CB: 2007 Advanced Placement Report to the Nation

[asteriskea]

<p>The College Board’s third statistical state’s study of the AP (in NY, MD, UT, VA, CA, MA, FL, CT, NC, and CO) is out. The data on its findings are in the “2007 Advanced Placement Report to the Nation: A Larger Percentage of High School Graduates Achieve High AP Standards”.</p>

<p>

The Report also highlights new independent research, which bolsters previous research findings that students who participate in AP have significantly better college grades and college graduation rates than academically and economically similar students who did not take the demanding courses and exams.

</p>

<p><a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools;

<p>Some of the findings include the following:</p>

<p>New York, Maryland, Utah, Virginia and California led the nation in 2006 in terms of the proportion of graduating seniors who could point to a score of 3 or above on an exam </p>

[asteriskea]

<p>CB officials directly addressed AP overload for the first time at the College Board’s annual release of its AP Report to the Nation in downtown Washington:</p>

<p>

“Five is plenty in a high school career. Any more, the official response suggested, might be just showing off.” …</p>

<p>Trevor Packer, executive director of the AP program, said he had spoken to a number of college officials about how many of the college-level courses were needed to impress admissions officers and prepare for the rigors of higher education. They told him that “three, four or five AP courses are sufficient” in a high school career, he said. Under that scenario, a student could max out with one AP course as a sophomore and two each in junior and senior years. “Beyond that, they are interested in seeing students participate in other activities.”

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<p><a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/06/AR2007020600738.html[/url]”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/06/AR2007020600738.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[mommusic]

<p>Anyone know how to access the reports on individual high schools? I can’t find it on the collegeboard website (State reports aren’t broken down by HS or even school district.)</p>

[ejr1]

<p>Too Many AP’s? I think this is very interesting - need only 3, 4 or 5? How do those kids keep up their GPA’s in order to get into the school of their choice? If your school ranks, it will look bad. If it doesn’t, you aren’t taking the most demanding…and so on and so on…all those topics that are being discussed on other threads. So the schools want to be selective, but the kids shouldn’t do what the schools themselves are demanding? Please…me thinks they speak mendaciously (or idealistically, but this is not an ideal world.)</p>

[sly_vt]

<p>ejr1: I think the point here is to try to stop the constant raising of the bar. If all students take 3-5 APs, then it won’t affect rank, GPA, most demanding curriculum, etc. I don’t see this happening though; at too many schools AP classes are the only challenging courses and I doubt students will ratchet down.</p>

[kriket]

<p>Florida has the highest enrollment in AP courses for 2007. Like Sly says, if you want challenging courses you must take AP.</p>

[sly_vt]

<p>I guess that’s what I said, but I don’t like it. We’ve had this discussion a lot on CC, and I think good teachers can make non-AP courses challenging, and I think taking double-digit AP courses is ridiculous. I think for most kids, 3-5 APs should be sufficient.</p>

[kluge]

<p>ejr1, you bring up an interesting point. Here in California, the UC system only “weights” 8 semesters of grades, including AP, college level, and a few approved “honors” courses. But at our local high school that wouldn’t constitute the “most challenging” course load, so it would presumably be frowned upon. As a result, if a student attends a school with a lot of higher level courses available, and takes an AP class and gets a “B” instead of an “A” in a mainstream class, they will be penalized as compared to a student at a school with fewer AP offerings. And considering the grading habits at the local school - my son got a B in his AP calculus class while getting a 5 on the AP test last year - it’s kind of a “Catch-22”.</p>

<p>Oh, well.</p>

[epiphany]

<p>Yes. It can be really difficult for a student in a very challenging school with exceptional peers, to be as competitive for U.C., as students from “easier” schools. That’s one of the ironies. Unlike Privates, U.C. doesn’t really scrutinize/compare high schools one to another: curriculum content, admission standards, grading policies, etc. Officially speaking, U.C relies on the course label & the resulting “numbers” on the transcript & scores.</p>