The Challenge Index 2005

Washington Post education reporter Jay Mathews was online Wednesday, May 11, at 1 p.m. ET to answer your questions about the list of the most challenging public high schools in the United States unveiled in Newsweek.

More on The Challenge Index:

Class Struggle: Challenge Index 2005 -- I Defend Myself (Post, May 10)

The 100 Best High Schools in America (Newsweek, May 10)

Other Winning Equations (Newsweek, May 10)

How to Build a Better High School (Newsweek, May 10)

A transcript follows.

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Arlington, Va.: What do you hope to accomplish with the creation of this list? What is its intended purpose?

Jay Mathews: To encourage more schools to open up their college level courses and tests to all students, particularly average students. The research shows those B and C students need a taste of college trauma in high school to survive in college, but most schools tell them they are not good enough for AP. Notice that 96 percent of US high school are NOT on the Newsweek list.

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Jay Mathews: Ooops. Sorry. I was supposed to announce myself. I will start answering, and i may encourage some of you to email me personally. That address is mathewsj@washpost.com.

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Washington, D.C.: What made you decide to develop this list? How and when did you first start? Thanks.

Jay Mathews: I wrote a book called Escalante about Garfield High School in East LA, which had a terrible reputation because it was all low-income kids, and yet those teachers were doing wonderfully preparing kids for college with AP. Then I wrote a book called Class Struggle that showed that most nice suburban schools NEVER let average students like those Garfield kids anywhere near an AP course. So, having suffered for years covering Wall Street, which I did not enjoy doing, I decided to invent an index that would reveal supposedly bad schools that were actually good, at least from this perspective, and allegedly good schools that were bad. Unlike the Dow Jones index, it would measure something I thought was important, and many educators and parents have told me they are glad I did. Many other educators have told me it was a big mistake.

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Tonawanda, N.Y.: A simple methodological question (or two or three): Where do you obtain your raw data? I understand that you calculate the ratio, but where do you get the numbers of graduating seniors and AP/IB participants? And do you calculate ratios for every high school in America or a selected list of schools?

Jay Mathews: It is hard. There are no national data bases to work from with the numbers we want. Over the years I have developed a list of schools that had made the list, or had the potential to do so, and we look for other sources of information on good AP and IB schools. Then we contact each school and ask them to give us the numbers we need. This week, for the first time, I had a research team at Newsweek, two brilliant young men named Dan Berrett and Dan Brillman. And when we publish the list, we sometimes hear from schools we missed, and put them on the list right away.

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Alexandria, Va.: I am a Mount Vernon HS graduate who is sad to see it consistently at the bottom of the local rankings. If it always looks so bad to us, how can Newsweek list it among the top 1000?

What kind of education do kids get there these days? Is it possible to achieve given all the bad things going on?

Jay Mathews: You sadden me deeply. Mount Vernon is a great school. I just wrote a book about it and its wonderful IB program. Go look at it. The book is called Supertest. And keep this in mind---those 1,041 schools are in the top 4 percent of all American schools. I have never been in the top 4 percent of anything, except maybe Redskins watching.

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Fullerton, Calif.: Do you take into account the retention rates for the school on the list? Some of the schools listed from the Los Angeles area have tremendous dropout rates, leaving a smaller pool of seniors by which to divide the number of exams taken. It seems that this would affect the results of your rating.

Jay Mathews: It does effect the results, and I felt it fair that since those dropout rates have little to do with the school, but with the neighborhood, the index should rate the success of that AP or IB program based on that smaller core of students serious enough about their studies to stick around and graduate.

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Alexandria, Va.: Isn't the description of "best high schools" misleading if it's tied only the the number of kids taking AP or IB classes? What other criteria should be considered in determining "the best high schools" or the "best" schools for particular children or particular goals (e.g., success in highly-rated colleges, performance on SATs or AP exams, percent who graduate from high school, percent who graduate from college, etc.)?

Jay Mathews: A good question answered in my FAQs on newsweek.com, which you should consult if I fail to answer your question by 2 pm when I have to go write a story for the Post. Here is what I said:

5. How can you call these the best schools or the top schools if you are using just one narrow measure? High school is more than just AP or IB tests.

