Dartblog

An interesting story about a proposal at Tufts University to limit the amount of Advanced Placement course credit with which students may begin college. I have posted a bit about AP tests in the past, and I generally think that they are a fantastic way to expose high school students who are ready, to more advanced material.

“If you read the recent College Board report, the phrase ‘college-level work’ is repeated over and over again like a mantra,” [Tufts’ Education Policy Committee Chairman James G.] Ennis said. “What college? What level of college? Colleges aren’t all one thing. The idea that there is this easy-to-ascertain method of determining college-level work for all colleges in the United States is questionable. If it were up to me, I’d set [the proposed limit of credits] lower than five.”

Some students, however, find the proposal’s limit of pre-matriculation credits to five somewhat arbitrary and argue that the required AP test scores to earn credit should instead be increased for all disciplines.

It does seem as though increasing the required score to earn credit would be a better way to accomplish the same goal of limiting pre-matriculation credit than setting a hard cap of five. Rather than awarding credit for 4s and 5s, for example, as is the common practice at many universities (although for many disciplines, Dartmouth only accepts 5s, if we give credit in those subjects at all). Our policy, here.

To be sure, AP classes are not being used “correctly” at many high schools. At my own, and I suspect many other high-powered public and private schools, AP courses function as the equivalent of glorified honors. In at least some subjects, I have witnessed nearly half of a school grade being placed in these courses. One of proximate causes here is an unwillingness by high school administrators and faculty department heads to say “no” to whining, complaining parents. Perhaps schools could create entry tests to assess readiness for more difficult courses thus imposing a strict, empirical cutoff point for admission. In the present system, the presence of so many misplaced students in these courses has the effect of dragging down the pace and rigor of the class, forcing a departure from the college-level standards that these courses are supposed to emulate.

Perhaps too, the AP tests themselves should be rescaled and made more difficult so as to change the distribution of students receiving 4s and 5s.