<p>Our private school is thinking of doing away with AP, and just sticking with the Honors designation that overlaps. The teachers don’t like having to teach to the test, and they think that the school’s reputation will make up for any perceived “deficit.” It’s in the future, though, won’t affect my kids.</p>
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<p>No argument, but the key words are “It depends on the school system.”
That’s far less true of AP’s and IB’s.</p>
<p>Ditto what Drive said. Many private schools are moving away from APs. At the prep school my daughter attended (Interlochen) the courses did not have AP designation, but at the end of the year the teachers prepared the kids for the AP exam. At S’s prep school, an occasional sophomore took an AP course (if recommended by a faculty member), many juniors might have 1 or 2 APs and seniors might have 1 to 3 APs. S graduated with a total of 5. When I first joined this forum, I was absolutely shocked that so many kids had APs in the double digits. I had never heard of such a thing. The regular courses at my kids’ schools were quite rigorous, and the AP courses were extremely challenging. There was absolutely no expectation that a kid would take APs across the board (i.e. in all the Eng/history areas as well as math/science). The kids tended to go with the APs in their areas of interest and strength. I really think that is how it should be.</p>
<p>What are the facts:</p>
<p>AP courses are designed to mimic first year college courses.</p>
<p>The AP examination is a nationwide standardized test.</p>
<p>Conclusion 1: The student must be highly motivated.
Conclusion 2: The teacher must be competent.</p>
<p>This is because consistently poor performance on the AP exam by a majority
of students reflects poor teaching or poor teacher knowledge of the material.
Although some students are unmotivated or do not belong there, many
belong there and their AP exam results will reflect teaching ability.</p>
<p>In many communities, particularly in California, this discourages teachers from wanting to teach AP courses, since it is the only time their performance is graded. Placing the name “Honors” on a course is totally subjective. Some are wonderful and some are terrible, but since there is no AP exam the course goes on in perpetuity.</p>
<p>I agree that their should be no pressure to take these courses, but jazzymom
is correct in the pressure placed on students by the UC system in California.</p>
<p>What is the solution? Encourage your child to take the most advanced course load that can be reasonably handled. If your son is not too mature,
AP History will either mature him quickly or depress him. You must discuss
how hard he is willing to work. If he decides no, let it go. </p>
<p>I find it somewhat discouraging when a student is relegated to five AP courses in a senior semester. This does not make for much of a life.
Enjoy what remains of your family time. Engage in a sport. Daydream.</p>
<p>The goal of AP courses should be to introduce the mature student to the rigor of college level courses, not substitute for college.</p>
<p>Absolutely, Scidoc. College is for college courses. This overemphasis on AP courses, at the expense of everything else, is just ridiculous.</p>
<p>It just bothers me that it turns into a big competition with schools vying to have the most students taking the exams. So then it becomes a competition with students and parents who ask you in the grocery store line “How many AP’s is little Johnny taking? My Suzy is taking 15. I don’t know how she does it.”</p>
<p>In our school everybody knows yu don’t stand a chance of graduating in the top 10% if you don’t start taking AP’s in Soph. year. I just think a lot of kids aren’t ready for a college level class at age 15 but are being suckered into thinking they will be considered dumb or won’t get in college if they don’t do it.</p>
<p>The funny thing is almost all of the college bound kids here don’t have any elite college aspirations. The vast majority (even the top 10) attend in-state public u’s. They more than likely would have gotten into these same schools whether they took 3 or 5 or 9 AP’s.</p>
<p>"Instead, I see my D squeeze in every minute of her senior day reading 3-4 chapters of AP Biology, answering 20 essay questions for AP Lit, studying 5 chapters for AP Calculus…all in one night after coming home at 7pm because of her ECs!!! "</p>
<p>seriously? starting that much hw after 7 everyday or was this a bad day? Plus, my calc book has like 9 chapters we are studying…your DD must have like 100 if shes doing 5 chapters a night of calc.</p>
