Here’s an excerpt from an e-mail discussion I had about AP teachers, expertise and parallels in teaching.

An expert recognizes parallels – real parallels – in different activities and assigns the practice appropriately. The best example of this, in my opinion, is with the baseball player Ted Williams who, for those of you who might not be baseball fans, is regarded as the best hitter in baseball history. He didn’t hit the most home runs [though he is 15th all-time in that category], but he could hit any pitch off any pitcher. Last year the average major league baseball player reached base safely [with a hit or a walk] 33.6% of the time. Ted Williams’ numbers averaged over his entire career? 48.2%. He reached base safely – the object of a hitter’s every at-bat – 50% more than the average baseball player. He really knew how to hit. He was an expert.

In 1970 he published a book called The Science of Hitting. It broke down and explained his technique, preparation, etc. There was a memorable section that I won’t ever forget reading when I was 12 or so – he compared hitting to what he called the “dying act” of chopping a tree. To sum it up, an optimal baseball swing is at a slight downward angle with a release of energy at the point of impact between the ball and the bat. It’s exactly like chopping down a tree with an axe. The best part about practicing chopping down trees is that if your shoulder is too low or you’re committing some other mechanical flaw, you’ll feel it the next day and know your mistake.

Ted knew hitting well enough to find a perfect parallel. If you spent a winter with Ted Williams and chopped wood each day, when baseball season hit in the spring, you’d have improved a great deal without ever touching a bat or seeing a pitch. That’s the power of identifying real parallels and making them work for you.

And it’s the same thing with academics. If you know your subject well enough – and know your test well enough, like an AP exam or Regents – it isn’t hard at all to prepare students to score well without trudging through test prep or methodical review. A good teacher makes you a great hitter even when you’re chopping wood.

Experts can do this effectively. Hardly any teachers [HS or college] have this level of expertise in the subjects they teach or in teaching.

Teacher Jaime Escalante received the Presidential Medal for Excellence in Education in 1988. He gained notoriety when portrayed by Edward James Olmos in Stand and Deliver, the story of a tough, dedicated math teacher in Los Angeles. It’s a classic.

The moral of the story? When taught properly and when all parties are dedicated, anyone can succeed.

And, of course, the final score is one for the ages: Escalante et al.: 1; ETS: 0.

Take a look at a few bios of Escalante’s former students. They defied crass, ill-founded expectations and, with Escalante’s masterful guidance re: math and that other important discipline- life – they’ve done quite well.

The rise of Escalante’s math program in a LAUSD school is the stuff of education legend. Its collapse, however, is largely unknown. As Reason Magazine pointed out in its in-depth history of the program, it’s a shame.

I didn’t mind that South Park parodied Escalante a few weeks ago. Eric Cartman became Mr. Cartmenez, a capable instructor who guided his underperforming students in the ways of cheating. Infused with topical references to the New England Patriots cheating scandal, it was a lighthearted parody that poked a little fun without undermining the important work that Escalante is known for.

The Sacramento Bee posted today an interview with Mr. Escalante [hat tip: Intercepts]. Unfortunately for us, he now teaches in Bolivia, but he was back in the states to receive a Latino Spirit Award from the California Latino Legislative Caucus.

If there’s one thing you read today, make sure it’s this interview. Sound, common sense wisdom from funding to calling moms.

———-

Q: If you were a young man, would you choose to become a teacher again?

A: Absolutely. That’s the only thing I can do. Believe me, I had fun, especially when I used to deal with gang members or kids who weren’t motivated.

Before class and after class, I’d talk to them, to make them believe they could do it. I used to tell them, “Remember this: No one is better than you.”

Q: How do you feel about the term “hero”? Do you feel like a hero?

A: Not really. I’m just an honest man. An honorable man who did the assignment and the homework, because California gave me the chance.

Q: Do you have any regrets supporting Proposition 227 (the 1998 ballot measure that virtually ended bilingual education in public schools)?

A: I was in favor of monolingual language, and it was controversial in those days, because people thought I was going in the wrong direction. No. The tremendous success I had at Garfield High School was because I emphasized (English). I used to say, “Unfortunately, the test comes in one language, and you have to master that language.”