A. Indeed it is, and if I could quantify all those other things in a meaningful way, I would give it a shot. But teacher quality, extracurricular activities and other important factors are too subjective for a ranked list. Participation in challenging courses, on the other hand, can be counted, and the results expose a significant failing in most high schools (though not the ones that have made this list.) I think that this is the most important quantitative measure one can make of a high school, and I think one of the strengths of this list is the narrowness of my criteria. Everyone can understand what I am doing and discuss it intelligently, as opposed to the U.S. News college list that just has too many factors for me to put my mind around.

As for the words "top" and "best", they are always based on criteria chosen by the list maker. My list of best directors may depend on Academy Award nominations. Yours may be based on ticket sales. I have been very clear what I am measuring in these schools. You may not like my criteria, but I have not found anyone who understands how high schools work and does not think AP or IB participation is important. I often ask people to tell me what quantitative measure of high schools they think is more important than this one. Such discussions can be very interesting and productive.

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Bethesda, Md.: On the Newsweek I got in the mail yesterday, your index was presented as defining the 100 "best" high schools. Do you really think that is an accurate way to portray your index even though you are only taking into account one measure of success? There are so many other factors that go into making a high school one of the best in the nation. Why don't you include any other indicators?

Jay Mathews: see answer right above.

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Greenwich, Conn.: Dear Mr. Mathews,

First, I would like to applaud your courageous and farsighted advocacy of the IB and AP. You have quoted data that suggest that students who have taken AP courses do better and have a higher likelihood of graduating from college than those who don't. Do you know whether the top schools in your Challenge Index also feature average SAT scores that are correspondingly among the highest as well? And how would you suggest dealing with school administrations that continue to require that students take entrance exams to get into AP classes when their challenge index is as low as 1.4?

Jay Mathews: I know that neighborhood you are in, and your problem. Just keep showing them the data that shows that average students, including average SAT students, need that dose of AP college trauma the most. Average school SAT scores are measures of average school parental income, so the schools on the Newsweek list that have high percentages of free and reduced lunch kids---we are giving that data per school for the first time---will have correspondingly low average SAT scores. If you find a case in which this is NOT true, let me know. I would be a big story.

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Fairfax, Va.: Why do you not include selective schools, such as Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria Virginia? TJHSST gives more AP tests than any other school in the country per capita.

Jay Mathews: This is the MOST frequently asked question. From my FAQ on newsweek.com:

6. Why don't I see famous public high schools like Stuyvesant in New York City or Thomas Jefferson in Fairfax County, Va., or the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora, Ill. or Lowell High in San Francisco on the Newsweek list?

A. I do not include any high school that accepts more than half of its students into the school based on academic criteria like grades and test scores. All of those schools you name are terrific places with some of the highest average test scores in the country, but it would be deceptive for me to put them on this list. The Challenge Index is designed to honor schools that have done the best job in getting average students into college level courses. It does not work with schools that have no, or almost no, average students. I want a list that measures how good the schools are, not just how good their students are.

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Alexandria, Va.: What does the "Challenge Index" measure, exactly? And why is it a useful metric to compare high schools?

Jay Mathews: that is FAQ number one:

1. How does the Challenge Index work?

A. I take the total number of AP or IB tests given at a school in May, and divide by the number of seniors graduating in June. All schools I found that achieved a ratio of at least 1.000, meaning they had as many tests in 2004 as they had graduates, were put on the list on the Newsweek Web site, and the top 100 schools on that list were named in the magazine.

and number 3:

3. Why do you count only the number of tests given, and not how well the students do on the tests?

A. In the past, schools have usually reported their passing rates on AP or IB as a sign of how well their programs were doing. When I say passing rate, I mean the percentage of students who scored 3, 4 or 5 on the 5-point AP test or 4, 5, 6 or 7 on the 7-point IB test. Those scores, the rough equivalent of a C or better on a college course, make the student eligible for credit at many colleges.

I do not count passing rates because I found that most American high schools keep their passing rates artificially high by allowing only A students to take the courses. In some cases, they open the courses to all but wrongly encourage only the best students to take the tests.

