I should have written this a few pages earlier in this thread but looking over the course description it seems like alot of time per subject vs. the old version of 1 year of biology, 1 year of chemistry, 1 year of physics at whatever level was appropriate. What are you trading off if you have to take 2 years of physics and chemistry etc.?
Precisely our question when we told DD's high school that they were out of their minds if they thought she was going to take "honors" coursework as PREPARATION for the same subject offered as an AP course.
(And in contrast to Quantum's experience, there are only so many periods in the school day, and students are NOT PERMITTED to exceed a certain number of courses per term-- usually 7 or 8-- plus, there are a mandated 24 credits for graduation, and that's the state. So there isn't a lot of wiggle room-- DD graduated with 28 credits, I think, which is VERY high.)
Their answer was fairly interesting, actually-- that this is the "general" recommendation for most students now, but that it "Obviously would be waived for a student like {HK DD}," and the implication was fairly clear-- she is the kind of student who can exell in an AP course without much in the way of handholding or spiraling (as preparation). Most of the students that are "AP" students aren't.
Even so, it was interesting to note the attrition rate in DD's AP coursework-- in the six that she took, the attrition rate was 50% or more. In some of them, it was significantly higher. Physics, for example, started with 22 students, I think? By May, there were only five of them left. IMHO, the five who actually belonged in that class. Of those five, only three of them bothered with the AP exam, but all of them got 5's.
My conclusion based upon that is that in spite of all of the spiraling in the world, AP coursework is still a lot more than most high school students can manage very well. Maybe even fewer of them than in previous generations, in fact.
