<p>I don’t but due to the echo boom, officials decided to streamline the system and CCC’s fall under the K -12 umbrella. Also, the pressure from parents and peers have hyper-actively conditioned teens towards test taking over comprehension.</p>
<p>Less than a year ago editorial:</p>
<p>Advanced Placement classes, once open to only a very small number of top high school students around the country, have grown enormously in the past decade. The number of students taking these courses rose by nearly 50 percent to 1.6 million from 2004 to 2009. Yet in a survey of A.P. teachers released this year, more than half said that “too many students overestimate their abilities and are in over their heads.” Some 60 percent said that “parents push their children into A.P. classes when they really don’t belong there.”</p>
<p>Students who passed an A.P. science exam didn’t do much better in college science courses than those who hadn’t</p>
<p>Here is one of the dirty truths, much like how gerrymandering goes on:</p>
<p>“For high schools, having a lot of A.P. classes signals quality to the community and real estate markets.”</p>
<p>“For instance, data show that in public high school class of 2009, 274,000 students took the A.P. English literature exam, yet 350,000 students — many from minority, low-income, rural and urban communities — who had the same level of academic performance and credentials did not have access to the program. This pattern holds true across all A.P. subject areas.”</p>
<p>“In the last 10 years, Advanced Placement has become a game of labels and numbers, a public relations ploy used by school officials who are dumping as many students as they can into A.P. courses to create the illusion that they are raising overall standards and closing the gap between whites and minorities. In fact, they are doing just the opposite. And in the process, Advanced Placement has become the College Board’s cash cow as each year tens of thousands more students — or their school boards — fork over an $86 fee for each exam.”</p>