The point of AP isn’t a score. It’s taking a more challenging curriculum than what is usually offered. So, in Mississippi, top students take AP classes because it’s way more challenging than the usual curriculum, and so they’re challenging themselves, even if they are unlikely to pass (very few students in Mississippi get even a 3). The benefit is from trying something hard relative to the rest of the offerings. The kid who took the class and scores a 2 is still better off than the kid who didn’t, took a regular level class, and learned even less.
College credit is cherry on the cake.
In addition, AP human geography is a very worthwhile class for 9-10th graders. However it shouldn’t replace a core junior/senior class just because it’s an AP and yes it’s an easier social science than APUSH or AP euro. For students who’ve never taken an AP, whether Freshman or seniors, it’s very well designed to introduce students to difficult concepts, primary source analysis, rigorous expectations.
Seems like there are some issues either with how well the HS teaches that AP course, and/or how ready the students are to handle that AP course material to the standards of the AP test.
APUSH is considered the entry point for AP exam in our school district and offered to sophomore. After that, students may take m more AP in junior and senior year. There are other accelerated or specialty course that are also considered higher rigor. My D1 had only a few courses throughout high school that were not considered advanced level even she had only 6 AP by the time of graduation. With that 6 AP, she got 33 credits for college that fulfilled most of the elective requirements and a few entry level courses. Having more AP credit would not make her graduate earlier in college but start paying higher tuition earlier.
Our suburban district in California – one of the top scoring districts in the state – requires teacher recommendation to take an AP the next year. (Hum Geo is not offered, btw.)
I have not taken any AP classes and have no idea what AP human geo covers, it is considered at S’ school to be an “easy A” class and also is only offered in upper classes. Is it a kind of course that reflects ideas similar to books like “Guns, Germs, and Steel” - interplay between environment and history and the subsequent differential in society’s development?
I take it you haven’t been in an urban public high school in a while.
Since many of these high school students reading level is around 6-8tth grade at best, even though they are a year away from graduating HS, they cannot read the material quickly enough during the test itself. The biggest reason these kids do not pass the AP exam is they simply cannot finish it. Most of them have to sound out every word they read. Usually, the questions they do answer, they will get right. But most are just not ready to handle the volume of work needed for an AP test.
But they get advanced every year because that’s what these urban schools do. It is no big secret among teachers in urban public schools that most of their students come in far below grade level in reading.
Some high schools list formal prerequisites, probably to avoid any accusations of teacher bias or corruption in recommendations. E.g. to take AP calculus, the prerequisite may be B in honors precalculus or A in regular precalculus. Granted, grades can also be subject to teacher bias, but may be somewhat more transparent than a recommendation separate from the grade in the prerequisite.
I do realize that some public schools are very low quality (and that can be exposed by poor performance on AP and SAT subject tests after students earned A grades in the associated courses), although not all of them are in urban areas, and not all urban public schools are low quality.
Seems like if your friend’s school district has very low standards starting from the early grades, it is doing the students a great disservice. It may also be extremely difficult to fix from the position of a single teacher.
All honors students take the same social studies and Language arts classes at our school. If you keep passing the classes you can stay on that track. Noone questions why this is so:
APHUG/Language Arts 1H
APEuro/Language Arts 2H
APUSH/APLang
APEcon/Gov or some combo to make 2 semesters/APLit
IB kids vary a little form that track the last two years. But everyone else does this and most kids at least get a 3 on all of these tests.
Correct. Sorry, that I was not more clear. In order to receive a teacher recommendation to take AP the following year, one must have a B in the prereq. (Our hs does not offer ‘regular’ percalc, only honors, so that is the prerequisite for Calc BC, as we don’t offer AB.)
My son’s girlfriend taught in a Chicago HS last year. They had more kids involved in shootings (4), then who took ‘regular’ trig/pre-pre calc.
A few points:
D20s large public high school offers APHUG freshman year and many of her classmates took it. She/we decided that she would not take it because it was her first year in HS, she was already taking 3 honors classes, and we wanted to make sure she wasn’t overwhelmed. She ended up with straight A’s.
She wants to get the AP Capstone certificate (similar to IB certificate, but not offered at her HS) and will need to take at least 6 APs including AP Seminar & AP Research, mandatory. While Seminar & Research may or may not translate directly into college credits, the course work such as doing research-based writing, designing and delivering oral and visual presentations, individually and as part of a team will only be beneficial to her in college and beyond.
Now in her Sophomore year: 2 APs 3 Honors classes
Junior year: 4 APs
Senior year: 3 APs, 1 Honors
Total 9 APs, 4 Honors
Because some of her peers are taking at least the above, she/we feel that it is necessary for her to take a challenging course load as long as she can do well in those classes.
Her HS does not rank and Valedictorian GPA is capped at 4.0. I believe last year there were at least 20 Vals (400-500 seniors).
We are in CA and the UCs only factor in 8 semesters of AP/Honors into the UCGPA. UCB/UCLA may be the exception.
IMO, if she can handle the course load, she should challenge herself as much as possible.
For our school it is usually an A- or higher in a prerequisite. Even going from college prep to honors requires the same thing. Now let’s take it back to student stress: that means for math you have to have advanced math in 8th grade. But the only way you can get into that is advanced math in 7th grade. And the only way to get into that is an A in 6th grade math. (Same type of sequence holds true for languages and science.) Yes, kids, your grades in sixth grade affect which high school classes you can take. Sigh.
