‘Tis the season–of AP review sessions and testing that is. With almost two-thirds of the school year done and May rolling right around the corner, many students at Elk Grove and around the nation are beginning to immerse themselves in fat test books and pages upon pages of review packets in what is the beginning of the stressful AP test season.
For many students, it’s the time of year when realization hits that they need to re-learn a school year worth of material in order to prepare for the test. For teachers, it’s the time when they start to crank up the teaching to get through the last leg of their curriculum, start giving out practice AP tests and begin researching past AP tests to predict what will be on the exam this year.
In midst of these couple of months are also when the lines of actual learning and brute memorization begin to blur. Somewhere along the way, learning begins to get sacrificed for preparation for the test.
When AP testing began in the early 1950s, the idea was to offer high school students a rich curriculum of advanced work and an examination that will grant college placement and course credit to students who obtain high scores. The idea behind offering an advanced curriculum was to make the transition from senior year of high school to first year of college more manageable.
The educators behind this, more specifically the Ford Foundation, had laudable intentions, sure. And with the cost of a college education these days, who doesn’t like saving money by paying $87 for one test that will possibly save them thousands of dollars in the long run.
I won’t deny that there are many advantages to being in the AP Program: preparation for college, college credit, allows me to be among some of the brightest students and teachers in the school. It’s a great experience and opportunity, which is why more than 954,000 high school students around the nation took at least one AP exam last year, according to the College Board, and why 1,068 Elk Grove students signed up for an exam last year.
However, do the pros really outweigh the cons when it comes to something as important as sacrificing learning for a test that may or may not get students college credit?
Since the prime goal of the AP curriculum is to prepare the student for the test in May, there is very little time to go in-depth on certain subjects. It’s a “mile wide and an inch deep” curriculum that often drives the most intensely curious student outside the classroom.
The issue is this: imagine two teachers, one teaches AP U.S. History and the other teaches regular U.S. History and they are both covering the 1960s. In the regular U.S. History class they might have time to do a project on key figures during the civil rights movement, watch a documentary on the Bay of Pigs invasion or even have a class discussion about the impact of the Warren Court.
In the AP U.S. History course, however, learning about the 1960s will most likely be crammed into one week of learning the key points that will most likely be on the AP test. The AP program isn’t designed to teach students the most minute details, regardless of how interesting they may be, it’s designed to teach the test and to produce good scores.
However, it bears mentioning that recently the College Board, who administer the AP tests, have been making dramatic changes to improve AP exam and support for deeper learning.
For instance in recent years, College Board has changed test questions to promote deeper learning and to prioritize application over rapid content coverage. They have also been working closely with AP teachers and curriculum specialists to build engagement and depth into the smorgasbord program.
However, until the AP program makes enough reforms so that the curriculum offers depth, sacrificing learning is an unfortunate price that students and teachers are going to have to make.