Q: Do you support the concept of a high school exit examination?

A: Yeah, I would say so, because when kids graduate … I assume that in four years, they’ll learn something. … What they have to do on the test is to emphasize their basic knowledge.

Q: Some say public education isn’t getting enough money. Others say money is not spent wisely. What do you think?

A: Money is not the problem. … We have to know how to spend it. We put too much money (in programs) that don’t achieve results. We waste a lot.

Q: What should California do about its dropout rate?

A: Schools alone cannot educate, they need the help of parents. … At Garfield High School, a high percentage of dropouts were kids who didn’t want to come to school. So I made them sign a contract.

And before that, I got in communication with their mom – mom is the one who calls the shots. I said, “Mom, … this is what we’re going to do, and you’re going to help me out. … I need you to control him. I’ll be calling you.”

Q: Advice to teenagers?

A: Set your goals and go for it. You’re going to have to go to college to be something. Otherwise, you’re going to be pumping gas all the time – and today, there’s no gas.

How can teachers prepare students for success on Advanced Placement exams? They can start by taking the test themselves, says Erica Jacobs.

“This may not sound very radical, but teachers rarely take the tests they give even though that is the best teacher training available. Remember the hated-by-teachers adage that “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.” Well, teachers need to “do.” We need to take the test.”

This seems like a no-brainer, but it’s almost never done. Teachers will claim they’re short of time, but in fact it’s because they don’t want to see the results.”

Teachers whose students are subject to standardized exams – AP, New York Regents, etc. – often rely too much on course review material compiled, edited and distributed by outside sources. These can be handy, but there’s plenty of value in sitting down and taking the test.

You know your curriculum best. You probably designed it and, at the least, you implement it each day. If you stumble on certain parts of the test, your students will likely do the same. Self-testing helps identify curricular shortcomings before your students take the test.

There are additional benefits:

“Taking the test proves something else to our students: It proves that we are not “too good” to do the work we assign, and that we believe in what we do. Since humility is always a good thing, I’m not ashamed to admit that I never get 100 percent on this test.”

Not only should you take tests while designing your curriculum, you should also take the practice exams as your students take them. If you think that’s unnecessary, consider this:

“When some of my students get an answer correct that I’ve missed, their smiles spread from Fairfax to Loudoun, and last the rest of the week. For that alone, taking the test is worth it.”

Spending an hour on a test is a small price to pay to help your students maintain an interest in the AP exam. A little friendly competition might even spice up their preparation.

I use Google Alerts to track news and blog articles on several different topics – it’s a handy way to keep up with current issues in education. Yesterday I received an alert from College Planning Specialists called A.P. Classes: Are These Courses as Important as Your Guidance Councilor [sic] Claims? I normally wouldn’t respond to an education article in which “counselor” is spelled incorrectly in the title, but this piece’s content is representative of the attitudes expressed in too much of the professional analysis of AP’s role in the college admissions process. I’ll react to each paragraph.

AP courses, the most advanced college prep classes available at the high school level, may have unforeseen detrimental effects upon a student’s ability to gain entrance into a top flight university. Often thought of as invaluable tools in the quest to impress discerning university admissions officers, AP classes are being evaluated differently by high schools than they are by universities.

AP courses are, indeed, the most advanced curriculum readily available to talented, high-achieving high school students. The AP curriculum isn’t designed to impress admissions officers, though; it’s designed to give appropriate coursework opportunities to students who can – and want to – handle the material. Like any challenging endeavor in academia, AP courses can be invaluable or detrimental – that much is true. And consequently, any challenge is interpreted differently by each stakeholder in the educational process.

The biggest pitfall remains the over scheduling of AP courses during a high school students [sic] curriculum. The majority of intelligent high school kids can and do excel in college level AP courses. The problems arise when students take 3-4-5 AP courses during a particular semester. More often than not one of these classes is far too difficult for the student; consequently the student dedicates huge chunks of time to one course. This time disparity usually leads to suffering grades in all a student’s course work.

