Not sure what you mean by this. Theoretically (and this is all theoretical because I’m not convinced this is how it works in practice), shouldn’t high school students taking AP courses be of the same level as college students taking the (theoretically) same course at a university (not including students who already took the AP course in high school). Why would high school students be considered more advanced or stronger than their equivalent college student? They are both taking the same class with presumably similar levels of preparation. High school students taking AP courses would, of course, be considered (theoretically) more “advanced” than their peer taking the non-AP course or than a college student taking a remedial, lower-level class. But I don’t understand why they would automatically be considered stronger than a college student taking the equivalent course. They got to the level at a younger age, sure, but that doesn’t make them better. They could theoretically enter a higher level in college, sure, and then would be considered more “advanced” than other college students who are taking the introductory courses but I don’t know why they would be automatically considered stronger students before than, if both students are at the same level and learning the same material.
The course material may be similar. But the high school students who are taking the courses with that material while still in high school are generally considered to be the stronger students in the subject, because high schools (or middle schools) place the stronger students into more advanced courses or tracks.
D routinely had 3-4 ours calc AB homework nightly, plus ~6 weekend hours. The teacher was 23 (don’t know if that’s part of the problem) and told me she expected that much. IMO, ridiculous and extremely stressful with other senior courseload, sports, and fall college aps. About 7 weeks in, D dropped, with my blessing. Didn’t seem to hurt her admissions decisions.
I took Calc 1 in college and had nothing near that amount of homework.
HW in my ap classes: daily reading (with note taking), “focus” questions (released essay questions from previous ap exams- student work up an answer in graphic org/bullet point format- essentially a skeleton essay) once a week, and weekly vocab. We also fully write at least one essay a week in class. More than 75% of my sophomore US kids get a passing score on the ap exam. My Euro average is only 50%- but then again I teach it to freshman.
The more I read CC and speak to parents with children in different schools, the stronger I feel about the importance of standardized tests. GPA is way too capricious.
There’s such a wide range of readers on CC that it’s always hard to write a response that doesn’t offend someone - and that’s despite the fact that only 35% of people in this country even get a bachelor’s degree and CC readers are pretty much all well within this demographic.
A few random personal opinions -
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I’d be willing to bet that 3 hours of homework a night for AB Calculus is either i) an exaggeration (most likely) ii) the experience of a student who is struggling iii) an aberrant case of some inexperienced taskmaster of a teacher iv) some combination of the above
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In our school, I’d say there isn’t that much busy work in our AP classes - they might make the kids do a group project where they make a video, but that usually only takes 4-5 hours once per semester. Some busy work though. Even at the AP level it’s totally appropriate to spend some time teaching them study skills for college & how not to kill each other (or yourself !) when you work on a group project. It’s a little bit of an affectation to say that AP classes should be the “same” as a college class. Also, it’s simply wrong to think that AP classes are taught at the same level as a college class at a good college, but that’s OK.
In my opinion, the way the AP program has evolved is that it’s no longer a replacement for freshmen level college classes at a strong college (other than Calculus / Chemistry / Languages). What it is is a national high school curriculum for strong high school students and I think it’s done a perfectly fine job at that. You have to remember that 30+ years ago most strong students didn’t have access to classes at this level and most high schools didn’t have teachers who trained to teach these classes. Only a few rich school districts had these opportunities. That’s changed now <:-P
- I’ve had a few kids take BC Calculus - they didn’t go to a magnet school, but the demographic is professional and affluent. Half the kids will take either BC or AB Calculus in 10th/11th/12th grade, with 90% getting a 5 or a 4. Definitely harder to get an A than a 5 in our school (that’s clearly not true at most high schools).
I’d say they assign a theoretical average of about 20-70 minutes of homework X 5 nights / week - 20 minutes for the good students, 50 minutes for the weaker ones. My kids have all been good math students, so it’s more like 25 minutes for them (including the break in attention span from responding to 10 text messages :(( ). Homework is only spot-checked for completion, not correctness, so if I had to guess most kids spend 20 minutes even if they should be spending 60 minutes.
- The AP Calculus kids are generally the stronger math students, but at most colleges Calculus I is taught at a higher level than AP classes are taught. I’d say that someone who gets a 5 (but isn’t well above the 5 cutoff) on the AP exam would probably get a B in the corresponding college class at a state flagship level school if you gave them the college final at the end of the AP class (because the AP classes aren’t as demanding, not because they couldn’t learn the material).
