<p>It sound to me like you are really just pointing out an issue with the scale: instead of a 5, give the physics ‘genius’ a 7/8. But that is not a problem with the AP concept per se, just its scaling.</p>
<p>Also remember, that the AP curriculum committee is comprised of college professors, as well as high school teachers. It is the job of the college professors to ensure college-level rigor. The Chair of the AP Physics development committee, for example, is from the Univ of Arizona. The AP English Lit committee includes a Prof from Cal. The Calc committee includes professors from Davidson, Northeastern, and Cincinnati. The Euro committee includes Profs from Baylor and Rochester…Chem has a prof from UW-Madison.</p>
the post I was referring to was talking about Physics C. And yeas, I know UCB doesn’t give bredit for Physics B–I believed you have posted that over and over and over again)</p>
My main problem is with the power CollegeBoard has in the admissions process, and the fact that to even question it draws ire from the very parents I would think would want to question it. For some students who start taking these exams in the 7th grade or earlier, parents fork over thousands of dollars to this institution. They sure have a loyal following - I don’t even support my religious institution with such ardor.</p>
<p>The scale is one major problem. Look at the Math II achievement test. You would think that if a perfect 800 is not even at the 90th percentile, the designers of the exam would want to add a few more difficult questions to differentiate the top achievers. But I suspect CB marketing tells them this is not the way to go. I can’t think of another reason. </p>
<p>I also have a problem where we now have around 1,000,000 students taking 2,000,000 exams and half of them are flunking the exams. And despite this supposed growth of advanced students our standing in the world’s education market has supposedly fallen.</p>
<p>I also think many of the exams are a joke.</p>
<p>But I give up. I never get anywhere with this argument, I’m not sure why I got back into it. Nobody ever changes their mind.</p>
<p>Bovertine, there are people who have changed their mind about the AP and its even more dubious European cousin. </p>
<p>Over the past decade, a growing number of important and influential dissenters have openly rebelled against the grwing AP trend . They include the Independent Curriculum Group, which is an alliance of “leading college preparatory schools that emphasize site-based, teacher-generated curriculum for advanced courses.” The ICG’s primary initiative is to eliminate all Advanced Placement from high school curricula. The group contends that AP forces teachers to conduct superficial and mechanical survey courses. They argue the frenetic pace required to cover all the material on an Advanced Placement year-end exam leaves no time for the flexibility and in-depth topic studies conducive to more effective learning. Fieldston, Riverdale Country, Trevor Day and Berkeley Caroll are among the New York City elite private school members that have dropped AP courses.</p>
<p>That’s IS an issue of scale and ONLY an issue of scale. But with the other tests available for high math achievers (national math), I don’t necessarily agree that the scale should go to a 1,000, or that the test should be ‘hardened’ to a mean of ~550. </p>
<p>CollegeBoard is nothing but a membership group of colleges. It is THEY who decide what scales that THEY want to see. If colleges cared to see differences among the 800s in M-2, they would direct CB to change the test. But colleges do not care. Thus the test stays the way it is.</p>
<p>On the attached link is the listing of CB’s Board of Trustees, who set policy. The college members include reps from UCLA, Ohio State, Texas A&M, Villanova…</p>
<p>My S’s APUSH teacher spent plenty of time reading student’s writing. He just read a lot of short DBQ essays instead of one longer paper. DBQs are on the test. Term papers aren’t.</p>
<p>bovertine - you aren’t the only person I’ve heard express concern with the AP tests. I’ve heard it discussed by HS administration, parents, and teachers. Some people think it emphasizes formulaic thinking rather than developing insight, connections, or a really strong foundation for further studies. I think it’s valid to consider - in fact I think any system (in education or otherwise) benefits from assessing current approaches and being willing to consider shortcomings or places where improvement can be made. </p>
<p>I’m not sure how I feel about it. in our school, students can take regular or AP - there is no honors level in any course that is offered at the AP level. </p>
<p>I’m very curious to see what changes are made when they revamp a couple of the tests to try to move away from learning TONS of facts and toward learning not only facts but how to recognize patterns and apply knowledge - higher level thinking. Is it biology and US history that’s supposed to change in 2011/2012?</p>
<p>Well seeing as the CSU system has twice as many students as the UC system my guess is that it is not 50%</p>
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<p>Uhm…yes?</p>
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<p>Well this is the university that keeps being brought up as the one not accepting very many AP credits. The other UC’s do not have the same AP Credit rules as CAL. But what the heck I’ll throw in UCLA, but I do think the college of engineering gives credit for Physics B. So lets throw another 5,000 graduates into the mix. And lets toss out a few thousand that go OOS. So, because AP is not a great benefit to the top 10% of college kids, its just bad?</p>
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<p>So what does this have to do with AP credits? </p>
<p>I used the example of average college students because I thought we were discussing college students and the benefits of AP classes. I was just trying to point out that it is a good program for the average college student. I believe you have changed the conversation to talk about how dissatisfied you are with US high schools–that is another can of worms!</p>
<p>I am not sure where you get your numbers from, but this might help. They are not the most recent, but should still be relevant.</p>
<p>Here are the released numbers for the UC system for 2008;</p>
<p>Total Applications: 304,618
Total Admittances: 139,381 </p>
<p>However, the number of applications does not tell the entire story. Here are the numbers of unique applications and admitted students for the university-wide system.</p>
Okay. I wasn’t really trying to imply what you inferred here, but I can see how you might read it that way. I actually used the example of a score of “5” just as one example of a cut-off point and actually the notion of kids with scores of “5” skipping intro courses is a lot less problematic to me than kids with “3s” skipping these courses, even at CSUF.</p>