AP and IB are important because they give average students a chance to experience the trauma of heavy college reading lists and difficult college examinations. Clifford Adelman's 1999 study for the U.S. Education Department, "Answers in the Tool Box," [http://www.ed.gov/pubs/Toolbox/] showed that the best predictor of college graduation, based on the records of a cohort of 8,700 students, was not good high school grades or test scores, but whether or not a student has an intense academic experience in high school by taking challenging courses. I feel that when schools deny their average students a chance to have that experience, they should not be rewarded with higher ratings because their passing rates are high.

The Adelman report, as well as some more recent research and interviews with hundreds of teachers and students over the last 20 years, have convinced me that a student who works hard but struggles in an AP or IB course, and does poorly on the AP or IB test, is still better prepared for college than he would be if he were forced to take an easier course and test. By taking AP or IB, he has gone one-on-one against the academic equivalent of Michael Jordan, and Jordan has beaten him, but he now has a visceral appreciation of what he has to do to play at that level. To send a student off to college without having had an AP or IB course is like insisting that your child learn to ride a bike without ever taking off the training wheels. It is dumb, and in my view a form of educational malpractice. But most American high schools still do it.

The College Board says the AP grade reports that high schools will receive this summer of 2005 will contain a new statistic that will show how well their students are doing on the test without rewarding schools that restrict access to AP. I call it the mastery rate. It will be the percentage of ALL graduating seniors, including those who never got near an AP course, who had at least one score of 3 over above on at least one AP test sometime in their high school careers. A preliminary study of 2004 results showed the average mastery rate for schools that had AP was about 13 percent. It will be interesting to see how many schools do better than that modest standard.

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East Coast: As an educator working in higher ed, I am extremely concerned at the attention paid to "rankings" both at the college level, and now at the high school level. It seems to be to be creating a larger divide between the haves and have nots, is increasing anxiety among our young people, and leading families to make choices that in fact MAY NOT be in the best interest of the student. As someone who participates in the creation of these rankings, can you please address the ethical issues involved and how those are being taken into consideration? If the goal here is to encourage schools to offer challenging classes to a larger group of students, surely there must be an alternative to creating a class system that makes students self-conscious and anxiety ridden about what school they attend.

Jay Mathews: good question. People do get excited about this list, and sometime misinterpret it, but i have been watching the effect for 7 years and many educators tell me it is doing far more harm than good. And unlike the US News college list, this one is based on such simple numbers than anyone, even me, can understand it. And here is some more from the FAQ:

7. But aren't all the schools on the list doing very well with AP or IB? So why rank them and make some feel badly that they are on the lower end of the scale?

That is exactly right. Every school on the list is in the top four percent of American high schools based on this measure. They have all shown exceptional AP and IB strength. I am mildly ashamed of my reason for ranking, but I do it anyway. I want people to pay attention to this issue, because I think it is vitally important for the improvement of American high schools. Like most journalists, I learned long ago that we are tribal primates with a deep commitment to pecking orders. We cannot resist looking at ranked lists. It doesn't matter what it is----SUVs, ice cream stores, football teams, fertilizer dispensers. We want to see who is on top and who is not. So I rank to get attention, nothing more, in hopes people will then argue about the list and in the process think about the issues it raises.

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Washington, D.C.: Has there been any tracking of the students that attend the top schools in your index, concerning their success after high school? For example, how many are attending 4-year colleges and of those who attend how many complete their degrees?

Jay Mathews: It is a great question. Computer tagging is not yet at a place where we can do that much, but there is a Texas study showing that students who passed an AP test had higher graduate rates than those who did not take AP. It even showed that student who flunked an AP test had better graduation rates that those who did not do AP. But there has been no study of the particular schools on this list. And as I am required to say, correlation is not causation.

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McLean, Va.: As a product of both the fairfax county school system and a Virginia university, I cannot stress the importance of AP classes. Yes, the classes entice students with a weighted GPA, but they also give the opportunity to teach students college-level courses. However, I feel that AP teachers need to prepare students for college life. Not only would no one hold your hand in college, but the teachers are usually grad students who have 30-50 students for 1 hour each week. Speaking from experience, some of my AP courses motivate me to learn more independently than with the crutch of a teacher. College-level courses are great if you get the one-on-one attention, but can be devastating to those students when they are introduced to a large 300+ student class.

