Jump to content

Menu

College board revamping AP (article from NYT)


Recommended Posts

I had heard that AP Bio and US History curricula were being restructured. This article in the NY Times provides more information.

 

My issue with AP has been that depth is sacrificed for breadth. Apparently I am not alone. Specifics on these two new AP Exams (for the 2012/13 school year) are forthcoming.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for this, nice to feel validated!!! Too late for us on the Bio., since we are doing it this year. I have been v. frustrated about the lack of time that we have to do synthesis-type projects or problem sets. (The dd is the one who chose to go this route.) The MIT OCS has some really interesting things to do (mostly on the quizzes and tests and work sheets). Next year, we may be going for AP Calc. but, I'd really rather not. US History seems to allow for more creativity, especially in writing assignments. I'm reluctant to pursue any Lit/Writing on the AP level. That way we get to just read and analyze what we want to and get some depth and thoughtfulness in the writing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thank you, Jane! I have one for you if you did not already catch this bit of news on NPR about AP classes being eliminated at some schools...and not for budgetary reasons.

 

ETA: I just completed the article and I think the revamped program sounds promising, but still wonder if it will be enough. Staff Sargent is planning on taking APUSH next year, but it sounds like it would be beneficial for him to hold off until his senior year.

 

Jane, recently I read Fahrenheit 451 for the first time.:blushing: Do you remember the part where the fire chief is talking to the protagonist? The chief mentions something about stuffing people so full of facts at school that they feel full but there is no real sustenance. I don't remember the exact wording, but I do remember thinking it it sounded a lot like AP courses.

Edited by swimmermom3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I had heard that AP Bio and US History curricula were being restructured. This article in the NY Times provides more information.

 

My issue with AP has been that depth is sacrificed for breadth. Apparently I am not alone. Specifics on these two new AP Exams (for the 2012/13 school year) are forthcoming.

 

I can't connect to this article. Is it saying that they're going from from depth to breadth? I did ask a girl I know who took AP English at our school, and she said they read full books except for things such as Emerson, where they read selected essays. Is that what others were upset about, or did they mean excerpts of everything?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can't connect to this article. Is it saying that they're going from from depth to breadth? I did ask a girl I know who took AP English at our school, and she said they read full books except for things such as Emerson, where they read selected essays. Is that what others were upset about, or did they mean excerpts of everything?

 

Hopefully going from breadth to depth. Harder to test if there is not standard curriculum content so one wonders how the tests will change.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can't connect to this article. Is it saying that they're going from from depth to breadth? I did ask a girl I know who took AP English at our school, and she said they read full books except for things such as Emerson, where they read selected essays. Is that what others were upset about, or did they mean excerpts of everything?

 

Karin there's another post about the exam changes. It seems that they'll be changing bio and history first and then a few others will follow. I think the English exam and math exams aren't in the plan for revision right now. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It still doesn't address what I think is the biggest problem: the over-influence that the Collegeboard exercises on high school education. Personally, I wish AP would go away altogether. We have played the AP game successfully, but I don't think it has improved my kids' educations.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Laurie4b, My older daughter (soph. in college) agrees with you on that. I think the biggest draw of AP classes in PS is that they offer the best teachers and a decent intellectual challenge as well as a good shot at a decent GPA. In our hs case, taking the AP tests may be a way to validate our curriculum choices. We are not doing out side classes so, we need as much validation as we can get.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hopefully going from breadth to depth. Harder to test if there is not standard curriculum content so one wonders how the tests will change.
Hmm, I wonder if they will change the standard curriculum content as well down the road.

 

Karin there's another post about the exam changes. It seems that they'll be changing bio and history first and then a few others will follow. I think the English exam and math exams aren't in the plan for revision right now. :)

 

Thanks. This may not affect my eldest who will be taking math and hopefully Chemistry' date=' but it will affect my middle dd who is most likely to take AP History English, although she doesn't think so now (but she's still 12.)

It still doesn't address what I think is the biggest problem: the over-influence that the Collegeboard exercises on high school education. Personally, I wish AP would go away altogether. We have played the AP game successfully, but I don't think it has improved my kids' educations.

Interesting. I think that one of the problems we now face in our state is the recent lowering of educational standards due to the No Child Left Behind act. This makes the honours and AP classes more appealing to many. I think a good honours program that is well done might be better, but the problem lies in the vast differences in what constitutes an honours course. For many homeschoolers, I don't think it improves their education. Do you have to take an approved AP course in order to take the exam?

Laurie4b, My older daughter (soph. in college) agrees with you on that. I think the biggest draw of AP classes in PS is that they offer the best teachers and a decent intellectual challenge as well as a good shot at a decent GPA. In our hs case, taking the AP tests may be a way to validate our curriculum choices. We are not doing out side classes so, we need as much validation as we can get.