Scheduling AP classes to fit in the increasingly-demanding, cramped lives of college-bound high schoolers is an issue that needs to be considered in every individual case. However, scheduling has nothing to do with the AP classes themselves or the value they bring to a student’s education. When making that decision, the focus should not be on grades – the most important factor is the student’s education. Parents, counselors and students need to ask, “Is this beneficial to the student’s education?” instead of, “Will this affect his GPA?” That is, if the decision-makers are committed to education rather than playing the admissions game.

Unfortunately or fortunately, depending upon your point of view, grades remain the driving force behind college admissions. The real catch and pitfall is that MOST colleges do not accept “weight” GPA’s when considering a student for admission. The high school gives added credit for difficulty but the colleges do not consider the difficulty level of AP course work when factoring in GPA for admissions according to Ron Caruthers of College Planning Specialists.

This interpretation depends on how you view the purpose of higher education. Is it to receive a degree or to prepare yourself to achieve whatever goals you’ve set – or may set in the future? Essentially, it’s a decision to play the game or commit to education. And yes, there’s a difference.

College admissions officers aren’t dumb. They know the difference between applicant A, who has a 4.0 and took two Advanced Placement / AP classes and applicant B, who has a 3.2 and took seven APs. Based on just that information, who would you rather matriculate? Me too.

Most competitive institutions simply can’t spend hours poring over each submission, but they’ve done this before – thousands of times a year. They look at what’s behind that GPA. And, if an admissions office only analyzes you on the surface, throwing numbers and information into an aggregating formula and making their decision, do you really want to go there?

Again, it’s about matching up your interests and background with the educational opportunities an institution has to offer – not about playing the game.

Caruthers goes on to state that high school admissions councilors [sic] are telling only half the truth when they advise their students to load up on AP course work. High schools do weight AP course grades much higher than normal high school classes; often an AP course “B” grade is counted as an “A” by many high schools. Unfortunately colleges count all grades equally meaning an “A” is an “A” and a “B” is a “B.”

Caruthers states that the reason for this disparity is that “most high schools are ranked by the number of students taking AP courses. . . ” consequently it is to the high schools’ advantage to push students to take AP courses regardless of the effects it may have on those students.

Anyone who’s dipped a toe into public education’s icy waters knows the methodology behind Newsweek’s rankings – and the value those rankings do and don’t carry. Admissions officers don’t take these rankings seriously. That’s why they request that a student’s guidance counselor submit a school profile with the application. That profile tells them what they need to know – if they don’t know it already – about a school’s enrollment, achievement, etc. It gives them context within which they can evaluate a candidate’s application.

It’s true that schools’ AP offerings are driven by many factors – mostly benevolent. But claiming that students’ educations are harmed out of a sinister desire to raise a school’s [irrelevant] profile does a disservice to all who are involved in public education.

What is the right answer in regards to AP course work for your student? As a rule of thumb, have a student take as many AP courses as they can without hurting their GPA. It is a tough call as AP courses have benefits, challenging curriculum-time management-higher expectations, but remember that in the college admissions game-GPA is king.

Not my thumb. A student should take as many AP classes as he can handle in such a way that he masters the curriculum. That’s the value of an AP course; GPA is a secondary consideration at best. Though a GPA should, in theory, be a certification of a student’s knowledge and performance, that is seldom true. I know it, teachers know it, students know it, administrators know it, those combating grade inflation know it – and so do college admissions officers.

And if GPA is King, you don’t want to be in that castle. Wouldn’t you rather focus on getting an education?

Dowling is a private Long Island college offering undergraduate and graduate degrees through our four schools: Business, Education, Arts and Sciences and Aviation.

Thankfully, we don’t have to scream on the internet to make sure someone across the country can hear. We just type out comments.

The most valuable component of blogging – and also the element I personally like the most – is the opportunity to present information and then read reactions to it. And not just read those reactions, but react to them, get a counter-reaction, etc. When blogging gurus like Debbie Weil use the word “conversation” to describe this phenomenon, they hit the nail on the head.

