I teach AP Chemistry and regular Chemistry and I can promise you that regular Chemistry is far more rewarding and fun to teach. Plus we do a lot more actual chemistry.
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A lot of states give a GPA multiplier for AP classes so the more AP classes you take the more you can push your GPA above 4.0. In a lot of high performing schools, the valedictorian is the one among the 20+ other 4.0 students who took the most AP classes.
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There most definitely SHOULD be advanced challenging college-prep classes at the high school level. The question is whether the current AP classes are the best way to do it with their intense mad rush through a giant breadth of curriculum with the main objective of passing a multiple choice test at the end of the year.
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Such things are usually decided at the state level not the HS level. That way state universities can fairly compare different students across schools based on GPA. Otherwise you would have a GPA-race among schools within a state. It is somewhat fair to do since it is most definitely the case that not all HS classes are created equal.
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It seems totally sensible to have a consistent standard for GPAs within a state, but I’m a little surprised that such unanimity can actually be achieved. We don’t have extra points for AP classes (I think?), but my kid does get high school credit for advanced work done in middle school. Which is just wierd. I’m not sure why everyone in this district is in such a hurry
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My wife had a colleague who Storrs dumped.
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I got advanced chem back in the early 60s, before AP I suppose. I breezed thru freshman Chem at Penn, where the teacher was a grad student.
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The high school my daughter went to was so small (how small was it?) that one of her friends was sent to a local technical school to get more advanced math classes because he had passed all that was offered before he got to senior year.
Hers was among the first graduating classes with more than 100 students. Even now, grades 9 - 12 have about 500 kids total. The school is located about 20 miles from Hartford (the capital) and they don’t go wanting for high-paying jobs. Average home price is in the $360K range, but there’s some really pricey stuff in the remoter areas.
Another related anecdote:
I think this is how weighted classes may’ve come into being - certainly a contributing factor.
My late sister was at the top of her class. As graduation approached, she was told she might no longer be the top-rated female student. She had all the college prep classes and all that, but there was a girl in the secretarial track that had equally good grades. It seemed unfair. What I don’t know is how they resolved it, but my sister walked at graduation as the top-ranked girl. This was in 1969.
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Some colleges also give grades and not just credit for high scores on AP exams. I started college with 30 credit hours, 16 of them A credit from scoring 5’s on AP exams. That was my only 4.0 “semester”… it definitely helped my college GPA. It was also a few decades ago, so not sure if that is still common.
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Yikes. Looks like Bugs just “Bobbitted” Florida.
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Maybe it isnt pandering so much as belief.
DeSantis needs to prove to the ignorant that he’s more anti-woke than Governor Fleece Vest of Virginia – who is having his own education “issue” right now to stir up the rubes – something to do with “commendation letters” for students who WEREN’T named National Merit Semifinalists.
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Both Dukakis and Quayle run circles around DiSantis in the personality department. Neither can lay claim to the misanthropic snarl that is his trademark.
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Here in WA there is no GPA weighting for AP classes, but schools do AP weighting to determine valedictorians and other class honors. So the kid with a 4.0 who took 15 AP classes gets ranked ahead of the kid with a 4.0 who only took 8 AP classes for class honors. Otherwise at a big school you might end up with 25 co-valedictorians. My daughter’s only blemish on her otherwise perfect 4.0 GPA was one A- she got in math during the start of COVID when schools closed and her grades were frozen in place. That dropped her to a class rank of about 45th out of 550 and she had 9 AP classes. I have no idea how many kids there were with perfect 4.0 GPAs. You gotta have some way to pick who is the valedictorian to give the speech at graduation.
If this were not kabuki, the College Board people would simply cancel all AP tests in the state.
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Yes, I see, there is some similarity there …
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Well obviously, but white students are being treated as a protected class here, as if learning what took place in this country’s past is more painful for them than those children whose ancestors suffered under racist domination and exploitation.
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"you’ve got politicians that are banning not assault rifles, but the word ‘Latinx’.”
Democrats have better priorities.