Jay Mathews: What you say is true, but i hope you are not suggesting 300 student AP courses in high school, so you can get used to how badly college intro courses are often taught.

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Alexandria, Va.: The brightest students (and those with the most supportive parents) choose to take these courses. The B and C students that your research shows benefit from AP are the same ones who are willing to work hard, which gets them further academically than the A students to begin with. But the real difference is the AP teachers.

At any given high school, the teacher selected to teach the AP class is almost always the best teacher in the department. It seems axiomatic that the best (or the most motivated) students with the best teachers will do the best in college. Perhaps the B and C students who take the AP classes benefit from having the better teachers and the teachers, rather than the coursework, are responsible for the students' success in college. With that in mind, do you think your index is self-selecting?

Jay Mathews: It is possible. I would love to see some research. But I don't really care what the decisive factor is. The hard truth is that most average students are kept out of AP. That should not happen.

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washingtonpost.com: Live Talk: School Spirit (Newsweek.com)

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Frederick, Md.: I am a high school senior who has taken 8 AP classes (not all this year), as well as 5 college classes. My school consistently encourages all students to take AP classes to expose them to college curriculum. Valient as this may seem, it has the affect of significantly reducing the rigor of the classes. I can confidently say that with the exception of my AP Calculus class, NONE of the AP classes I have taken have been at college level, and even though I could place out of college classes, I truly have not received a college level education.

Pushing more and more honors students into AP only results in turning AP into honors. I don't mean to sound elitist, but this has been my experience.

Also, I have found that the goal of each of the AP classes I have taken has NOT been to give students a college level education. It has been solely to pass the AP test. An entire class geared toward passing one standardized test is certainly not equivalent to a college class.

I am encouraged by schools pushing for more rigorous curriculum, however lowering the standards of AP classes are not the way to accomplish this.

Jay Mathews: Email me in a year after you have experienced an average college introductory course, and tell me if you still think AP is not up to that level. It is possible to argue that the intro courses at a few select schools are better, but those who have taken big intro courses at average state universities---which includes most college students---say AP and IB are better. And some data indicates they are right.

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Arlington, Va.: Jay, I am a graduate of Thomas Jefferson HSST and a long time reader of your work here at The Post. After many years, I still cannot gauge your true feelings towards TJHSST and schools like it. I completely understand your rationale for not including it in these rankings, but it seems with language like, "schools with strict academic admissions criteria that prohibit motivated, average students from attending," there is a deeper resentment towards schools like it, as they are somehow elitist and snobbish because they try to cultivate a different learning environment with their having standards for admissions.

Could you please clarify your feelings on schools like TJ? Do you think they serve a useful purpose?

Jay Mathews: I love TJ. It is the best high school in America. If my kids had gone there, I would have been very happy. I speak there nearly every year. But as a reporter, I have to report the good and the bad, and even the best schools have some flaws.

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Arlington, Va.: Do you know how many methods across the country exist for rating the quality of education? If theories differ on what's the best way to rate schools, how can we really get a quality account of what schools are on top? Thank you for your time.

Jay Mathews: There are a million ways to rate schools. Mostly we use test scores. That has some advantages. I like the Challenge Index because it has nothing to do with scores, but shines light from an entirely different angle. I don't think we will ever figure out the best way to rate schools, but the more ideas, the better.

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Washington, D.C.: Is this an annual account? Will you rate any other grade levels?

Jay Mathews: I do an annual ranking of all the Washington area public high schools in the Washington Post Extra sections, usually in December. I do the national list in Newsweek every two years or so, and there is talk of making that an annual event. Nobody is grading other grade levels this way, mostly because lower grade levels dont have national tests that you could use to do so.

