms the students that are capable of higher level work but are never pushed to their full potential. But the downside to the latter choice is often ignored. After all, no failing students, no complaining parents, it looks good for the school, everyone is happy. The kids who would be getting A's are getting them anyway, albeit rather effortlessly, but there is no immediate harm.
But the harm becomes apparent later. I'd like to know, of those here that have attended or do attend a university, how many can honestly say that high school completely prepared them for college-level work? After all, even if you're not taking AP classes, CP classes are called "college preparatory" for a reason, right? They're supposed to still get you ready for the higher, more analytical aspects of college classes as well as give you a frame of reference for the kind of work you will have to do in college, right?
In every situation that I can conceive, this is not the case. Virtually every adult has memories of that first semester of college, where the first quarter "went by just like that" and left them totally unprepared for their first finals. If our schools were really doing what they were supposed to do, would there be this steep learning curve associated with college?
To make matters worse, schools are often nationally ranked based on how many students they have in AP classes, so there's no reason to make a change if the AP classes don't work. But, if they didn't work, wouldn't it show up on the AP test? There are very few AP tests that require actual analytical and thinking skills and, as a teacher, to teach your class for the sole goal of taking one objective exam isn't difficult.
So, what do you think about this? Do you accept my premise? Do you think that high school prepared you enough for the kind of work you did/do in college?
Basically, the Advanced Placement system is very flawed. AP classes are supposed to offer classes for students who are especially interested or advanced in a certain subject area the opportunity to take a college-level course. This is not happening, as is obvious from fewer and fewer colleges accepting good AP test scores as grounds to skip a class.
The main cause of this problem is a parent/student problem. The parent and the student see AP classes as an avenue for the student to get into better colleges. The problem is that when you have parents who are pushing for their children to be allowed in AP classes who aren't necessarily ready, the system breaks. When a teacher has a class where a few of the students are capable of AP level work and the rest aren't, it creates a dilemma. Do you let the kids who aren't ready fail, or do you lower the bar so that they can pass? On the one hand, failing half a class doesn't look good politically. On the other hand, lowering the bar harms the students that are capable of higher level work but are never pushed to their full potential. But the downside to the latter choice is often ignored. After all, no failing students, no complaining parents, it looks good for the school, everyone is happy. The kids who would be getting A's are getting them anyway, albeit rather effortlessly, but there is no immediate harm.
But the harm becomes apparent later. I'd like to know, of those here that have attended or do attend a university, how many can honestly say that high school completely prepared them for college-level work? After all, even if you're not taking AP classes, CP classes are called "college preparatory" for a reason, right? They're supposed to still get you ready for the higher, more analytical aspects of college classes as well as give you a frame of reference for the kind of work you will have to do in college, right?
In every situation that I can conceive, this is not the case. Virtually every adult has memories of that first semester of college, where the first quarter "went by just like that" and left them totally unprepared for their first finals. If our schools were really doing what they were supposed to do, would there be this steep learning curve associated with college?
To make matters worse, schools are often nationally ranked based on how many students they have in AP classes, so there's no reason to make a change if the AP classes don't work. But, if they didn't work, wouldn't it show up on the AP test? There are very few AP tests that require actual analytical and thinking skills and, as a teacher, to teach your class for the sole goal of taking one objective exam isn't difficult.
So, what do you think about this? Do you accept my premise? Do you think that high school prepared you enough for the kind of work you did/do in college?
Comments
On the other hand, my school still has dreadful AP test scores (no one from my school has gotten a 3+ on AP Physics in a long time), and kids probably still don't get the proper education out of it. But oh well and whatever I guess...
I would like to add a further worry, however. In my experience, many students participated in the AP classes, not in order to do well on the AP test (and therefore, hopefully, skip a class in College/University), but rather to have Colleges see that they were taking these higher level courses, and therefore be more likely to be accepted and then simply retake the class in College and get an easy A, thereby rising their GPAs. This would only be probable during senior year (since Colleges would see the AP test scores, and the grades in the AP classes from junior year).
In any case, I handled my first year of uni quite well; all it took was a slight reduction in laziness and doing things I wanted to do.
Anyway, the system is flawed, but not nearly as broken as you make it out to be. I hate this idea of being "unqualified" to take an AP course. Even if people aren't at the level of the class, there's no reason one shouldn't be given every opportunity to take it. People who would do poorly in AP classes generally don't take them, so it's not unreasonable to have no restrictions and expect everybody who enrolls to be prepared for the difficulty. If you can't handle it, you can always drop out, but to prevent someone from taking a class they want to take is contrary to the purpose of school in the first place: to provide the best academic community they can.
To say that "the AP classes don't work" displays a deep misunderstanding of the philosophy of APs, IBs, Honors, and whatever other advanced courses there are. They are meant to be precisely that: advanced courses for good students who want them. To say that they are entirely broken because they didn't completely, thoroughly, 100% prepare you for your first semester of college, or that colleges are not allowing AP students to skip classes is ridiculous. If somebody told you that's what they'd do, they were lying, and if you thought that, you were mistaken. Nothing can prepare you 100% for your first semester of college, nor should they try.
Basically, you didn't get what you expected and are now criticizing the AP courses for not delivering those expectations. It's like ordering a plain pizza, and ranting against the pizza delivery guy for not giving you pepperoni and mushrooms.
