From the original article:
In two decades of interviews I have found only one student who thought wrestling with AP did her any harm.
This, IMO, speaks to the value of setting high standards in core courses, particularly in elementary school. Students cannot challenge difficult courses without a strong academic foundation.
My comments will set aside the real possibility of selection bias and self-serving bias in the sample the author quotes. Let us assume that, once a student attains a sufficient level of proficiency in a subject, access to enriched content is at least as good as standard course offerings, in terms of developing that student's capability in the subject. The material questions are: what is that proficiency, and how do we inculcate it universally?
Educational policy where I am - and, it seems, in a growing swath of the US - is looking at the issue from the wrong end of the telescope. Instead of enforcing equal outcomes at the end of K-12 and throttling supply to quality educational placements, with multipliers assigned to traditionally under-represented groups, we should be amplifying opportunities to bring forward lagging and under-represented students as early in their academic careers as possible, and not at the expense of the strongest. Education is not an expenditure category in which we should skimp. A decade of sound educational policy and implementation could radically improve the trajectory of the population's potential, and no student or group of students need lose out as a result.
I am concerned that the disconnect between the timescale on which benefits of such policies is realized, versus the shorter interval of the political cycle, makes this difficult for the average voter to appreciate. Sadly, expediency and political salability seem to dominate the policy implementation in this area.