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Montgomery County, Md.: Mr. Mathews, there are recent reports that top independent schools are dropping AP classes -- for example, the Crossroads School in Santa Monica -- because these schools find the AP curriculum constricting. My son's independent school here in Montgomery County does not offer AP course (although students may take the test if they wish), and from what I have seen his course are as demanding as any of those high schools on your list. Have you or has any educational scholar ever analyzed the difference between an AP curriculum and the challenging course at schools such as Crossroads? Has any analysis been done of the performance of AP students in college as opposed to students from Crossroads or other top schools that do not offer AP classes?

Jay Mathews: Good question. You give me an excuse to unveil my very latest edition to my FAQ on newsweek.com. I also did a long column on this for this web site. Look for the Class Struggle archive on our education page. Here is the answer:

13. Why are you making such a big deal out of AP? I hear more and more selective colleges are saying they don't like the program and are raising the score for which they will grant course credit, and some high schools are dropping AP altogether. I have heard some people say the courses are either watered down, so the schools can stuff in more students and look good on your index, or limit a teacher's ability to be creative.

A. There is a bit, but only a very small bit, of truth in what you have heard. Many selective colleges are making it harder to get credit for taking AP courses and tests in high schools, but their reasons for doing so are unclear. Former philosophy professor William Casement, who has analyzed this trend, says he thinks AP courses and tests are not as good the introductory college courses and tests they were designed to substitute for, and that is why those colleges are pulling back. There is, sadly, almost no evidence to back up his theory. In fact, the colleges have done no research on the quality of their introductory courses, while the College Board has expert panels that regularly compare AP courses to college intro courses to make sure they are comparable. Some educators think the colleges don't like to give AP credit because it costs them revenue. There is no evidence to support that theory either, but it is clear that selective college admissions offices are very happy to see AP or IB courses on applicants' transcripts. As for high schools rejecting AP, there are exactly 12 who have acknowledged doing that. They are all private, all very expensive, and represent three hundredths of one percent of the nation's high schools. Thousands of high schools, by contrast, are opening more AP or IB courses, which they say are the only national programs that provide an incorruptible and high standard for student learning.

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Ann Arbor, Mich.: Jay,

Once again you've helped bring into focus a critical question in the education debate -- given scarce resources do you focus your energy on the top students or do you try and reach everyone at the risk of alienating those same top students.

I think one reason some people are uncomfortable with the challenge index is that by design you are excluding schools that follow a strict tracking approach (gifted, scholars, mainstream).

I was fortunate to go to one such inner city public high school because I tested into their superb gifted program (which was the only way to get into AP). But I have always struggled with the fact that I had opportunities my friends did not. But most of my guilt was eliminated in the few mainstream classes I took - which were full of students who were not interested in learning.

Jay Mathews: Thanks for this very good, astute thought.

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Bethesda, Md.: A comment about the Challenge Index, which seems to me overly narrow in its assessment of overall school quality ...

I'm personally familiar with two local schools that are very high on your list, yet my personal assessment is that the school that ranks slightly lower offers a more comprehensive and challenging high school experience when you factor in things like extracurricular activities, athletics, even advanced elective courses in subjects that do not have AP test equivalents -- especially since many of those courses demand at least college level work. It's the latter that skews the Challenge Index away from some better schools that do more than follow the AP and IB standards. (I'm not sure how you objectively measure those things, but I don't think a school quality ranking is really meaningful without them.)

I'd also be interested to know how well the graduates of the schools on your list have done by the end of their college experiences. How many graduate on time? How well do they do in College, and in their future graduate studies and careers? Is there any kind of long-term follow-up study underway?

My basic criticism of the Challenge Index is that while it highlights some things that ought to be an important part of how we evaluate the overall high school experience, it also oversimplifies it and leaves out many other important factors.

Jay Mathews: Excellent points. I would like to see that research too. I celebrate the narrowness of the index. It is so narrow and simple that everyone understands what it is, and can make their own sensible judgments, as you have.

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Anonymous: Generally speaking, what types of feedback do you receive on this list once it's published and from whom to you get it? Mostly positive? Negative? Varies completely? Do you take the feedback into consideration for your future methodology?

Jay Mathews: Most of the feedback is negative, since the people who like it are less motivated to write. But the negative feedback is often very intelligent and useful. I try to read all the messages, and respond to as many as I can.