So ironically I’d say in college you have the weaker students taking a harder class 
And on top of that, college calculus classes are notorious for being taught by non-native speakers with weak English language skills.
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At most high schools that have the resources, kids either take AB or BC; most don’t have the default track be AB then BC. But some do. Personally, I think taking 2 years to cover AB then BC is a waste of time, but this all depends on the demographic of the high school and whether they have a critical mass of strong math students.
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The old rule of 3 hours a week of work per semester hour may have been true in the past but not so much anymore. Most professors would tell you students are spending more like 1.5-2 hours, but for Calculus I (and STEM classes in general) it might be higher.
We have a few APs that are taught in the freshman and sophomore years. Those seem to be loaded with busywork. I think those teachers are attempting to pad the grades so they can keep the tests at a level of difficulty to prepare for the AP exam. I also think the extensive summer assignments for those classes are designed to weed kids out who are not really interested. One of the teachers forces the outlining of the chapters because she is attempting to teach study skills she thinks they will need for college.
By the time my older son hit the majority of APs in junior year, the busywork seemed to cease. My son often has little homework at all (and was in 5 APs) mostly reading chapters, and preparing for quizzes and tests. Math homework was a completion grade and was typically completed in class.
“In college, neither of my kids had to make crafts”
-Mine did when taking a Paper Making class. That was in fact very time consuming class as most art related classes. I warned her, but she likes to decide herself. She never took any more art related classes, she learned from her mistake. She probably spend more time earning an A in this class than most of her very challenging upper Bio classes. And A was a must.
My School offers AP classes that can begin as early as freshman year. I really like this system, the underclass AP offerings are really more “learning how to do AP” classes, and by the time kids reach upperclassman level the APs are much more like college. (State college anyway). In Ohio, where I teach, is going to begin offering dual enrollment- meaning that if you take an AP class and score a certain percentage in the class you can still get college credit even if you do not pass the AP exam for many in State Universities. In order to teach this class, the teacher needs to have a Masters degree in the subject taught. I am looking forward to this, because it will reward some excellent (generally younger) students who sometimes freeze up on test day.
Although it’s been awhile since S was in hs, S took 9 APs starting in 10th grade. Although there might have been periods of increased work in APs (eg test prep) there was never the kind of excessive busywork reported above, especially with more experienced AP teachers. For example, his APUSH teacher, who had also been an AP grader for 15 years, required kids to read 5-7 pages every night with a 5 question multiple choice quiz following morning. In 15 years of teaching APUSH, teacher had 3 kids score below 3 and when S took class, teacher had 3 other full APUSH classes. As you can imagine his class was always in high demand.
We are in an excessive busywork school, and the AP classes are often the worst offenders unfortunately. Daily grades on homework (but random, so you could never be sure when they would collect it), graded notes, lots of ‘arts and crafts’ in unnecessary places, and a complete lack of understanding just how much work other teachers are assigning. My DD1 did sew a lovely shirt with the words from a passage of a ‘midsummer’s night dream’ embroidered on it and hand sewn wings attached, but my other 2 kids were not so into the crafts and I am positive their grades suffered in comparison to older sis.
One example in AP World History this past month, required creating a periodic chart of 100 historical figures on poster paper, categorized into student-defined categories and color coded to reflect those categories. Each historical figured was illustrated, given a periodic table code (based on how much they were ‘liked’ or ‘despised’ in history - don’t even get me started…), and the top 10 and bottom 10 required an explanation of why they deserved that ranking. It took hours and hours, even if you cut and pasted pictures off the internet for the historical figures. DD2 thought it ‘might’ have even been a decent review for the AP test, except that was already over weeks ago.
DS struggled to get B’s in the AP classes with the most ‘busy work’ oriented teachers. He did fine on his AP exams.
Oh my, that’s got to rank among the top 10 worst AP assignments ever. Pls delete that post before other AP teachers get any ideas!!!
I did the IB diploma program in high school, along with the corresponding AP coursework for those classwork. It was as much work as IB is known for - a lot. I never felt that it was busy work, however. When I took IB Math/AP Calc, I had plenty of homework - but never three hours in one night of problems. IB in general is very writing intensive - allegedly one of the most writing intensive programs in the US. I don’t know if that’s true, but I’m glad I did as much writing as I did in high school, and that it was all meaningful work.
