Ordinarily, I don’t advocate simple solutions to complex situations. The factors that contribute to success or failure of a school or a student are so numerous that we’ve been arguing since the nineteenth century on the best way to accomplish the goal of achieving literacy for all children—and I include math, science, history, art, and music to the foundational literacies of reading and writing.
Yet there is a reason why I’ve championed the Advanced Placement program for twenty years. AP is flexible enough to fit in any school setting, and is intelligently designed to elevate high school thinking and writing to something approximating college expectations. Over 90% of four-year colleges and universities in the United States accept AP credits, and studies show that AP students entering college achieve both higher college G.P.A.s and a higher rate of graduation within 4 years.
Last week, College Board released its fifth annual AP report to the nation stating that 15% of the high school class of 2008 earned at least one passing score on the demanding AP tests given last May, with Maryland first in the nation at 23.4%, and Virginia third with 21.3%. If over a fifth of high school students in Maryland and Virginia pass at least one AP exam, no doubt a quarter are taking one or more AP courses—an impressive figure. But we can do better than that.
President Obama has voiced support for initiatives not only making college education more affordable for the middle class, but also aligning high school and college more closely, so that fewer students drop out through lack of preparedness. Increasing the number of AP classes is one relatively simple step toward that goal.
That Maryland and Virginia score so well on College Board’s list of AP achievement is in no small part owing to Jay Mathews’ celebrated Challenge Index—a school ranking based on availability of AP and International Baccalaureate classes in local high schools. Parents love rankings, and schools—and school systems—beefed up their AP and IB offerings in order to ascend the Challenge Index ladder in the greater D.C. area.
Mathews is slightly partial to IB, and I am partial to AP—because of its flexibility and widespread acceptance by four-year institutions. But either one will provide the rigor and critical thinking students need to develop if they are to handle a college curriculum. Washington D.C.’s schools are undergoing huge changes at every level, and AP inclusion and preparation should be at the top of the list for every principal of every high school interested in improving student achievement.
Next week I will describe the AP program more specifically and outline why it is successful in preparing students for college and the complex realities of the world beyond high school’s walls, but the essence of the AP method is that it doesn’t settle for rote memorization or multiple choice as means and ends in learning. (Even the math exams include essays.) Students need to be able to reason and think logically to pass an AP test.
My personal Utopia consists of a population of students who reason and think logically! My next column will show how AP brings us closer to that goal.
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 the syllabi of Advanced Placement literature teachers.
Books Frequently on AP Reading Lists
1. 1984 by George Orwell
2. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
3. King Lear by William Shakespeare
4. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
5. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
6. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
7. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
8. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
9. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
10. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