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Silver Spring: Dear Mr. Matthews:

Could you please cite to us the peer review your Challenge Index underwent before it was published? I guess I am a bit skeptical about your methodology and would feel ever so much better knowing it has undergone academic scrutiny.

Sincerely,

A reader

Jay Mathews: It has been out there in the Post and Newsweek for seven years now. I have discussed it with statisticians and they see no problem with it, mostly because it is so simple. There is no regression analysis. No weighting of factors. It is really much more akin to the simplest kinds of newspaper statistical reporting, such as Dow Jones averages in the business section or earned run averages in the sports section, than it is related to anything a peer reviewed journal would ever deign to even think about. I am not a scholar, but a reporter, which many people have pointed out to me.

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Lincolnshire, Ill.: As a teacher at one of the Top 100 Schools, I applaud the Challenge Index and the use of AP/IB to create a culture of high standards throughout a student body. But I fear many top schools are now backing away from this type of culture out of concern that students are facing too much stress in these schools. Your thoughts?

Jay Mathews: It is not happening. Check out my answer above about high schools dropping AP. Even those 12 schools that have rejected AP admit that many of their kids still take the tests, because the college admissions offices are so hot for them. And the kids who overdo AP are a very small slice of the high school pie. AP director Trevor Packer did some analysis and showed that kids taking more than 3 tests is less than 10 percent of the total, or something close to that. I don't have the data with me.

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Riva, Md.: The focus of standards and testing has been to force "meaningful school reform" through numerous threats to our public schools, and what follows is a frantic revision of the curriculum to substitute "accountable test scores" for real learning. High-stakes testing, an example of which is the AP exam, seeks to improve schools, but in reality, it has done little to improve schools. In a similar vein, states can push their schools to provide AP courses in order to make them look better to outsiders, compromising the classroom but placating the bureaucrats with meaningless statistics such as the "challenge index." Under the No Child Left Behind Act, about $24 million is offered annually to states to expand access to the AP program among underserved students.

One result of state and county standard testing programs to meet NCLB mandates has been to virtually extinguish the importance of courses not yet accounted for in the rigorous testing structure. The determined efforts to accomplish school accountability within the act's timed framework have stimulated a restructuring of both math and language arts, which have been the focal testing areas. The curricula controlled by the mandated accountability of standardized testing have likewise been standardized and have evolved to reduce curricular content to the content of the tests. In a race to dictate "outcome," the federal government has hastily supported the AP explosion and along with it the explosive growth and financial gain for testing and tutoring companies. The race to prove proficiency according to the federal guidelines has caused a frantic chase to move students into advanced level classes before they are prepared with a foundation framework on which to build. The results of these measures having been implemented in our schools to meet the federal standards have been felt at every level by students and teachers alike.

The quality and standards of the testing also have received much criticism. The teachers, who are compelled by the county administration to use the test products, have voiced complaints about the quality of the tests themselves, and a growing number of reports have found that the grading of tests has suffered as well. In many cases, driven by the demands of accountability to teach the test under severe time constraints, teachers are compelled to provide the students with the answers to poorly written test questions in order to meet the proficiency levels in their courses. Teaching is reduced to a race to prepare students with a limited scope of content prescribed by the test. In other words, the student is prepared to be tested on information covered on a test that is determined at an administrative level, in a manner that does not encourage or allow time for individual interest, ability level, learning style or mastery.

The students no longer have the luxury of creative thought when so much weight is placed on a learning model that prescribes facts and information for the test. As the average potential and special needs populations experienced the transformation of the curriculum, so have the advanced or ambitious or gifted populations. The concentrated efforts to bring the lower functioning students up to a mandated level of test proficiency have robbed the ambitious student of many opportunities to have their needs met appropriately.

