How much time does your HS spend in covering the AP E&M?
Our school covers both topics in one year, but the teacher spends only 2 months for E&M, I wonder whether it is common.
Does the school claim that the class will prepare students for both the Mechanics and E&M exams? If the school is preparing for both exams, it should be dividing the time from the start of the school year until 5/11 (the week before the AP exam) into approximate halves. As a point of reference, my HS I attended spends about 15 weeks on E&M.
Yes, the school claims that AP courses will prepare students for the AP exams, this AP course is designed to cover both, I was concerned as they teacher just began E&M and is rushing through the material. Every year, we have less than 20% of the students took the AP E&M exam.
I wonder, in general, how successful it is for a school to cover both.
The better question is how successful your school is. Assuming that the same teacher taught the class in previous years, you should ask for the score distributions on past AP exams.
^^I did. We have a new teacher this year. However, I checked with the previous teacher, in the past 7 years, we had less than 20% of the students took the AP E&M. About 90% of those who took the exam got 4 or 5. (The teacher gave me the exact number of students, the percentage is my rough estimate).
This new teacher is first time teaching the course. I plan to raise the issue to the school, but not sure whether the problem is the material being too demanding in general as I saw many schools are spending a full year for E&M, or that the teacher is learning as he teaches. (Based on my DD told me, the teacher could spend one class period to do a single problem).