Advanced Placement? Prove It
By Leslie Brody, The Record, Hackensack, N.J.
Jan. 31–Ambitious students in North Jersey’s high schools have long flocked to Advanced Placement courses, but for the first time ever, their teachers have to prove their classes are as rigorous as the prestigious AP label promises.
The College Board launched the first massive AP audit after college and high school educators complained that too many schools slapped the AP label on courses that weren’t sophisticated enough to make the grade. Last week, teachers in North Jersey and nationwide began submitting evidence that their classes truly cover college-level material.
Officials at the College Board, which runs the AP program, said they have heard of bogus pretenders such as AP Band, AP Journalism and AP Oklahoma History.
The outcome will be key to motivated students, who love to pepper their college applications with APs to show their academic zeal. Some colleges let students skip introductory courses — and so save tuition money — if they get high marks on final AP exams. When AP courses are not as tough as they’re supposed to be, students get inflated views of their own understanding and can easily founder in college.
Susan Landers, who oversees the audit at the non-profit College Board, said some teachers have “some anxiety” about the process but it’s not meant to be punitive. Teachers whose courses fail to rise to AP standards can fix their curriculums and try again. She said some teachers had already used the audit as leverage to lobby for better books and resources, and see it as a tool for improvement.
Landers said there are many ways to present college-level material and the audit does not aim to handcuff creativity. “There are a lot of teachers doing innovative things out there and the course audit is not attempting to stop that,” she said. It takes about two months for college faculty to review AP teachers’ syllabi and homework for approval.
Several North Jersey high school teachers and college professors applauded the push to enforce more consistent expectations.
Andrew Dunn, who teaches AP English at Northern Highlands Regional High School, says he met a North Dakota teacher who assigned George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” for an AP class. That book would be read in a regular 10th- to 12th-grade course at Northern Highlands. Dunn said the audit process will have value mainly if it persuades more colleges to give students college credit for work they’ve done in high school.
“We’ve been seeing over the last few years that some of our best students aren’t getting college credit after they do take the AP exams,” he said. “It’s some of the more elite institutions that aren’t granting the credit.”
Robert Goodman, who teaches AP physics at the Bergen County Technical High School at Teterboro, welcomed the audit, but thought it would be easier to require all students in AP classes to take AP exams. That would force teachers to cover the necessary material. “If you don’t take the exams but slap the label on transcripts who’s to say what’s in a course?” he noted. “I know specifically of cases where students taking courses called AP physics are studying things that have nothing to do with the AP curriculum.”
The College Board says 74 percent of students in AP courses take the final exams. Some students balk due to the cost — $83 per test — or the fear of a poor grade, or the assumption it won’t count for college credit anyway.
The AP program has grown dramatically over its 51-year history. Last year, 39,085 New Jersey students took AP courses, roughly double the count a decade ago.
Many college professors say AP courses show inconsistent quality, and they’re most valuable in certain disciplines. Michael Beals, a math professor and vice dean for undergraduate education in the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers in New Brunswick, says the AP calculus courses cover college-level material, but biology professors often complain that AP biology students lack sufficient lab experience.
Philip Sadler, a senior lecturer in the astronomy department at Harvard, studied 8,500 students who took AP courses and how they fared in colleges across the country. He says students who take AP courses do better than other students in introductory science in college, but not well enough to skip ahead to a higher-level course. Students who scored a 5 — the highest mark — on AP exams in biology, chemistry and physics, averaged a 90 in introductory college classes. Students who scored a 4 averaged 87. Students who took honors courses, but not AP classes, averaged 82.
“AP is a very worthwhile program, and a lot of kids learn a lot from it — but I have questions about whether they’re equivalent to college-level courses,” Sadler said. He tells Harvard undergrads who got 5 in AP physics to take introductory physics anyway.
In November, the College Board will post a list of AP courses authorized to use the AP name. If the board learns of schools applying that label that haven’t passed the audit process, it will ask them to stop. If they don’t comply, the board might take legal action.
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