AP classes, created initially to provide "advanced" opportunities for ambitious students, are the most apparent illustration of the damage done to our schools, courtesy of the "accountability" orientation of the federal "reforms." The effects reach into curricula and impair the actual standards of the originally well-intended classes. In the rally to meet federal approval, students are allowed to skip prerequisite courses and take an AP course as a first course. "Among the sciences, AP physics is the course students most frequently select as a first course in the discipline. Data obtained from the College Board (College Entrance Examination Board, 2000d) indicate that almost half of all AP physics test takers had had no prior experience with physics before enrolling in the AP course. Thus, the AP course had to cover both a year of high school physics and a year of college physics, making in-depth examination of any topic nearly impossible." (Learning and Understanding: Improving Advanced Study of Mathematics and Science in U.S. High Schools. Committee on Programs for Advanced Study of Mathematics and Science in American High Schools, Center for Education, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, National Research Council. National Academy Press. Washington, DC. 2002. books.nap.edu/books/0309074401/html/index.html.)

Since the expansion of the AP program, teachers who, in many cases, do not have the background in the subject area are "recruited" by administrations to teach the "advanced level" classes. The "training" provided by the College Board, at a cost to the schools for materials and "credentials," comes in the form of weekend workshops. It is NOT, however, a requirement for the teachers to have completed any training prior to teaching the classes. As a result, many teachers are forced to rely on workbooks and materials bought by the schools, providing a scripted class experience. The teachers often are no further along in their reading of the extensive resource and materials lists than are the students who are taking the class.

Other repercussions of the expanded AP and IB programs have resulted in compromised or even extinguished honors programs and the ambitious recruitment of resources into these programs at the expense of any other course levels of instruction. In high schools, while the AP expansion campaign continues to thrive, honors level classes in physics and other sciences and calculus are unavailable. At magnet schools for the IB program, honors classes, when they are available, are filled with priority ELP (extended learning program) students who are entering the IB program.

Many distinguished educators and researchers have added their voices to the litany of complaints about your shallow, scientifically ridiculous and tragically harmful "quality index," but your rote defense continues to be a tired reference to your book or a relentless plea for "proof." Unfortunately, the AP "miracle" is no more helpful than the Texas "miracle," statistically a scientific non-entity, and its expansion promotes the same damaging results to our school system, regardless of the best intentions.

Therefore, for your readers and for your own information, I include a few resources to help direct your numerous requests for studies and research and to counter your opinions on the topic of AP and public school reform.

John A. Valentine, The College Board and the School Curriculum: A History of the College Board's Influence on the Substance and Standards of American Education, 1900-1980 (New York, 1987), 1-6, 13.

Timothy A. Hacsi, Document-Based Question: What Is the Historical Significance of the Advanced Placement Test?

http://www.indiana.edu/~jah/textbooks/2004/hasci.shtml

William Casement, "Declining Credibility for the AP Program." Academic Questions, Fall 2003.

Kathleen Kennedy Manzo, "Advanced Placement Courses Cast Wider Net", http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2004/11/03/10ap.h24.html?querystring=AP%20program%20among%20underserved%20students

http://cgi.kqed.org/topics/news/perspectives/youdecide/salon/highstakestest/index.html

Barbara Miner, Keeping Public Schools Public, Testing Companies Mine for Gold, http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/19_02/test192.shtml

E. Wayne Ross (University of British Columbia), Kathleen Kesson (Long Island University), David Gabbard (East Carolina University), Sandra Mathison (University of British Columbia), and Kevin D, Vinson (University of Arizona) : Defending Public Schools (published by Praeger).

http://www.fairtest.org/nattest/bushtest.html

Saul Geiser, Veronica Santelices, UC Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education, and Santelices, of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education, ishi.lib.berkeley.edu/cshe/publications/papers/papers.html.

Lois Weiner, New Politics, Vol X, No. 2, Winter 2005

Jay Mathews: You will have to show me some data to prove your assertions. I think as far as AP goes, you are just wrong. The NRC study you cited ASKED for MORE AP courses and tests, not less, and seemed upset that AP wasnt deeper, when AP is only designed to mimic college intro courses. The college professors on the committee could not bear to admit it was THEIR courses that weren't deep enough. Read a few of my books, particularly Escalante and Supertest, and come back and tell me how AP and IB hurt those schools.

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Jay Mathews: Sadly, it is time for me to do what my editor wants me to do, finish a story I promised long ago. Thanks for all the great questions. Read the FAQ on the Newsweek web site if you want to know more. ---jay

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washingtonpost.com: Live Talk: School Spirit (Newsweek.com)

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