@theGFG- Too late ha ha Ha, but Don’t worry I have no intention of stealing that assignment. After the AP exams and in May, the students that I have that semester do projects, some of which are “arts and crafts” type assignments but they are interest based, and they pick from a Wide variety of options. Part of the requirements for the projects is a presentation, which is what my students do on final exam days - since I see no point in taking another test after the ap exam (my kids do a released exam the week before the ap test - and I “hold” that grade to be a part of their final.)
Stronger than other students in their grade or stronger than other students taking lower level coursework, sure. I don’t see anything in your reasoning that would suggest that these schools think their students are stronger than other students taking the same coursework.
Like, for example, let’s say we have one high school with, on average, very poor SAT/ACT and other standardized test scores. There are a few AP classes, and students tend to do very poorly on the AP exams. The very best students are put in the AP class. Then you have another school where nearly everyone takes, say, AP Calculus in their senior year. That’s just the norm, perhaps because there’s a lot of focus on math at this school. Would you say the AP calculus students at the first school are automatically better than the AP calculus students at the second school because that school tends to put their strongest students in that class? I wouldn’t, just like I wouldn’t say that a student who take AP Calculus in high school is automatically a stronger student that someone taking Calculus in college, at that specific moment. You don’t have any evidence based solely on their age who’s the better student. They are (again theoretically) taking the same course at the same level learning the same material, and based solely on that, I don’t think you can make assumptions on who is the stronger student. Because one is younger doesn’t mean you can say that student will be more successful in the course or will learn the material better or will have an easier time in the course (all various possible definitions of “stronger”).
Re: #34
Within the same high school, it is the stronger students who tend to get placed into more advanced courses. You are just confusing the issue by having two different high schools in your comparison. While it is not necessarily true that an individual more advanced student is stronger (even within the same school), it is generally the case on average that the more advanced students are stronger.
My older son said he considers about 50% of homework he’s been assigned busy work. I told him he should see a lot less of it in college; professors don’t have time to fool with busy work.
“5 hours of homework means 10 total hours per week including class time” Not quite. We don’t have 5 hours of instructional time per week. We have 3.6 hours, and there are constant interruptions such as excessive snow days. I’d say closer to 8-1/2 hours total than 10, assuming there are 5 hours of homework. It’s been 4 years since my daughter took AB calculus, so I am just going on memory. It did not seem excessive at the time. Our AP classes don’t generally have excessive busywork, although there are some presentations and group projects. In math it was basically do the problems and study for the tests. At the end of the year there was a low key project. AP Gov had a lot of projects but they were relevant and worthwhile, like model congress and mock elections.
Reading about the busywork being required in some AP classes (Isn’t AP world enough work without requiring a silly and timeconsuming craft project?) I am beginning to understand why the AP scores are so low in some schools. All of my daughter’s AP teachers were pretty much down to business about covering the curriculum and preparing for the exams. Too much so, in the case of the English teachers who cared far more about 5 paragraph essays than writing actual papers. I suspect that teachers who assign big crafts projects just aren’t well trained and don’t understand the difference between AP and elementary school.
I think some schools falsely equate the amount of homework assigned and rigor. These schools and/or teachers pride themselves on requiring a lot of their students because they think that is what a high quality program demands. I find this trend really counterproductive. At best, it overburdens students trying to excel. At worst, it actually turns off students who come to associate learning with repetitive, tedious assignments.
My daughter’s high school had lots of AP busy work (though not in Calc or Statistics - hard to create busy work in Math) - they included:
Creating a t-shirt with a slogan etc. about a philosopher (APEH)
Creating a 45 minute video interview with a grandparent (APUSH) - the video had to be 45 minutes after editing (so the interview had to be much longer) and the quality of the sound/picture/editing was part of the grading rubric
A group project which created a 15 minute video that required visiting 5-6 historic sites in our state (most about 30-45 minutes away) (APUSH) - this one got me so mad I complained to the principal - imagine requiring a team of 4 17-18 year olds to drive all over the state when legally they are not supposed to have more than one underage passenger
A group poster on the water cycle (APES)
Create a solar cooker (APES) - this one was fun to do
A visit to a museum to view a piece of art (APEH) - the art had to sketched and then analyzed
She never had to write a single paper for either AP history class - only DBQs and FRQs