<p>As for my view on APs, I like them. My school only has about 6 so I don’t need to overload myself. We also don’t start until Junior year. Most strong kids take 2 in Junior year and another 2 or 3 Senior year. We do have block scheduling however which is not exactly the best for loading up on APs. I do like APs b/c it has mostly serious and mature students that are respected more by the teacher (respect FROM a teacher is incredibly important). But I can understand that kids can feel overloaded by APs at other schools.</p>
<p>My S honestly didn’t appear to be studying much more for his APs than he did for his other classes & his teachers were awesome. Most kids at this HS get 5s & a few 4s on the AP exams ALL have to take if they take the course. He never read multiple chapters of any of his AP texts in any night that I was aware of & they did cover the entire text in each of his classes.</p>
<p>One problem I see with so many taking AP…what about the top kids, will they be as challenged as they could be? Will the pace, or level of material be compromised because kids who perhaps shouldn’t be in APs, are? Or doesn’t it matter since they’re mostly teaching to the test anyway? </p>
<p>Recently ran into oldest S’s former 9th grade Honors English teacher, who told me 9th gr H English currently is “ruined” (his word). Because there are now 60 kids in it (class of about 300-350). In contrtast S was one of just 7 who tested in as a freshman several years ago…the amount and depth of material taught can’t possibly be the same. And since these kids end up in AP English that will follow through AP. Seems not fair to the top kids, esp if they aren’t unable to take college courses in hs (I don’t think that’s too common still in our hs).</p>
<p>fwiw my S said college courses, at his college at least, are FAR more difficult that hs APs. Wonder if others have had similar experience.</p>
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ha… yeah, at the end of 6th grade, my teacher asked if I wanted to take pre-algebra over the summer, and of course I didn’t want too, so I didn’t.
I ended up feeling “behind” because of it even now, 7 years later :/</p>
<p>I didn’t realize that my high school was all that competitive until I found out in college. there were freshmen taking language APs, sophomores taking up to 3, and it was normal for juniors and seniors to take 5-6 APs. I don’t think it was the school that was shoving APs down students’ throats, but more of the competition between students and the mentality that you had to take the most APs possible.</p>
<p>I did feel sometimes that AP classes taught strictly to get students to pass the test rather than going more in depth into the material. it was common for my teachers to say “I don’t think this will be on the AP test so we won’t cover this.”</p>
<p>but still I do feel that AP tests helped me prepare for those 3 hour long midterms in college :/</p>
<p>Let’s not forget, that a VAST MAJORITY of students get into college of their choice, without great grades or APs. Kids who take boatloads of APs are usually aiming higher: prestige Us, well-known privates, the Ivys. So if you truly think APs are being shoved down your child’s throat unnecessarily – and that ‘honors’ or ‘regular’ will do just fine, then by all means encourage your kids to avoid the APs. If they have decent grades and test scores they will likely get into your state U. </p>
<p>But for many of us, AP courses are the only realistic preparation for college-level work. In my children’s high school, ‘regular’ courses are generally of very low quality catering to the lower-end of average students, and ‘honors’ courses are honors in name only. For example in my D’s 2nd year honors Spanish they watched Evita and La Bamba. None of the kids could so much as conjugate a simple past tense. She didn’t start truly studying the language until she switched to AP. Her honors history teacher, the football coach, was caught by surprise when a kid pointed out that Berlin is now the capitol of Germany. And I can assure you, my D would not have been prepared for college-level writing – even a basic freshman ‘college writing’ course – without AP English, because of the generally accepted mediocrity in her ‘honors’ classes.</p>
<p>The problem isn’t AP. The problem is low standards in the other classes.</p>
<p>It’s true that HSs have to teach the children who are there. If the HS has the vast majority of its kids who don’t plan to do much academically past HS or perhaps community college, there is really not much point for the school to try to put much effort into the college prep. The public HS I graduated from has changed greatly – when I graduated in the 70s, nearly everyone went on to the local flagship U or higher; now I believe it’s a majority who don’t do much beyond HS.