AP Biology was more thorough and challenging than any science class I would have had to take at RIT. AP Calculus C went far beyond Calc 1, 2, and 3. AP Physics C was the most challenging thing I have ever attempted in my life, and provided more intellectual stimulation than any class I ever took in college. I was 100% prepared for college long before I graduated high school.
The problem is not the AP system. The AP system is brilliant. It's just not designed to prepare you for college: it's designed so that if you're already prepared, you can skip all of the sad remedial BS that the majority of incoming college students have to take just to make up for the fact that their high schools never taught them anything. It's a skip-ahead for those who already excel. It will not help those who do not excel do so in and of itself.
The real problem, which has nothing to do with AP classes, is simply that most high schools do not prepare students for the real world in any conceivable way. A great many of the incoming students at RIT were pathetic, failing basic algebra and literature classes that barely pushed the 10th grade level. AP classes are not to blame: they're a means of escape for the smart kids who push themselves independently of those around them. If you are looking for a system that pushes students who won't push themselves, look elsewhere, but don't blame the AP program for not achieving what it was never meant to achieve.
As an example of how it can be done right, consider my high school's AP Biology class, which I took in 10th grade. It was a class of eight students, as those eight were the only ones who met the stringent requirements. We had three lectures a week, a large textbook, and a test every two weeks. That was it. No homework, no classwork: just lectures, books, and tests (exactly like college). If you didn't learn the subject matter on your own, from the text and supplemented with the lecture, then you failed. The teacher couldn't care less if you failed the tests: she would just fail you in the class. She would help you personally if you asked, but the impetus to learn was entirely on you, the student.
If you want to say that AP courses count for college credit, fine. But then why do these low-level classes taught at the colleges themselves also count for credit? By those standards, every class I took in senior year of high school should have counted as credit.
College really should not be redundant with high school in any way shape or form. I'm not paying outlandish tuitions to be re-taught the same chemistry,physics,math,literature, and history that I was taught for free in high school. If you require students to have high school diplomas to be accepted, then you should assume that they know that stuff already. If they don't, then that's their problem. If you do want to offer those courses for students who do not know the material, that's fine, but don't give college credit for it.
I mean, it's bad enough that you have to take some of these high school classes your freshman year of college. What's worse is that just about everyone I know had to waste time taking one or two of these courses during their last quarter/semester in order to meet the graduation requirements.
Absolutely every course in college should be as grueling as AP courses in high school, or worse. Anything less should be worth no credit. If you aren't ready for that, then you should hang out in community college until you are ready. We need to make school much much harder, so that diplomas from high school and college both mean something again.
My own experience with the AP courses is mixed. I signed up for AP Physics B in my last year in High School. The problem is that they fired the last teacher and forced us to take the class online. Without a lab instructor. All of our homeworks and assignments were to be faxed to an offsite teacher and the actual material was work at your own pace. I'm not going to lie, while I could have worked diligently on my assignments, we just ended up skipping pretty much every period (because it was the last one of the day). However, my AP Literature courses were probably the best courses I will ever take on the subject. The required english classes at Tech are a joke.
Also, just to add some more data, I too honors non-AP calculus in high school. It was hard, and I got about a C. At RIT, calculus 1 and 2 were a breeze. Calculus 1 was just a joke because I already knew about Nx^(n-1) beforehand. Calculus 2 was about equal to what I had in high school, but I had a TI-89 to help me as well as my previous knowledge. Calculus 3 was all new, and all hard. I failed it two times, but then got a C on my third try in the summer.
My Calculus 3 was actually a specific course for CS majors and I enjoyed it thoroughly as we were required to apply the knowledge in programming projects. My project consisted of created my own image compression algorithm.
So basically what it comes down to is: Can you teach it to yourself solely from the book? Is the Teaching Assistant competent enough to speak English and actually help you? Can you predict what the prof might put on the test? (I actually cried on my first Calc final because nothing I had studied was on it) Most people couldn't and relied on curves to pass. I would say the average scores were in the 40s-50s out of 100. I was able to glean enough information from the book to be slightly ahead of the curve and get decent grades.
And speaking of being prepared. My high school was a joke, and I am jealous of people that say their high school classes were hard (including AP) and got Bs and Cs. (Of course I am referring to people who really did take hard classes, not the average Joe that doesn't understand anything) I got As, but only because it didn't involve too much effort. They let anyone in AP classes, as long as they weren't failing anything, I guess. I was one of the rare people that ever got a 5 on any of the exams. The biggest shock for me when I got to college wasn't how "hard" the material was, but how the class structure was. For the most part, we only take tests or do projects, and that's it. No homework (graded) to rely on to raise your scores like in high school. Since I didn't have much experience studying independently for tests, this really hurt me. (Of course I realize this is my fault, too)
High school got easy, and so everyone goes to college if they want to get anywhere in life. College got easy and now they are calling masters degrees "the new bachelors."
The problem is, parents want their kids to be in the "best" tier. It's the theme in the Incredibles. "If everyone is special that just means no one is." The AP gets watered down and no one gets challenged.
So, which is it? Will students with high potential generally push themselves beyond their confines, regardless of the class? Or will a low-level class generally bore them to the point that they will lose interest in the subject? Or is it a mix of both? Should advanced classes be oriented toward challenging and pushing the student or should they just be a way for the smart kids, assuming that they'll do fine on the AP test either way, to get some college credit?