I’d like to point readers toward a few valuable conversations that are happening on this website:

• Whereas “Why We Should Blog in Education, Part I” didn’t generate much feedback, Part II did. Prospective school board candidates and current members weighed in and gave us some insight about how they approach blogging and communication in general. I do like the trend I’m seeing: increasingly open communication and a hefty respect for the laws that mandate it.
• Reactions to the AP Audit. “Teachers Cynical About Advanced Placement / AP Audit” led to a good ongoing discussion about the motivations and effectiveness of the College Board’s audit of AP curricula. I’ve gotten quite a few e-mails about this, which is why I’ve decided to wait a little longer before producing a follow-up piece. In short, the motivations for the audit and the audit in practice are separate issues that I’d like to address properly – and after the audit has run its course. What have your experiences been like? What’s your take on the audit?
• Opinions on the dismissal of a teacher with a backbone. The outpouring of support for a Texas teacher who refused to alter the grades of students was incredible. After her story broke, we saw several reports from across the nation of school officials pressuring teachers to change grades – and if that failed, changing the grades themselves. This is a serious issue in public education; those teachers and administrators who value integrity should be applauded.

If you haven’t yet weighed in, go for it, and if you have – or don’t want to – the comments are worth reading in full. Remember, conversation is what our sites are all about.

I have completed by [sic] AP audit – 11 pages! Breathing a sigh of relief and snarling at College Board for 20 hours of useless documentation.

Sometimes forums and blogs present people as a little angrier than they really are because, well, for lots of people that attitude is more fun (and the anonymity of the internet relieves them from the accountability it warrants). We’ll give the original poster (OP) a free pass here – he/she’s just frustrated from having been forced to work 20 extra hours.

The first reply tells him it’s time to celebrate. The second asks if the OP used the ‘Syllabus Wizard’ or sent in the documents himself, to which OP replies:

Joe – I sent it as an attached Word document. They haven’t approved it yet. Our AP US teacher said on her list serv that about 50% aren’t being approved! One sent in by a PhD with 22 years college teaching experience was rejected by College Board! It’s causing quite a stir. I put in 20 hours ( 11 pages) on mine. I told my principal if they reject it he can get someone else to teach the course – not worth the trouble to me! LOL.

Free pass revoked, OP – and here’s why.

If a syllabus doesn’t meet the requirements for an AP course, it shouldn’t be approved. Whereas ~50% is a very high rejection rate that probably represents a small, insignificant sample size or is an utter fabrication, who cares? Making sure talented, motivated high school students have true access to the advanced material they believe they’re getting matters far more than a blow to a teacher’s pride.

OP points out that a syllabus submitted “by a PhD with 22 years college teaching experience” was rejected and “it’s causing quite a stir.” I have no idea how any of these elements add up to or guarantee proficiency. Anyone who has witnessed a dissertation defense on a topic as inane as Gender Equity in 18th-Century Siberian Basketweaving knows that a PhD doesn’t guarantee competence in anything beyond a highly-specific focus of study. But apparently to the Original Poster, a PhD and 22 years of teaching guarantee a good syllabus.

I could refer the OP to more than a few college professors with 30+ years of experience who are utterly incompetent at teaching. They’re just awful. Most of them are very good scholars, but they are, at best, indifferent teachers. But such is the entitlement our OP feels. Things like his own time/effort matter more than the year his students will spend under the illusion that they’re in a college-level class.

The OP is quite comfortable with using arbitrary, non-content measurements to analyze the project, though. He points out that he spent 20 hours/11 pages on this – a remarkable feat if he’d taught the course in the past and it was, indeed, a college-level course. Other than formatting and adding in some additional information as required, the process should take a few hours. Why only a few? Because it already should have been done anyway. Quality teachers plan their courses in detail.

This line is so rotten that I need to quote it again:

I told my principal if they reject it he can get someone else to teach the course – not worth the trouble to me! LOL.

The LOL’s on you, OP. If your syllabus is rejected, the principal should get someone else to teach the course. He/she should get a competent teacher who has a command of the material and its pedagogy well enough to write a few pages about what the class will contain.

Teachers who think the Advanced Placement audit is a hassle that gobbles their Saturdays and insults their professionalism need to regain perspective on the task at hand (n.b. If you’re a department head or administrator, take the initiative and re-center your staff). An Advanced Placement course provides students with a seminal element of their higher education; introductory courses are not to be wasted because they are the foundation on which greater studies are built.

