Last month, “SCD” asked about the value of Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses:
Our school struggles with A.P. and I.B. courses. They are looked at highly by colleges, so any school of size can’t really NOT offer them. But there are many problems with the courses and tests, which you have only touched on. I would love to read a high school teacher’s view on things. I know the District has to pay for special training for A.P. and I.B. teachers. I would like to hear more about what goes on in that training and whether it is useful.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I’ve taken A.P. courses and received college credit for a couple of them. I’ve also taught A.P. Language and Composition and attended A.P. training sessions for professional development. While I adored teaching A.P. Language and Composition, my subjective sample size of one is hardly statistically significant, so I spoke with administrators and teachers tasked with deciding whether to offer A.P. or I.B. courses at their own schools.
A.P. and I.B. classes and exams are similar, but not identical, and the choice between one or the other is a matter of student preference and course availability. Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in Maryland and CollegeConfidential.com have published fairly comprehensive articles about the pros and cons of both programs. For a truly in-depth examination of how A.P. and I.B. courses may contribute to increasing academic pressure on students, I recommend Amy Brecount White’s recent article, “Under Pressure.”
When taught well, A.P. and I.B. courses can offer high school students the opportunity to study college-level material while in high school. Administrators and teachers may be divided on the merits of offering A.P. courses, but they agree that secondary schools feel pressure to offer them to appear academically rigorous.
Some high schools offer a full range of A.P. courses, some have declined to offer them at all (students are free to take A.P. exams on their own), and some have chosen an integrated approach in which A.P. courses are offered in some subjects and not others. Ben Snyder, the head of the Upper School at Noble and Greenough School, who is on sabbatical this year, explained in a phone call why the prestigious independent school outside Boston has chosen an integrated approach to Advanced Placement courses.
“We don’t have a schoolwide policy on Advanced Placement,” he said, “because we have decided let the people with the requisite academic training and expertise in their subject area decide whether or not the A.P. coursework is appropriate. Consequently, we offer a full range of A.P. courses in math because our math teachers are satisfied with the A.P. curriculum. However, we have opted not to offer A.P. coursework in foreign languages because our language teachers feel the A.P. courses lack sufficient emphasis on oral proficiency.”
While A.P. courses are one way to show colleges that a student is willing to take on advanced material, more is not always better. “When students enroll in a full course load of A.P.s in an attempt to get a leg up in college admissions, I believe it’s naive, and worse, it can be truly unhealthy,” Mr. Snyder said.
Jay Mathews, an education columnist at The Washington Post, has spent years researching and writing about Advanced Placement coursework, and he agrees that loading up on A.P. classes may not be worth it in the final analysis. For students seeking admission to highly selective schools, three to five A.P. courses can be great. More than that, he wrote in The Post, “will almost never make you more attractive to those colleges that reject more students than they accept. Your chances with them depend on your SAT or ACT scores, the depth of your extracurricular activities, the warmth of your teacher recommendations and your grade-point average compared with other students at your school applying to the same college.”
As for whether A.P. courses and their attendant financial costs are “worth it” for school districts, the teachers and administrators I spoke with are divided, mostly on economic lines. While A.P. courses offer a great supplement to the average high school curriculum, they are a luxury many schools can’t afford. There are far too many teachers in this country who lack basic training for high-school-level courses, let alone college-level material. In school districts that lack funding for professional development, it does not make sense to push the focus off effective high-school-level training in favor of Advanced Placement training.
However, Mr. Mathews disagreed with me on this point. “The training of A.P. and I.B. teachers is quite good. It helps them see ways to present content imaginatively, and is much better than the standard professional development course that passes for training these days.”
A.P. courses are, for the most part, rigorous, challenging and demanding, and can be a real boon to students motivated by intellectual curiosity and a love of learning. For students looking to please their parents or for those in pursuit of transcript padding and other false academic idols, A.P. courses can be an unpleasant and unhealthy slog. Therefore, in deciding whether or not an A.P. class is “worth it,” students and parents must figure their own motivations and values into the equation.