It's not just AP African-American History:
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis questioned the College Board’s influence over university admissions and high school Advanced Placement courses Monday after clashing with the organization over a black history class earlier this month.
“This College Board, nobody elected them to anything,” DeSantis said at an unrelated news conference. “They are just kind of there and they provide a service, and so you can either utilize those services or not.”
In addition to overseeing the SATs, the organization also administers AP classes that allow students to earn college credits while still in high school.
“There are probably some other vendors who may be able to do that job as good or maybe even a lot better,” the governor added, vowing to examine Florida public schools’ reliance on the College Board.
The GOP grassroots favorite initially clashed with the organization after Florida education officials rejected a proposed AP class on black history for use in its schools.
DeSantis argued that the course was being used as a vessel for the promotion of progressive agendas, and asserted again Monday that that it was permeated by “neo-Marxism.”
I'm glad someone's finally bringing AP testing to the national discussion.
I like the idea of having outside, objective tests to determine if students learned anything in a course. What I don't like is a company raking in zillions in taxpayer dollars.
I'll leave the SAT alone for a minute, let's just talk about AP tests. What I'll do here is talk about how AP tests are administered at schools.
Schools encourage students to take AP classes and then the AP tests. Not only are university credits (sometimes) awarded for decent scores on the tests, but in many schools students get a "grade bump"--a B, which is usually 3 points in a GPA, earns 4 in an AP class. Thus, A students can get GPAs higher than a 4.0!
We at schools encourage students to sign up for AP tests. (We used to collect the money for them, too, and pass that on to the College Board, but now students pay for those tests online.) We at schools (from now on in this post, "we" means school staff) order the tests and answer documents. We store and organize the tests and documents. We find and set up the testing location; in my own school, custodians set up tables and chairs in one of our gyms. We supervise the taking of the tests over a period of a couple weeks. We collect, collate, and organize all the testing materials--at my school, this is hundreds of tests involving scores of man-hours--to send back to the college board.
The college board writes and scores the tests.
As I said, I support having an outside, objective test with a common standard. But look how much money is spent by schools, almost every high school in the country, organizing and administering these tests for the College Board. Do they reimburse the taxpayer at all for all this work? No (or so I thought), and they charge $97-$145 per test. In a state that guarantees almost no out-of-pocket cost for public education, this should be anathema.
As I looked that information up, I came upon this: The per-exam rebate that schools can retain to offset exam administration costs is $9. All the times I've talked about this to the "AP experts" at my school, none of them has mentioned this offset rebate; in fact, I just emailed them to find out if we apply for this! That takes a little of the wind out of my sails, but my back-of-the-envelope calculations tell me $9 each still isn't enough to reimburse my school for the amount we spend to prepare for and administer the tests for the College Board, which is making money hand over fist.
What would I prefer to see? Something along the lines of New York City's Regents Exams, I think, or perhaps Britain's A-levels. If the government prepares the standards, the government should test to those standards. AP has its own curricula and tests to those curricula--and those curricula are not necessarily apolitical, non-partisan, ideologically unbiased, or even necessarily aligned to state content standards.
If you started from scratch and wanted to create a way for high school students to earn some college units, the current College Board/AP model would probably be the last one you'd come up with. We can, and should, do better.
6 comments:
I've taught AP Physics for 17 years, and although it is not a fair or well-made test, I have to stand up for the College Board.
In Ohio, there are three ways that a high school student can get college credit. Student can take an AP class, take a course at a local college (post secondary credit) or take a college course at the high school (college credit plus).
In my district, all three of these options provide a weighted grade. An 'A' counts as a 5 on a 4 point scale.
At least the College Board takes steps to keep the quality up. AP teachers have to get approval for their syllabus and the school is supposed to provide adequate facilities. The test provides an objective way to compare all students. Also, the College Board provides significant resources to help.
Taking a class at a community college is usually much easier than the comparable AP class. The community college has an incentive to get more students and not much of an incentive to avoid grade inflation. Students take this option if they want an inflated GPA, but aren't interested in mastering the content.
College credit plus is more difficult for a school to implement, and may or may not be credible.
One of our kids' private high schools opted out of the AP system. They worked with the UC schools to create advanced classes that UC would accept like APs. If you went out of state, though, no joy.
Randomizer, what about the issues I brought up? What about the College Board's raking in money while govt employees do the work? If the tests aren't fair (whatever that means) or good, why defend them at all? Is it solely because you think they're better than the alternatives?
The "not fair" part: The College Board did a study where they had students in the comparable course at a variety of universities take the multiple choice portion of the AP test. They compared students who had a 95% class average in the college class, to high school students who just made the cut to get a 5. The college students averaged a 72% while the high school students averaged a 81%. The AP test was much more difficult than it had to be.
Yes, the College Board is certainly raking in money, but there is so much money floating around in public education, that doesn't bother me because the College Board attempts to return some value for the money. They do try to maintain test integrity and provide resources. A '5' on an AP test means something. With grade inflation, hectoring parents, pressure from the administration and accommodations, getting an 'A' in a high school course doesn't mean much.
The College Board is driving the curriculum. That's not good, but nobody else seems to be serious about it. Universities care more about equity than academic rigor, and public school administrators all seem to be from Lake Wobegon, where every child is above average.
It does bother me that the College Board is expanding their reach. My district has AP US History for 10th graders and enrollment is growing. The majority of those students don't have the horsepower for a college course. The College Board is rolling out "Pre-AP" courses. I don't even know what that means, but they will be making bank.
Our academic standards are in decline and report cards aren't honest. There is a big leadership vacuum in education, and the College Board is stepping in. That isn't how it should be, but that's where we're at.
How about this for a solution. New York could license their Regents Exam to other states. That's not the same as states doing their own work, but it might be the best we can get.
I didn't spend much time addressing the alternatives to the College Board.
For high school students to get college credit, there is International Baccalaureate, community college and a university endorsed teacher at the high school. I mentioned a few of those in my original post. None of those do what the College Board does.
What organizations are there supporting thorough academic programs with objective testing and accurate scoring?
States could do that, but none of them seem to be attempting to.
Bad all around.
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