<p>Whatever the school assumes as a cutoff point, be it 3, 4, or 5, that does imply the particular school considers it to be basically minimally passing competence at that school. So conceivably a kid could enter CSUF bent on an Engineering degree, with 5 APs with scores of 3. This kid could then gain sophomore status and apparently skip all the introductory engineering requirements like Physics, Calc, or Computer Science. This would be as if the student attended all those classes and attained a GPA of 2.0. Now, the student may actually be far more competent than this but nobody knows that (except possibly the student themselves). Going on to advanced classes with a sketchy knowledge of the introductory courses is a very risky proposition in many cases. </p>
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Yes, the section you quoted is just an issue of scale. No need to throw out the capitalization, I basically stated so in the preface to that part of my post. I have other problems with the tests as well, which have nothing to do with scale. </p>
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I thought it was a for profit company as well. If it’s a non-profit then I might moderate my position somewhat, at least as far as my evaluation of their motives. </p>
<p>But it doesn’t really matter entirely. People spend plenty of time criticizing teachers, professors, guidance couselors, high school and college administrators and their positions on educational and testing policy. Why should a CB imprimatur make anyone exempt?</p>
<p>I’m not going to post the details about my feelings about the rigor of some of these exams, because that seems to lead to undue controversy. People can read the samples on the CB website and judge for themselves. And yes, some are pretty tough, I know that.</p>
<p>So did you mean for the title of the thread to be Proliferation of AP tests of dubious credit value for “Engineering Majors”? It is the major you you tend to reference most often, so I am assuming you majored in engineering at Cal, and therefore this is the the topic you know the most about.</p>
<p>Certainly you can understand that there are majors besides engineering that other people find of value. How about a biology student at Cal State Fullerton-- I believe if they score a 3 or above in AP Physics B they will get physics credit that can be used for their major.</p>
I know this wasn’t directed at me, but I’ll throw in my 2 cents.</p>
<p>I personally believe Biology students need a good grounding in Physics, but it is not as critical as Chemistry or Biology. So if my kid wanted to be a biology major and used AP to get out of Physics I would probably not be concerned.</p>
<p>However, if my kid scored 3 on their AP Bio and Chem tests, and wanted to skip ahead to O Chem or advanced Bio, I would be concerned. Just as I would be concerned if they got straight Cs in all their freshman Bio and Chem.</p>
<p>Your post that I replied to referred to engineers. And a subsequent post regarding UCLA also referred to engineering students.</p>
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<p>Yes, CSU Fullerton does give credit for “physics for biology majors” for AP Physics B. However, a large percentage of biology majors are pre-meds, so that AP Physics B credit is still useless to those students, since medical schools want to see actual university courses rather than AP credit for pre-med courses.</p>
<p>They are from the CA department of education.</p>
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<p>I will assume those are all CA residents that applied and were accepted. But I guess I’m not getting your point. Are you suggesting that 75% of CA college eligible students are UC bound and thus their AP credits are useless? </p>
<p>Are you also assuming that all the UC’s have the same AP credit policies? UC Merced = UC Berekely?</p>
<p>Because CB is just the messenger in this business. CB is a non-profit corporation (that makes millions and pays its top staff lavishly), but still a non-profit which runs under the direction of a Board made up of colleges. CB performs a function for the colleges, not students and not parents. The member college see value in CB’s services. It’s the member colleges that require you, me, our kids to deal with CB. </p>
<p>If you want to “criticize”, look first at the colleges themselves. If the colleges did not find CB’s services of value, CB would not exist.</p>
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<p>Me too, but IFF my kid was gonna be a science major. If the kid was majoring in hume/lit, however, I’d recommend taking the AP science credits to fulfill an elective and then registering for something more meaningful to them; perhaps a full year study abroad, for example.</p>
Okay. I criticize the member colleges and the members of the college board board, or whatever it’s called. But it’s not surprising the colleges take the easy way out. </p>
<p>And it is also possible to criticize non-profits, especially non-profits where top execs rake in huge salaries.</p>
<p>I’m not a big fan of monopolies - profit or non. We have one that licenses my occupation - the NCEES - and believe me, people critcize it all the time, for many of the same reasons I’m criticizing the CB.</p>
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So basically what you are saying is that IYO, AP tests are of some value in that they give you credit in college courses, but really should only be used to replace college courses which are not of much interest, use or importance to you. They are useful in clearing your path of unsightly obstacles, namely general education electives.</p>
<p>Okay. I’ll go along with that. But I’m not sure that’s how everyone regards or uses the exams.</p>
<p>With ~3,000 colleges, there are all kinds of permutations, bovertine, even for science wannabes. For example, pre-health aces AP Bio, and scores a 5. In college, it is highly suggested to repeat bio (with which I concur). But this college’s bio is molecular in semester 1 and mostly organisms and population (enviro) in semester two. For premeds who are non-bio majors, it is possible to take the AP credits and then move into an upper division bio class that does not require populations & enviro – in-depth molecular or physiology or genetics, for example. Med schools don’t care – they just require two semesters’ worth of bio – it does not have to be a full year of Bio 1. Perhaps the premed is a chem major (or physics) and will never really need second semester of bio. The material is not on the mcat (at least according to sage advice on cc).</p>
<p>So, in this instance, a premed is using AP credits.</p>