College Board sets standards for Advanced Placement courses

But as high schools have greatly expanded their AP programs, some are questioning the quality of courses labeled AP. Concerns about AP courses being watered down has led the College Board, which supervises the end-of-course AP exams, to establish an audit procedure to ensure AP courses meet certain standards.

All schools that want to label a course AP in the next school year have been asked to submit a course audit form to the College Board by June 1, 2007, said Trevor Packer, executive director of AP programs at the College Board. The course materials will then be reviewed by college professors.

Courses that pass the audit process give the College Board permission to use the “AP” designation on students’ transcripts.

Currently, some courses that are labeled AP really shouldn’t be, Packer acknowledged. He rejected the notion that the courses are watered down, however, noting that there has not been an increase in the number of students passing the end-of-course AP exams.

Under the new process, the College Board will not dictate what should be in the curriculum, Packer said, but it will provide a “set of building blocks” laying out what material should be emphasized.

The College Board also will identify certain required resources. For example, a geography course should include maps, and an art history course should includes images of artwork.

A requirement that AP science classes include physical laboratory work has raised concerns among the online learning community.

The number of virtual high school courses has grown exponentially in recent years, and leaders of these schools are worried their AP biology, chemistry, and other science courses will lose their AP designation, even though they provide “virtual laboratory experiences” and require students to carry out experiments at home using materials they might have around the house.

The College Board says AP science courses “require a hands-on (not virtual) laboratory component.” But it also says “courses that use virtual lab materials to develop the skills and learning objectives of hands-on labs may be authorized to use the AP designation.”

At one time, only the brightest students aiming for the most selective universities took AP courses. Now, these courses are eyed by all students looking for an edge to beat the competition in the college admissions game.

Doing well on an AP exam can lead to college credits and allow freshmen to take more advanced courses. Recently, however, some colleges have complained that even students who took AP courses aren’t prepared for college-level work and have stopped exempting them from introductory courses.

According to the College Board, 1.34 million U.S. students (nearly 23 percent) took at least one AP course in 2005-06, compared to 845,000 in 2000-01. Most students take only one AP course, but some students take as many as eight.

There are more than 35 AP courses in 20 subject areas. Nearly 60 percent of U.S. high schools participate in the AP program.

The high cost of taking an AP exam has become less of a barrier for low-income students, as state grants, funded by the federal government, cover most of the exam fees for students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. Students must pay $83 per exam, but disadvantaged students generally pay only $5.

The U.S. Education Department distributed $17 million to 33 states in September to improve disadvantaged students’ access to AP programs. The funds can be used to waive test fees or provide teacher training, books, and curriculum development.

According to Packer, there has been “steady progress” in the number of minorities taking AP courses, but “it’s not a big jump.” While black students make up about 13 percent of the public school population, only about 6.5 percent of students who took an AP exam are black, Packer said.

The rate of Hispanics who took at least one AP exam, 14 percent, is about the same as the proportion of Hispanic students in the United States. But if students who took the AP Spanish exam are excluded, the percentage drops to 12.

Chicago Public Schools is one of three school districts in the nation, along with Duval County, Fla., and Washington, D.C., participating in the College Board’s EXCELerator program, which is aimed at encouraging more minorities to take AP courses. Several high schools in each of these districts have received grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support course development, teacher training, and college planning and tutorial services for students.

The program’s objective is “to help students not only attend college but be successful when they get to college,” said Afina Lockhart, manager for AP programs in the Chicago school district.

In mid-January, the district plans to launch a major campaign aimed at students and parents to encourage students who did well on the PSAT to sign up for AP courses.

Chicago also is focusing on ensuring that all students have equal access to AP courses and removing obstacles that have prevented some non-traditional students from considering them.

In the past, some students have been denied admission to these courses because a teacher wouldn’t give permission to a student with mediocre grades or poor study habits or used a test to screen out students. In other cases, students didn’t register for AP courses because they thought they would be too hard. When you expose a child to a more advanced class, “that’s when you can see if the student will succeed,” Lockhart said.

Chicago teachers already have participated in workshops to learn about the new College Board audit requirements, and the district is in the process of evaluating its AP courses.

The Guilford County, N.C., school district also has made AP growth a major priority and developed a program called “Cool to Be Smart” to get more students, particularly minorities, into AP courses.

Students who take at least five AP courses and attain an average score of 3 or better on their AP exams receive an “advanced placement diploma,” said Ann Barr, the district’s coordinator for advanced learners. (The exams are graded on a scale of 1 to 5.)

Seniors who receive these diplomas, along with students who qualify for International Baccalaureate diplomas, are honored at a celebration each August, where they have a chance to win a new car, laptop computers, and scholarships.

All ninth, 10th, and 11th graders and many eighth graders take the PSAT, and all ninth graders with high scores are automatically enrolled in AP history, said Guilford County Superintendent Terry Grier.

All students are encouraged to take AP courses, and the district uses a College Board software program called AP Potential to help students decide which AP courses to take.

These efforts have led to “tremendous grown in our AP enrollment and the number of exams given,” Barr said. This year, 4,159 students took at least one AP exam. When the district began the initiative in 2000-01, only 1,767 students were enrolled in an AP course.

Grier and Barr both strongly support the College Board’s plan to audit AP courses. Despite the growth in the number of students participating in the AP program, “we are not satisfied with the number of students scoring 3 or higher on the AP tests,” Grier said.

That means “students are not working hard enough, the curriculum is not good enough, or teachers are not fully following the curriculum,” he said. “The audit is another measure of quality assurance. That will help us ensure that all students are getting the best instruction possible.”

Some of the nation’s most elite private high schools have eliminated AP, but Scarsdale High School is believed to the first public school to consider this option. The school board expects to make a final decision in January.  

“We’re in a very unique position,” said Principal John Klemme. “We can design a curriculum that exceeds AP and is more powerful and more focused on skills.” At Scarsdale High, 98.9 percent of students go on to college, and at least 70 percent take at least one AP course. Klemme believes AP is a good program but relies too much on the memorization of facts. “We can do better than that.”

Currently, AP teachers are “racing through the material” to cover everything on the AP exam,” he said. If Scarsdale develops its own rigorous courses, teachers would be better able to “cultivate in kids the ability to synthesize information and apply information in different contexts. When the primary objective is not performance on a test, teachers have more flexibility to explore topics in depth.”

Most students and parents support the elimination of AP, but some are opposed, he said, mainly because they are concerned that students wouldn’t earn enough credits to graduate early or qualify for more advanced courses in college.