Ideally, AP teachers present a college-level course and prepare their students to receive a 3 or higher on the exam. Most of these students will receive college credit or test out of its 101-equivalent. Because of this, an AP class needs to meet or exceed what those students would encounter at their future college because that is part of the opportunity cost of the AP curriculum. Can you as a teacher say with confidence that your class is as good as its average 101 counterpart? Does your district demand that level of proficiency? Do you?

If you do, then you realize the task with which you are charged. The College Board’s audit is in place to ensure that students aren’t cheated out of the high-quality experience they deserve. Compassion for students and a recognition of their seriousness of purpose demand that AP teachers treat their courses as a college-level class.

AP teachers need to stop whining, gird their loins and get their courses in shape – they owe it to their students. I wish the OP’s attitude was less common than it seems to be.

UPDATE at 4/21/07, 6.14pm:

Teachers aren’t surprised or offended in Arkansas – they’re used to quality control:

Beth Carnes, the Advanced Placement coordinator for the Rogers School District, said Arkansas is a step ahead of other states because of a law that was enacted about four years ago.

That law requires Advanced Placement teachers to attend a summer institute for recertification every five years to continue teaching those courses. The law also requires Arkansas high schools to offer Advanced Placement courses in the four core subject areas …

… At Bentonville High School where 19 such courses are offered, Principal Steve Jacoby said the audit “helps make it more exemplary. It helps the integrity of Advanced Placement.”

At least some schools get it.

This week’s All-Star Team:

• Textbook Evaluator hands a dose of reality to those behind Curriki, a new virtual community for teachers.
• Ms. Q of Teaching in the 21st Century asks, “When Do You Know the Education System is Not Doing Enough for Your Child?”
• Line 46 explains the process of screening candidates for Advanced Placement classes.
• Miss Profe keeps her will when a student behaves unacceptably [this one's a must-read].
• Going to the Mat assesses teacher quality. This is the fourth in a series; to view the previous entries, click ‘Teacher Quality Stats’ on the left column of his site.
• My Wealth Builder, a Princeton alumnus, identifies the three criteria he uses when conducting interviews for prospective Princetonians.

You can read the entire Carnival here, including my submission about the use of cell phones and increased personal technology in schools.

A note from the Wonks, who will host next week’s Carnival:

Next week, The Carnival comes home to The Education Wonks. The deadline for submissions is: 9:00 PM (Eastern) 6:00 PM (Pacific) Tuesday, April 10th. Submissions may be sent to: owlshome [at] earthlink [dot] net . Contributors may also use Blog Carnival’s handy submission form.

If you’re interested in some other good stuff [not just education], you can see the best of what I’ve read this week by going to my del.icio.us.

This week’s All-Star Team:

• Going to the Mat reports on a massive failure by the Baltimore Public Schools Board. The Baltimore Sun shows that BPS just can’t make a budget that isn’t rife with errors.
• A Red Mind in a Blue State opines on recent findings of the (in?)effectiveness of technology in the classroom. He offers an interesting twist: could this suggest that the tech is just as effective as the teachers?
• Buckhorn Road wishes everyone knew a little bit more about political history. So do I.
• A Shrewdness of Apes points out that a parent’s idea of a school’s purpose isn’t always aligned with a teacher’s. Or with common sense.
• Teaching in the 21st Century asks whether it’s better to teach process or content. I can’t imagine not teaching both.
• Scenes from the Battleground tells us to stop listening to the children. Why not listen to the adults? You know, those veterans of childhood?

You can read the entire Carnival here, including my submission about reactions to the AP audit and how AP teachers fail their students.

A note from the Wonks:

Next Week’s Carnival midway will be hosted by Dan over at DY/DAN. Contributors are invited to send submissions to: dan [at] mrmeyer [dot] com , or use this handy submission form. Entries should be received no later than 11:00 PM (Pacific) Tuesday, April 17, 2007. Please include the title of your post, and its URL, if possible.

If you’re interested in some other good stuff [not just education], you can see the best of what I’ve read this week by going to my del.icio.us.

What students learn in high school doesn’t match with what they need to know as college freshmen, according to a national study released yesterday.

