| Today, I read this article (and ensuing discussion here) with some interest. The assessment of school rankings merely by the percentage of students taking AP or IB tests seems pretty lazy, when there are many other pieces of information that could be included to more completely rank a school. What does taking AP or IB tests tell us? Not much other than the schools push it and can cough up the $75 or so to pay for the tests. It seems that even taking into account how well students do on AP exams would be a better indicator of school quality.
I took 5 AP tests in high school and did well enough on all of them for some sort of college credit except for French, although I later tested out of the 3 semester language proficiency so there you go. (I ended up with enough college credit to finish a semester early, although this did not actually happen due to changing my major rather late in the game). Not a lot of kids in my high school took AP tests, probably about 25 out of 300 seniors sat the ones for which there was a specific AP class (English, Calculus, American History, and Psychology), with a few people taking the language ones or a science one on occasion. My high school had three tracks: remedial, regular, and honors, with about 1/3 of the kids in honors, 1/2 in regular, and 1/6 in remedial. AP classes and the test at the end of the year were only for the brightest students, the ones at the top of the honors track. It seems highly unlikely that having more of the honors kids or the average kids take the AP tests would have made my school better in any way.
That said, my high school was and still is private, so it wouldn't really matter in this case as private schools were not included in the listings. I believe the point still stands, though - that having lots of kids who are not on an educational track to do well on AP tests take those tests does nothing to indicate that a school is 'good'. |
