Advanced Fear Frenzy
“Advanced Placement.” Listen carefully: Does that say anything about college admissions? The goal of the AP system was originally to allow capable students to be placed in advanced college courses on the basis of exceptional work in high school.
In an op-ed piece for the New York Times this morning, Rodney LaBrecque, the head of Wilbraham & Monson Academy, a first-rank college preparatory school, accuses the AP program of having
…metamorphosed into something far from its founders’ intentions. Today its de facto purpose is to provide privileged high school students with a credential for college admission. It has become another form of standardized, high-stakes testing…
Good point – one of several in the article. And I like his soluton: to not allow AP classes to be reported until a student is accepted by a school, so they can serve only their original purpose. But I’m on a mission a bit to the side, as regular readers know: One of the most distressing results of the current national fear frenzy is that all of childhood is being turned into a competition. We are driven not by a desire for excellence so much as by the fear that our child will be one of the Have-Nots. It will backfire – it will make less capable learners, whatever their paper qualifications. Advanced Placement classes would do a better job for learners if they were removed from the admissions process.