Offering high school students college courses as a way to prepare them for the rigors of higher-level thinking and writing seems like a no-brainer. Yet Advanced Placement has always fought an uphill battle to gain acceptance in high schools and in the media. I’ve seen it in the three Fairfax high schools I’ve taught in, and I saw it last week in the New York Times. Why is such a successful program the target of so much negativity?
When I started teaching high school students after 10 years of college teaching, I realized that these students — only one year younger than most of the college students I’d taught — were capable of far more than was expected of them. At my first school, most students had no one in their families who had gone to college, yet they read Chaucer in Middle English and Jane Austen. They were “game” as long as my approach was laid-back and emphasized that reading was fun.
My second school — America’s “Best,” Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology — was newly created and thought Advanced Placement was not for all students (even though they scored 90th percentile or higher.) There were only a few AP English sections, and when I encouraged my “Regular English 12” students to take the AP test, tongues were wagging. “She had as many students taking the test as I did — and she wasn’t even teaching AP!” (That has changed, and all seniors at TJ take the AP test now.)
At Oakton High School, I saw the English AP program burgeon from 31 test takers when I arrived to more than 200 when I left. Most of the principals supported increasing AP offerings and opening courses to any student. Still, it was an uphill battle, with many teachers claiming that AP “wasn’t what it used to be” before the school allowed “regular” students to enroll.
The negativity was always a function of pettiness and jealousy, I figured, so I didn’t worry about it. But last Thursday the New York Times had an article about the annual AP Report to the Nation. Headline: “Expansion of A.P. Tests Also Brings More Failures.” That had not been my experience in Fairfax County, so I was interested in the degree of “failure.”
In 2001, 1 million AP exams were taken with a fail rate of 39 percent. In 2009, 2.3 million AP exams were taken with a fail rate of 43 percent. This is a 130 percent increase in numbers with a 10 percent increase in failure. The math: 610,000 students passed in 2001, and 1.311 million students passed in 2009. If your child was one of the extra 701,000 whose scores were 3 or higher last year, you would not be looking at the 10 percent extra “failure” rate.
It’s hard to accuse the media of being petty and jealous, so I can’t explain such a misleading headline. (Maybe the Times was looking for a “hook.”) But I know there are hundreds of thousands of students who benefit from AP courses and AP exams — and I would include among them the “failures” who earn 2s. I had many of them over the years, and they still came back from college to tell me that my AP class prepared them the way no “regular” course ever did.
What Kids Are Reading
This weekly column will look at lists of books kids are reading in various categories, including grade level, book genre and data from booksellers. Information on the books below came from Amazon.com’s list children’s best-sellers.
Children’s Books on Failure
1. Oprah Winfrey: “I Don’t Believe in Failure” by Robin Westen (Ages 9-12)
2. Failure Is Impossible!: The History of American Women’s Rights by Martha E. Kendall (Ages 9-12)
3. Why Anansi Never Fails! 10 Original Stories for Winning the Learning Game! by James Culver Jr. and Andrea Blumor (Ages 9-12)
4. Failure Is Impossible: The Story of Susan B. Anthony by Lisa Frederiksen Bohannon (Ages 9-12)
5. Columbus: The Triumphant Failure by Oliver Postgate and Naomi Linnell (Ages 9-12)
6. History’s Great Defeats — America’s Failure in Vietnam by Richard Brownell (Young Adult)
7. Uphill Both Ways: Helping Students Who Struggle in School by Crystal M. England (Young Adult)
8. The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective Teens by Sean Covey (Young adult)
Erica Jacobs, whose column appears Wednesday, teaches at George Mason University. E-mail her at [email protected].
