"The AP and IB courses, while including some of the best education in the subject currently available at the secondary level, tend in general to be out of date, too broad, and too inflexible in their curricula."
So the argument the NRC is making is that the AP curriculum needs to be improved, but is currently some of the best available. In addition, the curriculum is being overhauled.
So what exactly is the problem with advocating increasing AB and IBO students when, even though there are problems, it's currently some of the best education available, and an overhaul to bring it in line with the NRC/NSF recommendations is underway?
So what exactly is the problem with advocating increasing AB and IBO students when, even though there are problems, it's currently some of the best education available, and an overhaul to bring it in line with the NRC/NSF recommendations is underway?
First, "including some of the best education currently available" != "currently some of the best education available." What the report is actually saying is that a few components of the curriculum are good, but the courses overall suck. If you read the rest of the executive summary, it absolutely shits on the AP. This might be couched in academic language, but make no mistake about what they're saying.
Now obviously if the courses are made to be completely different then advocating them might not be a bad thing. But right now all that's happened is the NSF has given the college board a small amount of money to reform the curriculum, a process which just started this summer. Right now we have no idea if any changes were actually made, and if so what those changes are and whether or not they are really inline with the NRC & NCTM standards.
Anyway, all we know is that right now the president elect is advocating a curriculum that has kids going through the motions of science and math without actually learning the principles of either subject, and without learning what it means to think like a scientist or a mathematician. And these are just the science and math courses. There is every reason to think the other AP courses, the majority which are not being overhauled, are just as bad if not worse.
Further, even if the science and math courses are overhauled, there are still lots of problems with them. For example, the assessments are inauthentic and norm referenced, and there is no reason to think this is going to change.
I did read it. The AP gets it rougher than the IBO. But maybe I'm not used to reading Academic-ese, because it didn't seem to me that they were taking a complete shit on the AP.
In any event, I don't disagree that the AP and IBO need work, I just haven't seen a proposal for what we should be doing instead.
(Maybe if those people learned to say what they mean directly, the non-academic advocates of school reform would have an easier time sorting things out.)
A lot of the AP course problems seemed to stem from the 'teach to the test' mentality, which occurs because college admissions and school rating agencies use the test results in ways the Collge Board/AP did not intend, so schools and teachers are rewarded by gaming the system.
In that respect, almost everything bad you can say about the AP or IBO courses can be said about regular classes thanks to NCLB. At least where my children attend high school, about 2/3 of all classes suffer from the same issues as AP classes, due to the need to put the kids through the state testing grinder.
In that context, the difference between the two is that the AP classes, at least in math and science, while far from ideal, do expose the students to more advanced concepts than they would encounter otherwise.
So, given the choice between AP classes, and non-AP classes that have the same fundamental problems except the course material is easier, what would you do?
I expect your answer is neither, and you would propose something else? Do you have pointers to that info? I really am curious.
I don't really have any specific recommendations beyond what's in the Kohn book I referenced. (I don't endorse everything in that book, but it's a good starting place because it at least asks the right questions.)
"The AP and IB courses, while including some of the best education in the subject currently available at the secondary level, tend in general to be out of date, too broad, and too inflexible in their curricula."
So the argument the NRC is making is that the AP curriculum needs to be improved, but is currently some of the best available. In addition, the curriculum is being overhauled.
So what exactly is the problem with advocating increasing AB and IBO students when, even though there are problems, it's currently some of the best education available, and an overhaul to bring it in line with the NRC/NSF recommendations is underway?