Personal Reflection: The Case Against AP Testing (Class of '20 Opinion)

[ucbalumnus]

@digiflip

@bz1119;d-2187651

Secondly, let’s talk about how they are limiting. With their goal of producing a curriculum that matches the introductory class that every college offers, the curriculum of AP courses are rigid, overflown, and superficial. Teachers find themselves not being able to tailor the course to how their high school schedule works, how their students learn, in short AP classes are the distinct opposite of intellectual curiosity.

Isn’t that kind of why they’re being used so widely in the first place, and why you’re able to get credit for doing AP Calculus BC, but you probably won’t for the Calculus 2 taught at your high school, with a curriculum tailored to the specific school?

@bz1119 's criticism is probably applicable to some particular AP courses like world history and human geography, where similar courses at colleges, if they exist at all, are likely to vary significantly in content, as opposed to those like single variable calculus where most colleges have fairly similar content in those courses, so that the AP courses can cover that content without “spreading themselves too thinly”.