Yes, exactly as Val notes. My DD's AP Literature course is appalling in terms of the multiple choice "quizzes" offered.
I think I posted one of the peculiar little "gems" from that course last autumn in the Bad Homework thread. The Lord Byron/Mary Shelley muse question? THAT question? Yeah-- 20% of the grade on that particular "assessment" was on the basis of that one question. Which my DD got wrong-- not because she didn't know, but because she was thinking too much. She could have written a cogent paragraph-- or more-- answering that question, but couldn't "choose" a single correct answer because there wasn't one given.
That is fairly typical from what we've seen in this class. Her quiz grades are about 20% lower than all her written work. In spite of our sense that her writing skills are "average" that is clearly not the case relative to her academic peers, though if HER writing is "exemplary" (as it seems to be by today's HS standards) then I shudder to imagine was "passable" has become.
