I have a question for people who've taken AP classes or whose kids are taking them.

My son signed up for an online AP history class. He ended up asking me to drop him out of it after two weeks because he was miserable. It used an online ebook with online multiple choice quizzes and was almost 100% memorize and regurgitate. Plus (IMO), it was a poster child for the mile-wide/molecule-deep approach. There was really almost no room for measured analysis or consideration of patterns in US history that continue until today. Quiz questions asked things like "What was the response of farmers in Georgia to the of 1730?"

Essays directions said, "You have 45 minutes to write this." The instructor obviously wasn't looking for anything deep; I think the idea was to train students how to write FAST on the AP exam. From what I learned about the class, passing it and the AP test requires memorizing 400-500 pages of textbook factoids.

I dug into AP classes a bit and found that there's a movement to get away from them (here's a good series of blog entries on the subject).

Personally, I find this very depressing, but, as usual, not surprising. Memorizing a bunch of facts is not how my college professors taught history. They expected us to think about things and write long papers that took 2-3 weeks or more to put together. There was no such thing as a multiple choice test. I know that a lot of colleges rely on these types of tests, but IMO, the good ones use them occasionally at most. All that slow writing I did in all my humanities classes helped me get a perfect score on the essay portion of the GRE, with no preparation. I didn't have to practice by writing lots of rapid-fire essays. All that practice writing complex essays over weeks gave me everything I needed. Somehow, I think that whipping out 45-minute slap-and-dash essays won't teach kids how to spend 3 weeks researching a subject and drawing conclusions from what they've read.

I'd like to know if anyone else has had similar doubts about AP courses. I'm sure that some are better than others (makes sense, and is supported by what I've read). But to me, a course based around multiple choice questions isn't really teaching much of importance.

AP History was very different than AP Biology, English, Calculus or Chemistry. AP doesn't mean differentiated - just that it meets college requirements for that course.

My kids' AP History was similar to yours, but they took it in school. AP English was better, in that the reading material was college level and more sophisticated. Calculus II was more difficult that high school Calculus II, but was deceiving in that it in no way compared to the difficulty of the Calculus my son is not taking in his second year in college.

AP was the only choice for more challenging classes in our high school, and the only option for gifted other than the mentorship program, so both my older kids took mostly AP classes for core subjects.

I can't imagine taking APUSH online, so that might be part of the problem. My dd19 had an amazing history teacher for APUSH and it was definitely NOT all about multiple choice or "quick" essays (although being able to make those connections concisely certainly was valued). I've read so much about APs being hated, and people preferring the CC classes in HS, but I loved the APs for my kids. The CCs were much more basic, and filled with a mix of students. The AP courses seemed deeper and more geared towards gifted. Dd19 is now a senior in college, with a dual major, >3.9 GPA, honors track, etc and she credits her skill at writing and analyzing all to her APUSH, Honors World History (when she was a freshman in HS, AP World History wasn't offered) and AP Euro classes. In fact, she's said several times that the Honors/AP Eng courses offered were nowhere near as helpful to her writing ability as the history courses. She definitely had to write longer essays, but she did have to do some multiple choice and shorter responses/DBQs in the class, and I thought it was a great mix. When the top students in the HS were honored, they had to choose a "most influential educator" and she chose her APUSH teacher and says that she still would, as a senior in college.
I truly, truly think that it's mediocre teachers who are killing these classes. High schools are clamoring to offer every AP course but don't have enough qualified teachers. Personally, that's why I liked our large HS (4,000 students when dd went there) even it was a bit impersonal.
I don't know how our HS did as a whole (they only report students getting 3 or higher) but dd got all 5s and she really didn't study that much. Through the years (since APUSH was her 3rd in-depth history course) I think she just developed those skills. It did help that dd is a very fast reader and doesn't really view reading as homework, but I do know a few of her friends who also got 5s who weren't cramming. Dd finished her set takedown from the spring musical about midnight the night before the 8am APUSH test and had been doing rehearsals 5-6 days a week for the two months prior to it.

USH in this country does not go deep by design, because the purpose isn't to educate, it's to mold compliant citizens. The problem goes all the way up to college, and so it's evident in AP classes, too. This explains why so many highly-educated public figures can expound on the Founding Fathers, get it consistently wrong, and nobody calls them out on it.

I took it in high school. Homework was full of the same kind of rote nonsense mentioned here, which is why nobody did the homework. Tests had it, too. I used to get about 70% of the questions right... and set the curve. So, needless to say, I was worried about the AP test.

I got a 5.

The instructor made all the difference. He made up for awful textbooks and test questions. Of course, ultimately it was still a really bad course, but that's not his fault.