The real difficulty here is deciding whether to file this story under “N” for “No S#@$” or “S” for “Sherlock.” But read on:

A really common complaint from (college) faculty is students not being able to put together a complete sentence properly,” said Erin Goldin, director of the Writing Center, which provides tutoring at Cal State San Marcos.

The ACT’s survey highlights several disconnects between what high school teachers think their kids should know and what college professors need them to know. A few examples:

• With reading and writing, college instructors stress the need for fundamentals; high schools don’t bother.
• With the sciences, college instructors want students to understand the inquiry process; high schools focus on content.
• With math, college instructors emphasize mastery of basic concepts; high schools want to expose students to advanced concepts.

It’s a serious problem. How serious?

Many of these students end up in college unprepared to do the work. Nearly one-third of new freshman required remedial help in English at San Diego State University in fall 2006, for example, while half were unprepared in the subject at Cal State San Marcos.

And SDSU isn’t a bad school. Students – yes, even our AP darlings – enter college woefully unprepared. The ACT blames [rightly] the imposition of ineffective state standards on curriculum for the students’ lack of college prep. But some states and districts are, believe it or not, working with colleges to help develop appropriate curricula. It’s a big project:

La Jolla High Principal Dana Shelburne said there are expectations from the California State University and University of California systems, the private colleges, the state and federal government, parents and political and philosophical groups. Simultaneously, schools are also expected to do everything from feed and clothe students to provide remediation and pave the way to athletic scholarships.

“We’re drinking from something of a fire hydrant,” Shelburne said. “Information and requests come out at us in such a flood . . . What a high school graduate is supposed to know to satisfy all the stakeholders is a question that has yet to be satisfied in my estimation.”

Principal Shelburne misses the mark. The idea isn’t to satisfy every community or organization who speaks up, it’s to deliver the necessary skills to the students. That requires principals to make a distinction between right and wrong, beneficial and harmful, effective and ineffectual. They have to use their judgment, preferably based on professional expertise, to define the course for their school. That means they have to say yes to some people and no to others and base those decisions on solid evidence and reasoning.

You know, leadership.

UPDATE at 4/10/07, 7.41pm:

RightWingNation goes into more detail and references plenty of data to back it up.

UPDATE at 4/11/07, 3.10pm:

Take a look at Ken DeRosa’s comments on d-edreckoning, too.

Reader comments to my previous posts about the AP curriculum [located here and here] bring up some points worth addressing regarding the state of Advanced Placement. The College Board’s audit has renewed discussion about the AP’s purpose, delivery and effects; we shouldn’t waste the opportunity. I’d like to lay out two reader comments separately and then address them together.

JMoon points out the common-sense (but underpublicized) reason for the audit: The College Board wants to make sure classes, teachers and schools who use the AP moniker fall in line with the AP mission, its execution, and also its funds. This is a necessary requirement of all franchises. Your local Burger King faces periodic inspections to determine whether it’s worthy of using Burger King’s corporate resources. If the College Board can do this and evaluate the quality and effectiveness of instruction in the process, even better. JMoon says:

“… [A]lthough I agree with you in terms of increasing accountability, what do you think of adding a component that compares a student’s test score with the class grade? The problem is when a student manages an A in the class and can’t earn a 5, or even a 4.”

The Science Goddess tells us that not every student takes AP courses to get college credit. She accurately sums up the motivations of a significant block of students and exposes with subtlety an important underlying point: not every college accepts AP credit, and since students don’t know exactly where they’re headed until their last April of high school, they can’t count on college credit as a guaranteed benefit of an AP course. She also shares her experience as an AP reader:

“I don’t think that requiring all kids to take the test will say anything about the rigor of the class. As a Reader, I saw hundreds of test booklets each year that kids either left blank or wrote a lot of junk in—complaining how they were forced to take the test. I’m sure that the average score for their teachers suffered, but that doesn’t really give an accurate picture of how they ran their class or their qualifications to teach it.”

The theme here is defining and measuring the AP curriculum.

