Advanced Placement program

Started by FSBlueApocalypse, December 26, 2008, 09:24:50 PM

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Not sure if people are familiar with this. It's a program run by the college board to allow high school students to earn college credit. It's a great program if the class is taught by a good teacher and actually taught to the standards. However, a lot of schools now just use it as a buzz word to make themselves look better on paper. My district recently made it mandatory that AP US History would be the US History class taught. Of course everyone promised it would make our schools better, and what did we get? A 9% pass rate, 0% if you factor out the two academic magnet high schools.

Quote from: FSBlueApocalypse on December 26, 2008, 09:24:50 PM
Not sure if people are familiar with this. It's a program run by the college board to allow high school students to earn college credit. It's a great program if the class is taught by a good teacher and actually taught to the standards. However, a lot of schools now just use it as a buzz word to make themselves look better on paper. My district recently made it mandatory that AP US History would be the US History class taught. Of course everyone promised it would make our schools better, and what did we get? A 9% pass rate, 0% if you factor out the two academic magnet high schools.


I took a three when I was in high school and they did nothing to help me with college. I got 6 hours (2 classes of credit) for the AP US History, but my high school teacher had her PhD and taught the class correctly.

Our charter school consistently ties or exceeds the best public school in the county. Sometimes I think there should probably be a Bogosity on government-run schools. Or government-run anything, for that matter.

Quote from: MrBogosity on December 26, 2008, 11:08:05 PM
Our charter school consistently ties or exceeds the best public school in the county. Sometimes I think there should probably be a Bogosity on government-run schools. Or government-run anything, for that matter.

Yeah, we have 2 academically talented high schools here that constantly rank in the Top 10 of Newsweek's Best High Schools in America. They're "Public" but it would be more correct to say they're charter schools. One of the great ideas our school board had, right next to almost voting for intelligent design to be taught and not requiring students to take any history/civics beyond US history, was to break them up because the other schools were blaming them for their low scores on the state tests. I was booed out of a town hall meeting for trying to show why it was a good thing for them to be kept.

Actually, charter schools are public schools. They're just not government schools. But try explaining the distinction to some people.

Speaking of schools... I have a huge gripe against their ways of teaching, and testing.

I must admit, I was a bit of a "slacker" when it came to school. But ask me anything from High School, and I know it. Give me one of the tests, and I'll pass it. However... I barely slid by in school. Apparently knowing everything isn't enough. (Naturally, if I could do high school again, I would.)

That's not the thing that bothers me though. The thing that bothers me is the different level of courses in my public school system... in which people are assigned to. I really don't see the point in classes being "more advanced" than another class. The concept is that certain kids have different levels of learning, and learning abilities... or a certain pace. But in my experience, anything that is taught, is learned. So, why exactly delay one course for one class, and have another class learn it before another?

For example, in one math course, you'd learn something like, Trigonometry... but kids in another class would be stuck on something like... Algebra. And they'd keep them on Algebra for a long while. However, the other class in Trigonometry would advance past that, on to something else... While the other class is still learning the darn thing.

Okay, these are really horrible examples. But the point I'm trying to make is that going slow and "dumbing" down a class, doesn't teach anything.

I honestly remember being in a class in school where it was the "average / college" level course... And then some major exam was coming up... And our teacher freaked out and tried to shove as much of the stuff into our face at once, just because this test was coming and they didn't expect it to have such questions on it. It would be something that the Advanced Level courses could easily do, since... you know, they learned it already. But no, not us... cause we were still stuck on some other crud.

Am I making sense? Or less sense? I mean, am I making more sense than Real Captain Olimar?