 

This is the case here, I think. Also, the honours courses they have draw good teachers (but there are a few good ones who teach the Academic classes)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can't connect to this article. Is it saying that they're going from from depth to breadth? I did ask a girl I know who took AP English at our school, and she said they read full books except for things such as Emerson, where they read selected essays. Is that what others were upset about, or did they mean excerpts of everything?

 

My understanding is that they are moving from breadth to depth. As Jane pointed out, this is going to be more difficult to quantify. However, in the long run, if the board can pull it off in courses like biology students should benefit. It shifts the emphasis from how much information can you hold to what meaningful connections can you make with the information that you are holding. For example, in AP English Literature there are thousands of works a student could know but they are required to know intimately just a handful of novels, short stories, poems, and dramas in order to demonstrate their critical ability. This makes sense and allows teachers and a level of flexibility that is not available in some of the science and history courses.

 

In contrast, the amount of information to be covered in a science course, where content grows exponentially yearly, or in a history course is truly staggering. I combed through nearly a dozen AP World History syllabi in an attempt to build a world history course for my dd who has been traditionally schooled all of her life. She knows bits and pieces from major areas (somehow skipped Romans:tongue_smilie:) but there is no connecting fiber for what she knows. I concluded that using that AP format was a waste of our time because dd genuinely wants a basic understanding of world history. We are examining many of the overarching themes presented in the AP test but we are taking our time with them. The best example of how I think these tests go wrong is the World History syllabi that I saw that covered the major world religions in a week. There is an overarching theme regarding world religions and the teacher gets a week to cover it! There was even an AP World History course built for a semester.:001_huh: When you think of how much time has to be spent just mastering the nuts and bolts of taking an AP test let alone mastering the contents, the whole thing is laughable.

 

Laurie4b, My older daughter (soph. in college) agrees with you on that. I think the biggest draw of AP classes in PS is that they offer the best teachers and a decent intellectual challenge as well as a good shot at a decent GPA. In our hs case, taking the AP tests may be a way to validate our curriculum choices. We are not doing out side classes so, we need as much validation as we can get.

 

This is a huge point. The disparity between the content and instruction in a standard class and an AP class is growing creating numerous difficulties for an average student.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting. I think that one of the problems we now face in our state is the recent lowering of educational standards due to the No Child Left Behind act. This makes the honours and AP classes more appealing to many. I think a good honours program that is well done might be better, but the problem lies in the vast differences in what constitutes an honours course. For many homeschoolers, I don't think it improves their education. Do you have to take an approved AP course in order to take the exam?

 

 

)

No, you don't have to take an AP course to take the exam, but you can't call it an AP course unless it is approved by the college board. Where ds has applied, your scores on AP are not part of the application process--they come after you have been accepted to determine whether the college will award credit. So we called non-AP approved classes "honors".

 

I am just opposed in my gut to constantly raising the bar at each age, from K for which students are supposed to be "prepared" by knowing their letters, numbers, etc and are expected to read (We *learned* that stuff in 1st grade) to high schoolers being expected to take college courses.

 

I've wondered if the alarming disparity between male and female college students is due in part to boys not being willing to jump through hoops to the same extent that girls are. On one large state university ds applied to, this year's freshman class was 30% boys.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

I've wondered if the alarming disparity between male and female college students is due in part to boys not being willing to jump through hoops to the same extent that girls are. On one large state university ds applied to, this year's freshman class was 30% boys.

 

You might be right. I've lifted a quote from Regentrude from a different thread on the AL forum (she teaches at the postsecondary level). It's at the college level, but I think it supports the idea that girls may tend to have better skills to help them jump through the hoops. I have only included part of the quote, because the thread wasn't about the same topic, and this reply was definitely about something else.

 

My experience as a college instructor suggests that - as I wrote previously- a large contributor to student success are time management, work ethic and study habits. On average, my female students are more diligent, attend class more regularly, have a higher homework completion rate. That goes a very long way towards success (and may outweigh natural aptitude), particularly since college instructors are strongly encouraged to give points for homework and attendance instead of simply testing cumulative mastery in one final exam.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think that conceiving of the change in terms of breadth to depth is a bit overstated. From the 1400 page textbooks that are standard in biology, it sounds as if the new curricula will "only" be covering about 800 pages. So yes, it's a huge reduction of what was typical, but I can't see that with 800 pages, labs, and practice tests to get through there will be all that much time for exploratory learning or true depth.