The College Board, as I wrote in an earlier post, is taking the right first step. Auditing syllabi will pluck a few rotten apples out of the barrel and delineate the AP curriculum so an AP course can resemble more closely its college-level counterparts. It also makes teachers with dubious syllabi [and presumably those with dubious skills] accountable and shows them that they need to seek help from peers or outside bodies to refine their course content and methods. Districts all over the country should encourage teachers to address their weaknesses and provide appropriate solutions/help for their staff. Will they? We’ll see over the next few months.

Objections to using AP exam performance to measure a teacher’s quality stems from a difference in philosophy about what testing means. Exams are designed to be a certification of a student’s knowledge. The ultimate measure of a teacher is their students’ performance, much like a company is only as good as the quality and customer satisfaction of the products they make. This doesn’t mean that a class needs to pull a collective 5 on an AP exam to show they were taught well, and it doesn’t mean that a class average of 2 means they were taught poorly. [n.b. : Just think of Joe Girardi, who was awarded National League Manager of the Year in 2006 for finishing with a 78-84 record managing a team with baseball's lowest payroll and questionable talent. Girardi's sub-.500 performance looks lackluster, but given the circumstances he engineered an incredible success.]

There’s no hope of creating a truly comprehensive measure of a student’s achievements in an AP course. There are simply too many hands in the pot; the district, the state, the federal government, the College Board, etc. all have a say [directly or indirectly] in how a student is measured. Without a broad standardized grading process – a logistical impossibility at this point – we can’t combine in a meaningful [and fair or accurate] way subjective elements like course grades with the AP exam score. If we tried, the problems we face with current grade inflation would be exacerbated.

That means we necessarily have to rely on the exam as a measure of achievement. This includes the students who blow off their AP exam for any of a host of reasons, as The Science Goddess has pointed out. If a student doesn’t take the exam seriously, the teacher has failed.

Again: If a student doesn’t take the exam seriously, the teacher has failed.

A teacher can’t guarantee that every student will try their best on their exam, but almost all of them should. There will be a few token failures generated from apathy and that can’t be avoided. If a significant percentage of a teacher’s students don’t approach the exam with the seriousness of purpose it warrants, with a commitment to demonstrating their achievement and being accountable for that demonstration, that teacher has failed to impress upon his students the meaning of the exam.

Think it sounds harsh? Consider a football or basketball game – or any high school sport, team or individual. If a significant portion of a team doesn’t try at all and shows a selfish disdain for the event, how long does their coach keep his job? He will be dismissed, rightly, with all deliberate speed, because he has failed to impart a sense of purpose on his athletes. From chemistry to tennis, the issues of relevance and import are the same. Requiring every student to take the test will tell you nearly everything about the classroom environment in which they learned. How they perform on that test will tell you the rest about the degree to which they have mastered the skills set out in the curriculum.

Teachers and districts as a whole won’t have the will to mandate that AP students take their exams, either with policy or forging a financial solution. We’re nearing the need for a classification of AP students to separate those who choose to integrate accountability and evaluation into their purpose for taking the class and those who essentially will audit the course but receive a grade at the local level. There’s a difference between those two types of students – and it’s a big one.

I’ll address funding the AP exam [and several other Advanced Placement issues] over the course of these coming weeks. If you’d like to stay on top of this debate, you can subscribe to the e-mail newsletter in the left column [or at the bottom of this post] or subscribe to RSS feeds through the links that are also on the left column.

UPDATE at 04/09/07, 8.35pm:

Jay Mathews of the Washington Post gives some pertinent insight in Finding the Best Schools, Part III: High-Income Blahs. He nails the analysis on how too many AP teachers generate student indifference toward the AP curriculum when it ought to be – and easily could be – an exciting and challenging component to education. Mathews’ piece is a must-read. Here’s an excerpt:

Most high schools still treat AP as if it were nothing more than an impressive credential to add to the resumes and college applications of top students. This produces a lethargy, a case of the academic blahs, in the rest of the student body. Without knowing it, high school officials in these cases are saying to average students: “We know you are going to college. We can’t stop you from going to college. But we can and will keep you from taking courses and tests that will prepare you for college.”

“Part IV: Rationing AP” echoes with plenty of data many of the points I’ve written about over the last few weeks – take a look.

UPDATE at 04/10/07, 1.17pm:

Make sure you read Mathews’ new piece, Part V: Grade Grubbing.