AP European and American history were great experiences for me. We learned to handle historical documents and interpret them in essay-writing.

I wouldn't have wanted to do them online; and I do think the quality of the teacher and the feedback is critical.

DeeDee

You sometimes accuse others of politicizing threads, but that is what you are doing here. I could offer my own political critique of what is taught in U.S. history, which is the opposite of your complaint, but it would also be off-topic.

That comment was a response to the complaint that AP US History does not go deep. AP US History does not go deep because college US History does not go deep, and as a result, our country has a poor understanding of US History. This is all very topical.

Also, I called out no particular public figures. Are you suggesting that the individuals who consistently misrepresent the Founding Fathers belong to a particular political ideology? If so, the only one politicizing this thread is you.

USH in this country does not go deep by design, because the purpose isn't to educate, it's to mold compliant citizens.

I think it's impossible to make broad generalizations like this. The first book dd read in APUSH was Zinn's "A People's History." Hmmm.... doesn't really seem like they were trying to mold compliant citizens!

I took it in high school. Homework was full of the same kind of rote nonsense mentioned here, which is why nobody did the homework. Tests had it, too. I used to get about 70% of the questions right... and set the curve.
This would never have happened in dd's class. If you didn't do the homework, starting with the reading/analysis due on day 1 of class, you were kicked out. And the class wasn't curved....

So, needless to say, I was worried about the AP test. I got a 5.The instructor made all the difference. He made up for awful textbooks and test questions. Of course, ultimately it was still a really bad course, but that's not his fault.

So, what do you mean "it was still a really bad course?" The AP program doesn't set curriculum. Each HS develops its own curriculum. Dd's course was not full of rote nonsense; it was one of the best courses she ever took in HS. She didn't do rote nonsense and she didn't memorize thousands of dates or spend hours reviewing, and she got a 5. You didn't do the "rote nonsense" although your HS apparently included it in its (not AP's) curriculum, and you got a 5. Seems like a good teacher/HS can develop a curriculum that is not full of memorization or regurgitation and still have its students do well. The fact that 85-90% of the students (most who are at least high-achieving if not gifted) don't get 5s means, to me, that most teachers don't do a good enough job.

Dude, those are pretty broad generalizations. Many college history courses *do* go deep and challenge students to assess contrasting perspectives. I'm sorry if your courses didn't, but you can't say with certainty that they all don't.

Likewise, I wouldn't assume that AP history in high school reflects college history courses. How could it? There isn't a single standard college history curriculum.

DeeDee

I'm sure I made it obvious that, except for the first paragraph about US History in general, I was speaking of personal experience. Your results, quite obviously, may vary.

I agree. My daughter has found AP Physics and AP Lit both to be much more along the lines of what she needs as a student.

Frankly, we should have had her in AP classes two years ago.

No experience with APUSH other than what I see from one of my DD's HG friends. :shrug:

It's not precisely true that College Board doesn't determine curriculum in an AP course, either-- they do in a de facto sense, since they have to approve the syllabus and content of each and every class bearing the label. They also "train" teachers via summmer workshops in order to "certify" them to teach AP. There is prepackaged curriculum, there are "approved" textbooks for these classes, etc. It's not really as open as regular course development.

I've been a bit less than thrilled with some of the 'test prep' angle in AP Lit (they've spent whole class periods dissecting selections and running through AP-like exam questions), but on balance, the rigor of the course-- and I don't mean "Rigor" the way educational marketers mean it-- makes up for a lot of sins.

Val, I've also heard the claim that multiple choice-- er-- excuse me-- "student selection" as an assessment tool CAN, in the hands of an expert writer, transcend the lowest levels of Bloom's Taxonomy and get into 'synthesis' and such.

But frankly, I have never seen it done. Ever. Well-- that's not true. I had one college prof that managed it by virtue of "the answer bank" which contained ALL of the exam answers, and a few bonus red herring answers for fun. That was in a quantitative course, however (Chemistry 201, etc), so it really doesn't apply. I digress.

So. In my child's two AP courses, the main differences seem to be that:

a) more writing is expected. MUCH more writing.
b) in-class discussion is also expected-- much more participation than in regular classes (and DD has had both teachers prior to this year)
c) the pace is faster.

I don't think that I personally would consider either of these "college" level, but then again, both are out of my subject specialty. Actually, the pace in physics is close to college level.

I think that these courses are not all that fantastic. However-- by comparison with regular (or even honors) coursework, they are certainly the best thing available. It's not that AP is all that great, but that most educational offerings in K-12 are just that abysmal.

JMO.

Agreed.