Reply to AP Bio, AP Chem, AP Phys: order, difficulty, prerequisites?

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Reply to "AP Bio, AP Chem, AP Phys: order, difficulty, prerequisites?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I can speak for science in general and chemistry specifically - I teach honors and AP Chemistry in an MCPS school.

The regular MCPS progression for science now is: 1st year: Hon Bio, 2nd year: Hon Chem, 3rd year: AP something, I recommend AP chemistry as this is harder than AP Bio, and frankly I haven't a lot of use for AP Bio in general as the curriculum still has far too much memorization tied to it, something which has largely been extracted from the AP chem syllabus. If you've a go-getter AP Physics 1 is possible and doable, or honors physics. 4th year: AP Physics in Mechanics or Electricity and Magnetism, or AP Bio (I don't recommend this if a student has taken AP Chemistry, students don't tend to like AP Bio after being pushed in AP chemistry).

Depending on the performance of your student in general this can usually be mixed up depending on the ability of the student, i.e. you can double up here or there, but you'll usually get pushback from counseling so you'll have to be a strong student advocate and your kid should have the aptitude for it and have a record that reflects this, a parent's "say so" isn't going to cut it and counseling does take a perspective of wanting to protect students from unreasonable parental academic pressure and consequent overload of the student in question.

Something to be mindful of: MCPS Honors curriculums are NOT designed to feed kids into AP level courses. The fact is that there are NO established College Board prerequisite courses for any of the science AP classes (I'm guessing that this is true for ALL AP classes, but I can only talk to science) - a kid can, and this does happen, walk in off the street and take the test without ever taking the honors OR the AP classes. The bottom line is, a student can take the test without taking the course, and schools have no College Board standing in stating that any course is a prerequsite for enrolling in an AP Class. Might the honors curriculum be helpful for the AP class? The rigor in honors is no way near that of AP. I'd guess that MCPS would disagree, but honors is intended for ALL students, throughout the county, so it doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that the standards/expectations for a college-level AP class are not the same as they are for an honors class. Bottom line, I teach both, for darn sure my expectations in each are very different.[/quote]

And therein lies the problem that parents continue to complain about and at this point are demanding be changed.    The fact that we have some classes with an all honors  model is ridiculous because we don’t in turn maintain the rigor that is needed.While the expectations for a Honors vs AP class should not be the same, the honors class should definitely have enough depth and rigor as to prepare students to take a AP class.  Each level should be a step up in expectations, requirements, and depth of learning.  No one is asking that Honors classes be gate-kept.  They should be OPEN for ALL students to try and to challenge themselves and to grow from.

As you indicated, AP courses are college level class.  When students start taking them they should have acquired enough background, study skills, self-advocacy and frankly interest in the content to be able to deal with the demands of the course without significant hand holding.  When students take an Honors course, it should essentially be a test for them of have they acquired and developed the above, and getting support as needed in the areas where they are lacking. It also tells them if this is an subject area in which they want further study.

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