School Rating Scoundrels Club

Rooker started by saying that New Canaan is "an excellent high school" and I was wrong to base my high school evaluation "solely on one thing." But, she added, I was not the only one who, at least in part, appraises the worth of a high school based on AP participation.

Rooker advises students on college admissions. She said she has asked 85 college admissions officers in the past two years what was the first thing they look for in applicants' transcripts. She said each told her it was "the level of difficulty of the courses taken by a student. It is an automatic assumption that if an able student does not take AP courses when his or her high school offers them, then he or she has chosen not to challenge him or herself."

On that scale, she said, "some New Canaan students appear to be slouches. Why? Because even though NCHS offers AP courses, not many NCHS students take them. Such students appear simply to have chosen not to challenge themselves."

"Yet, I have worked with many students from NCHS who have wanted to take AP courses. They are told, though, that this is not a suitable placement for them. They hear things like: their past performance is not good enough, or they haven't been in honors level classes for the previous grade, or there is only one class and it is full."

Rooker said this is especially true of students with scores between 1250 and 1450 on the old SAT scale of 1600. She said she works with students from several other Connecticut high schools, and sometimes finds students with 1200 on their SATs taking four or five AP courses while New Canaan seniors with 1400s take none. "This is not because they are lazy, but because they were prevented from taking AP classes at NCHS by the system of placement." She said some NCHS staffers say the colleges its students apply to know that the school's non-AP courses are very rigorous, but that argument doesn't work if a New Canaan student applies to a college outside New England that doesn't know much about the school.

"My question is this: in a wonderful school like NCHS where there are a plethora of capable students and capable teachers, why are all able students not offered the opportunity to take AP courses?" Rooker said. "If this means changing the selection criteria, then that should be done. If it means adding more sections of some courses, then that should be done. If it means adding more AP courses, then that should be done. Why are many able students left to appeal and petition for placement in an AP courses, hoping to be admitted, only to find out that they aren't? . . . Our students are caught in the trap of not being allowed to take AP courses by their local high school, and then are being judged by college admissions committees for not taking them."

David Abbey, the New Canaan schools superintendent, said "we feel we have a strong and comprehensive AP program, but we don't open enroll and we don't require that those students who participate in the AP program take the AP tests." He said he felt that the Newsweek list penalizes schools like his that may have many students in AP classes, but not as many taking the AP tests.

He said he thought the most important consideration was how well a school was challenging all of its students, not how they were using AP "as leverage to get into college." He said the criteria for admittance to the school's AP courses were clearly listed on the school website and course catalog, and that the administration and school board planned to review the AP program, including the participation rate, in the coming school year.

As Nicholas Colangelo in Iowa and Mike Reno in Michigan can tell you, most high schools in their states are very similar to New Canaan High in the rules that keep students from taking AP. The Newsweek data, and my visits and calls to hundreds of school across the country, suggest this is the case throughout the country. The vast majority of schools don't pay much attention to their AP statistics, and don't think the fact that they limit access to those courses and tests is problem.

But each year there are more school rating scoundrels, toting up the AP and IB numbers and asking why so many students are denied the chance to face a college-level academic challenge. Eventually, I hope, more educators will join the club, and let the numbers help them produce better schools.