 

On the other hand, just about any change has got to be an improvement on the ridiculous amount of factoids kids need to know for the tests. The labs certainly sounded like an improvement over the identify-this-tissue-from-this-premade-slide example the article used.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think that conceiving of the change in terms of breadth to depth is a bit overstated. From the 1400 page textbooks that are standard in biology, it sounds as if the new curricula will "only" be covering about 800 pages. So yes, it's a huge reduction of what was typical, but I can't see that with 800 pages, labs, and practice tests to get through there will be all that much time for exploratory learning or true depth.

 

On the other hand, just about any change has got to be an improvement on the ridiculous amount of factoids kids need to know for the tests. The labs certainly sounded like an improvement over the identify-this-tissue-from-this-premade-slide example the article used.

 

Completely agreeing with you, KarenAnne. Although, from my perch, I see changes to the "dirty dozen", the twelve mandatory AP labs, as potentially noteworthy. My friends who teach biology at both the high school and college level have strongly objected to the standard twelve which assume a certain amount of funding for lab materials and completely dismiss any possibility for taking advantage of a local ecosystem or issue. At this point, the specifics of the changes have not been released so one can only hope...

 

Jane

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You might be right. I've lifted a quote from Regentrude from a different thread on the AL forum (she teaches at the postsecondary level). It's at the college level, but I think it supports the idea that girls may tend to have better skills to help them jump through the hoops. I have only included part of the quote, because the thread wasn't about the same topic, and this reply was definitely about something else.

 

Originally Posted by regentrude

My experience as a college instructor suggests that - as I wrote previously- a large contributor to student success are time management, work ethic and study habits. On average, my female students are more diligent, attend class more regularly, have a higher homework completion rate. That goes a very long way towards success (and may outweigh natural aptitude), particularly since college instructors are strongly encouraged to give points for homework and attendance instead of simply testing cumulative mastery in one final exam.

 

 

Yes, I think this is part of it. My sons want to know why they are being asked to do something and if it does not relate to real life in an obvious way, it may not be much of a priority to them. They are much more likely to be comfortable blowing it off than I would have been at their age. They have great work ethics when their perception is that the work they are doing is meaningful. It's much harder to get them to work at maximum capacity if their perception is that artificial hoops have been created. I don't think this is necessarily a flaw; it may actually be a strength.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My kids have done a total of 12 AP exams, and we expect the younger two to do probably eight more. We like AP classes; we like AP exams. So now you all know our bias, here are some comments that have been running around our dinner table about the changes to AP exams:

 

1) Hopefully the "breadth versus depth" changes aren't an excuse to water down the test. Enough things are being dumbed down these days in the education world; we don't need more lowering of standards. (The SAT "re-norming" was a way to deal with the fact that despite the SAT questions getting easier over time, the scores just kept getting lower.....)

 

2) AP classes require both background and brains. Way back when, only the truly "top" students took AP classes. In the 80's in my wealthy town with a school system that regularly sent 2-4% of its students to Ivies and sent other students to top LAC's and military academies, only the top 10-15% of students took AP's. In contrast, currently in our town 50% of sophomores take AP human geography. There is no way that 1/2 of all the students in my school district have what it takes to succeed in an AP class.

 

3) When I told my kids that the AP tests supposedly don't test connections and understanding, they were flabbergasted. They completely disagree with that statement! Yes, there are facts, but the questions on the AP exam require the student to "use" the facts, not merely regurgitate them. (No, my kids haven't taken AP bio, so I have no experience with that exam.)

 

4) If the new exams do in fact reflect lower standards, the College Board may well be killing the AP program. Already top private schools who have the reputation and who don't need the CB stamp of approval on their program allow their teachers to teach what delights them and challenges the students rather than AP classes. Already many top colleges do not give credit for AP scores, while lower-ranked colleges often use CLEP exams instead of AP exams for credit. If the new exams lower the standards, the AP label will become meaningless.

 

5) As a homeschooler, I have enjoyed the AP program. The courses are challenging and I know what will be covered; the exams provide outside verification of academic achievement. (I know that community college can provide many of the same benefits, but it isn't an option for everybody all the time.) If the AP program falters, will there be a standardized way for homeschoolers to demonstrate their academic achievement?

 

JMHO!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree 100 % Gwen! My kids have had great experiences with AP classes and you need in-depth understanding to do well on the tests.

 

At least the language tests are definitely being dumbed down. APs gave our kids a chance to stand out and show they excelled and that is going to be harder with the new tests.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
Guest Erick Tait

Whatever the structure of the AP Exams, it would be wise to start your studying early. I’m taking the AP US History Exam and found some great guidelines at Shmoop. Their study material is really very comprehensive. I think it would be better if you stop worrying about the structure of the Exam and get down to the basics. Once you cover all the topics it doesn’t really matter how the questions are framed. Best of luck!:thumbup1:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...