Reply to S/O Building a Rigorous HS Experience Outside the Magnets

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Reply to "S/O Building a Rigorous HS Experience Outside the Magnets"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Some of this will be school-dependent, but generally it is good to take a couple AP or IB classes in 9th and 10th. Otherwise they will be bored by the content in Honors.

Some schools now have AP Seminar available as an alternative to Hon English 10. AP Gov in 9th, then APUSH in 10th is a good pathway if your school provides it.

Honors Algebra 2 and Honors Precalc can be tough classes.

AP Computer Science [i]Principles[/i] is also good for 9th graders, because it's not hard, it counts as a tech credit, and gives them some experience with an AP exam.[/quote]

There’s a poster who keeps saying AP CS principles isn’t that hard, yet only 12 pct of students nationwide get 5s on that exam.  Setting a 9th grader up for a suboptimal AP score should be done with a lot of careful consideration.[/quote]

Not that poster, but the hypothesis is similar to that generated by the observation that state exam passing rates in Algebra in 9th are often lower than in 8th.  In the latter case, the thought is that those more attuned to the subject tend to take it earlier, and they, then, tend to score higher despite the additional year the others have.  Similarly, it is postulated that those taking AP CS Principles may represent those less attuned to the subject, when compared to those taking AP CS A (often without taking Principles), and the relatively low performance on the Principles AP exam reflects that divergence.

I would posit that a major underlying cause is the ridiculous arms race towards establishing a college application profile rife with AP markings and the associated GPA bump.  It appears that most top colleges do not accept credit for Principles, anyway, and it is probable that most students better would be served by a paradigm of non-AP survey/introductory courses.   Those could be designed without the fetters of adhering to an AP exam that approximates the level of that which used to be termed "Rocks for Jocks" (technical courses developed, under misguided philosophy of its own, to meet college graduation requirements for those not technically inclined).  The return, then, of AP courses like AP CS AB, AP French Literature, etc. -- now gone as a result of lower attendance due to the aggressive turn towards loading up on a series of easy-A APs beginning earlier in HS -- more properly would provide college-level educational experiences to well-prepared high-schoolers.

That is a whole-of-nation problem, though, not an MCPS one, and the profit seen by The College Board in offering a more numerous but less meaningful suite of AP courses almost certainly means that we will not see the suggested change.[/quote]

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