[Ohiogift] AP In Name Only

[Margaret DeLacy]

Friends:

Below is a link to, and excerpt from, an article that appeared this week entitled "A failure to balance Advanced Placement access and quality" by Jeremy Noonan for the Fordham Institute's Flypaper blog
December 13, 2016


"As for our district’s high schools being named Georgia AP Honor Schools, this recognition is simply based on the number of courses offered—a criterion that encourages schools simply to shove students into Advanced Placement who are not prepared to succeed there, leading to frustration on their part and potentially harming the experience of their higher-achieving peers.

Indeed, a major culprit of Douglas Country’s rapid AP-program expansion—and its drastic decline in achievement—was an “open enrollment policy” whereby the district essentially scrapped academic qualifications in the name of “expanding opportunity.” This was more than a passive open door. Students were aggressively recruited into Advanced Placement classes, regardless of their preparedness. Colleagues informed me, for instance, that some students in our AP history and literature classes were reading at a middle-school level."

https://edexcellence.net/articles/a-failure-to-balance-advanced-placement-access-and-quality