@ucbalumnus: even if we don’t think of the schools built on landfills or filled with black mold, the local board may be filled with a bunch of ignoramuses, education may be a low priority in the state budget (think of Nevada or Louisiana, for instance), there may be 4-day weeks as happened in Kansas or Oklahoma (which adds to a full year missing by the time kids reach 5th grade), the districts may not be equally funded and there may be no compensation beside Title I to handle especially difficult situations (think of Alabama or Arizona), the teachers may be good and but there may have been funding cuts and the assistants are gone, the ELL kids don’t have help, the class mushroomed from 18 to 24 to 28 - so, the teachers may be qualified and the buildings nicely equiped, yet the matter may be very different from “low standards”.
Add to this the fact some kids arrive with so many difficulties that teachers try their best but can’t fix everything. And they can’t fail 90% each class. Most teachers teach to a “middle of the class” that challenges 75% students (with about 10-15% that are way above and 10-15% that don’t have a clue). That “middle” is just lower when kids don’t reach the benchmarks you wanted, you just adjust to what your 75% is - so if 75% kids read like kindergartners by the end of first grade, that’s what you use for your benchmark. And if 75% kids are reading chapters books by the end of first grade and calligraphy with a fountain pen, well you adjust to that too. You simply can’t teach the same thing to every class. And it’s not just a matter of geography: all teachers have had situations where the class went way faster than planned and the next year they just don’t get it and you’re stuck in place for days and days and days on on. You simply cannot keep going at breakneck pace, going over stuff that 80-90% kids have no clue what you’re talking about - even when that’s what you’re “supposed” to be doing. Add external shocks - parent losing a job, losing a relative to opioids, losing a home, not seeing your mother because she’s doing shift work and she’s often gone, or having a trucking father whom you never see, or your entire family is poisoned by pesticides and you keep coughing day and night… During the recession, there were schools were upwards of 30% kids were homeless. They may well want to succeed in their AP classes but their teachers do their best to teach them and grade them relative to their AP classmates, relative to everybody else. What good would it do to give a D to all kids in AP English Language because they’re likely to get a 2 on the test, when they’re above 95% students in the school?
Add socio-economic circumstances, living environment, supportive parents who don’t know how to be academically supportive (seriously, parents who tell you proudly they set their kid up with their own TV and computer in the kids’ room, in primary school…), and of course parents who worry about education, are suspicious about the stuff schools teach because it may contradict their beliefs, or because they feel insecure about their social position and worry their kids may leave them behind…
Some kids make their own breakfast, or had cold fries, or cold pizza, or coke, or none at all. Perhaps when they leave for school, no one beside them is up in their house, either due to night work or due to unemployment. They arrive and no one has checked their backpack. They may or may not have done the homework, in part because there may be no dedicated space in their house, and/or loud music or loud TV or loud videogames going on. If you add that up from kindergarten till 9th grade, that’s a huge gap compared to kids who go to school ready to learn, well-fed, with a sense of stability and self confidence, 5 days a week, and go home to their own quiet room where they’re expected to do homework and where the neighbors’ huge party isn’t making the walls pulse (as is currently happening next door where I don’t know how the children can be studying and the toddler napping).
@SwimmingDad Yep. my son is in 6th grade and taking accelerated Math (2 classes offered, 75 kids total). In 7th grade only 1 accelerated Math class offered, so if he doesn’t get at least a B+/A- and a recommendation from teacher, he won’t be part of the select 35 kids, etc.
I do feel bad for kids nowadays. I don’t remember having to work anywhere near this hard back in the day…whether its elementary, middle or high school.
Is the teacher recommendation automatic (or implied with the grade) if one earns a B or A in the prerequisite, or is it discretionary (with the B or A grade merely making one eligible)?
@socaldad2002 I agree. I was a fairly self directed hard working kid in high school…I swam year round (AAU/US Swimming) for several hours a day and took hard classes. But what I did pales in comparison to what my kids have gone through. I cannot even imagine what it will be like for my grandkids.
Most UC use of HS GPA is the weighted-capped version (8 semester limit on honors +1 points). However, UC admission readers will see three versions of HS GPA when reading the application: unweighted, weighted-capped, weighted-uncapped.
Neither of our older kids did AP but we purposely put them in schools that didn’t offer AP. Not a fan of what the AP system has become. They did duel enrollment with community colleges and local universities instead and have/are doing well in college applications. You can be competitive without AP’s BUT if they are offered in your school and you don’t take them… results will be different.
If going to a college that accepts AP credit, each AP test passed will save the student thousands of dollars on the cost of their education. My son started school with 67 AP and dual enrollment credits. He got a tuition waiver, but even so the savings are substantial. Just calculate the cost of going to school for a year and multiply by two.
That is if he intends to graduate early.
But note that the selection of AP and college courses taken while in high school may not necessarily be optimal for subject credit to graduate as early as the number of credits may suggest. A major with long prerequisite sequences may only allow one or two semesters to be shaved off, since usually only frosh-level courses can be replaced with AP credit, even if the entering student brings in lots of AP scores that give three or four semesters’ worth of credits.
For many students, the AP credit may not allow graduating early, or graduate early by fewer semesters than it may appear possible by looking at the number of credits, but can allow the substitution of additional free electives in place of what would otherwise be lower level required courses. This can enhance the student’s academic experience.