Should We Put the Brakes on Advanced Placement Growth?

But if there is a vigorous and open AP program at a school that shares the spirit of St. Ignatius, with everyone working to raise the level of every kid, then they don't have so much of an excuse not to work harder to prepare more kids for AP. The door to AP is wide open. They can no longer say their kids will never be let into the AP courses. AND -- this is a crucial element you did not mention in your Ed Week piece -- if you do not have a lively and open enrollment AP program at the high school, you are not going to be able to give your teachers a chance to develop the techniques that work best in teaching AP to kids from families where AP is something very new, and scary. You also will not have AP teachers with that kind of experience who can visit the middle school teachers and help them improve their lessons. If we stop schools with low AP passing rates from trying to improve their AP courses, while keeping them open, then everyone will NOT be on the same team, as you were at St. Ignatius.

That kind of team spirit has helped increase AP test participation and AP passing rates in schools throughout the country. Look at Northern Virginia, look at Dallas, look at Long Island, look at Florida, look at Marshall Fundamental in Pasadena, Calif., or YES Prep in Houston or several other schools on the Newsweek list that have both high percentages of low-income students and high passing rates. For kids like that, you don't want to have high schools that look like AP dead ends.

Mattimore: I'm not clear as to why there needs to be an open-access policy in place in order to insist upon more infrastructure at the pre-AP level. In fact, if anyone can get into AP, what is the incentive for students to work hard at pre-AP classes in order to make sure they are qualified for AP?

Let me use a rather unfortunate example from the education system of the country I now call home, France. If you were to ask the average scholar for a listing of the world's great universities, the Sorbonne in Paris would no doubt make the list. But, I'm told, somewhere between 80 percent and 90 percent of undergraduates entering the Sorbonne flunk out within the first two years. Professors at the Sorbonne complain about the quality of students at that university. Why? Because any student who graduates from a French high school on university track with a baccalaureate degree is guaranteed acceptance at the Sorbonne. And the problem, as educational writers here note, is that the baccalaureate has been diminished over the years and no longer signifies anything like the kind of intellectual competence that students need to begin university studies at the Sorbonne. There are proposals to reinvigorate the baccalaureate by requiring students to pass two years of exams for that degree instead of one. In other words, make pre-college preparation more rigorous and winnow out some students so the university and the students don't waste their time later on. I would think the winnowing process is analogous to what we should be doing with pre-AP and AP.

There are a couple of psychological principles here that are apt, too -- scarcity and justification of effort. We want those things that are hard to get or are in short supply (scarcity). When we work hard to get something, the goal is more attractive than if we get it without effort (justification of effort).

AP is special, and it should remain so. Students should know that not everyone will qualify for an AP class but that with hard preparatory work they might just make it.

I've learned from having had plenty of rejected op-eds that if you identify a problem, you should be prepared to offer a solution. Here are two suggestions for the College Board.

First, begin once again publishing the percentage of AP passers (based on test-takers) compared with the previous year. It might be obvious, as Jay writes in his introduction, that the push to expand AP and open access will result in higher failure rates as it has, but that story is not getting reported by many newspapers (including this one). In fact, the story that is reported is that higher percentages of students are succeeding on AP exams.

Second, undertake research to determine the consequences of AP expansion. I won't repeat all the questions I think need answering, but the general thrust of the inquiry should be as to whether or not AP exam failure has any negative impact, not only on the affected students, but on AP programs more generally in high schools, and perceptions about the program in colleges.