The private HS my kids attend have 99% of the kids going on to 4-year colleges, often top-tier & some mid-tier, with about 10-20% staying in-state. The AP courses prepare them well for college, but so does the “regular” track, which the school encourages for students & families who don’t feel that AP/Honors are right for them.</p>
<p>Lol, my S’s APUSH teacher was the head football coach. S got a 5 on the exam. Next time he saw the teacher/coach,the coach jokingly said “S, couldn’t you have done a little better on that exam?” to which S replied “I did the best I could considering I had the football coach for a teacher!”</p>
<p>His AP Stats teacher was a football coach too.</p>
<p>Seriously though, there is a shortage of good teachers. A recent article in our newspaper said that last year of all the universities in our state (NC) there were only 3 Physics education graduates…in the whole state!</p>
<p>I hate taking AP classes. They kill my GPA. I’m not sure if it is the teachers or if it is that I’m really bad at them. All I have gotten so far on AP tests are 3’s. It is not like I’m a dumb person or something. I have a good SAT score and have a solid GPA in all of my non-AP classes.</p>
<p>Being entitled to teach APs is an honor at our kids’ HS. The physics teacher has a PhD (has been teaching physics at the HS for >30 years); there is another teacher here with a physics PhD from Harvard, but since he’s pretty new at the school, he teaches where there are openings in math/science. The kids really seem to like the AP physics teacher–so much that there are lots of kids taking AP physics B in JR year & C in SR year, all from the same teacher. Because of the strength of the math/science depts at the private HS, the grads have a very solid foundation in college, even in math, science, engineering & premed.</p>
<p>Wow, at my school it’s the exact opposite. We’re not encouraged to take APs at all… in fact, it’s extremely hard to get into an AP class. I go to a small, very competitive private school though.
I think this has put me and a lot of my classmates at a disadvantage when it comes to college admissions because the colleges want to see endless APs like kids at public schools have but at a school like mine it’s impossible even for the brightest students. Unlike most public/lower tier private HSs in my area (which is actually known for “top-notch” public schools), honors classes at my HS actually are really difficult, and CP classes are no breeze either.
AP classes at my school are usually limited to about 10 (usually less) students. The AP Bio teacher this year wanted to further weed out students (after they had already taken a test to get into the class, and gotten the A in honors Bio, and recs from teachers) even though there were only 9 students in the class to begin with.
Another thing- if anyone at my school got a 3 on an AP exam at my school they’d be horrified. The APUSH class last year had every single person except 1 get a 5 (the other got a 4). Very similar numbers in the other classes.</p>
<p>Most of the classes at my kids HS are small–the only large ones are ones that are designed that way (band, orchestra, choir, theater). AP classes tend to be under 20 & sometimes as small as just 2-5 students. Teachers generally allow students to take the class as long as they get the needed approvals & are willing to work hard.</p>
<p>Well, my D is taking 5 AP courses now in her senior year. By choice. No one, including me, told her that she had to, or that she should. In fact, I thought she should take a lighter load as she works part-time, plays two varsity sports and edits the school paper, and it is her senior year. Is her GPA as high as it could be without all these high-level classes? No. Is she learning? Oh, yes. Is she developing a level of self-confidance seen in much older students? Definately. Does she feel ready for college? She wants to leave tomorrow. With her full scholarship.</p>
<p>So I say, if it’s what they want, why not? Why be bored for 10 months when you can actually get an education! After all, isn’t that what we want most for our kids, to enjoy the challenge and to love learning?</p>
<p>But on the other hand, if she was told that she HAD to take these classes, her attitude may be a lot different. I’m just glad that she had the choice, and that the options were available for her.</p>
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<pre><code>So true. At our hs, though, the AP classes are taught by the best teachers so the one sure way to avoid getting “yo, coach” as a teacher is to avoid the nonhonors, nonAP classes wherever possible. And as you said, even the honors courses are very uneven and can be no more challenging than regular classes, all depending on the teacher. One of the reasons my soph son finds his first AP class so stressful and demanding is that he was not prepared for that level of rigor in any of his so-called honors classes as a freshman.
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I certainly agree with this. I wanted son to take less AP’s his senior year. He worked, played varsity sport and bottom line was I wanted him to have some free time. I remember my high school years as fun–can’t say that he ever really felt that way. Everything was so organized–practice now, study at X time, EC time at X, work from A to B o’clock. I honestly felt sorry for many of the higher performing kids—they didn’t get to be kids. Gosh I sound old!!</p>
<p>Back to quote. Son insisted on the AP classes for two reasons–1. Felt he needed “most rigorous” schedule for college application and 2. He didn’t want to be in the “regular” class(es) because the kids just goofed off and nothing was expected of them.</p>