Reply to S/O: How many APs are enough? Too much?

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Reply to "S/O: How many APs are enough? Too much?"

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[quote=Anonymous]Public school kids are taking as many as 9-10 AP classes between sophomore and senior years. On one recent thread, someone said their DS had taken 11 APs. (For the sake of disclosure, DC1 will have taken 9 AP classes by graduation and DC2 has yet to enter HS. To fend off the inevitable accusations of sour grapes, because this is DCUM after all: so far DC1's results have been very good, grade-wise and test-wise.) I think we can all agree, this pretty much stinks for the kids, who are under a ton of pressure. The stress on my own DC has been enormous.

Some of the blame definitely lies with the US News/Jay Matthews ranking, which ranks schools by the number of APs/IBs the kids take. This probably causes schools to push AP classes on kids.

A second problem is that kids are hearing "we want to see you take the most challenging courses you can" from the colleges. We did a college tour last spring, and we heard this same message over and over from both the top and 2nd tier schools. Unfortunately, the "honors" classes in MoCo are more like the "on level" classes of 20 years ago, and a teacher chimed in on another thread to confirm this. The college admissions folks divide themselves up by regions so they know the top high schools in each region, and they know the difference between AP and honors at the MoCo publics. So basically, this means the kids take APs if they want to get into a competitive college.

But rather than just whine, what are some possible solutions?
1. Get US News to stop publishing the rankings. Fat chance, because the rankings sell magazines.
2. Get US News to weight the rankings by test results. Slightly better. Might slow schools down from pushing APs on kids who aren't ready.
3. Neither 1. nor 2. would stop the pressure that is coming from the colleges themselves to "take the most challenging classes." My personal favorite solution would be for MoCo to offer more challenging non-AP classes. Basically, MoCo's "honors" classes are really on-level classes. Public school kids tend to take many more APs than private school kids: you see this on DCUM threads all the time, and from our personal experience, DC's friends at Sidwell et cetera take far fewer APs, and Maret doesn't have APs. I wonder if the problem is that college admissions officers have more confidence in the "regular" classes at these private schools, but maybe I'm wrong. So, if MoCo offered "honors" classes that were challenging, would this lessen the pressure to take APs? Or not?
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