Do private schools have it easier than normal publics?

mathyone
Thu, 06 Nov 2014 19:49:41 +0000

" Its the luck of the draw on these exams" So then how do you explain the fact that the AP scores are pretty consistent from year to year at our school? If luck is making students score a 3 or a 5, you’d expect the year they ask about something the class didn’t cover well for scores to go way down. That doesn’t happen. I think the AP scores do provide a real measure of the quality of the AP program at a high school.

“and income plays into the results which skew the results.” Academic performance in general is correlated with income. I don’t see any reason to believe that AP tests are anything special in that respect.

But for $20, or for free if you make the effort to go to a library or borrow from a friend, you can get the same AP test prep books that my daughter used–when she used one at all. I guess you think she must have been extraordinarily lucky to score 5 on every AP test she took. Nothing at all to do with all the many, many hours of hard work she put in combined with her natural aptitude. Certainly nothing to do with parents paying for tutors–there weren’t any–I purchased maybe three of those $20 test prep books, borrowed one or two others, and she didn’t bother with prep books for some of the exams.

“The college board has been revamping exams, so if you are the first year to take one of these reformatted exams you are at a disadvantage.” A disadvantage compared to who? All the kids are taking the new exam that year. And the college board curves the exams so the scores won’t be much different than in previous years. Sounds to me like someone is just looking for excuses.