Yup. She's using Giancoli's Physics. Which is larded up with math-math-math and example-example-example, but is VERY light on conceptual instruction. Ergo, the expectation that students can examine 20 worked examples of quite specific problem-solving using Newton's laws of motion, have a single hour of direct instruction...

and then tackle several synthesis problems --without using any notes or calculator-- that also throw in unusual units and forces them to derive conversion factors on the EXAM...

would be... oh, what's the word? Laughable? No, diabolical, I think.

It's good to hear that it isn't just us. Personally, I think that what I've seen of the AP coursework so far supports the notion that these classes were "too hard" and so now they've gone the route of substituting quality for quantity (more! more! more!) in the same sleight of hand that has been featured in things like Race to Nowhere.

It's maddening. We didn't cover some of this stuff in my year-long COLLEGE course. No, instead we covered about 2/3rds of this-- but in considerably more detail. In that course, some of these questions would have been fair. Of course, I don't recall being asked to do what my high schooler is being asked to do until...


well, my qualifying exams in analytical chemistry as a graduate student, quite frankly.

That's how crazily out of whack the assessments are seeming.

Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.