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All this growth is generally viewed as good news by the many fans of AP programs, who include parents, college-admissions officers and school administrators, as well as politicians on both sides of the aisle, who have called for additional funding to make AP courses more available to low-income students. A large selection of AP courses attended by a broad swath of the student body is widely seen as a measure of excellence for U.S. high schools and figures prominently in formulas that attempt to rank public high schools. The more active the AP program, the higher the rank and, often, the higher the school district's real estate values.
But in some quarters, educators are worried that AP, which was created as a way to give bright high school seniors a taste of college, is turning into something it was never meant to be: a kind of alternative high school curriculum for ambitious students that teaches to the test instead of encouraging the best young minds to think more creatively. And as AP expands, some educators have begun to question the integrity of the programs and ask whether the classes are truly offering students an extra boost or merely giving them filigree for their college applications.
To be sure, many AP programs are first rate. Calculus, especially in the hands of a gifted teacher like Wasmuth, is widely considered to be one of the best-thought-out AP programs, as is AP English Language and Composition, which teaches students how to critically analyze literary works. Two years ago, when the Center for Education at the National Academy of Sciences conducted one of the few serious studies of the AP curriculum ever done, it praised the AP Calculus program for achieving "an appropriate balance between breadth and depth."
But the balance was off for the three other courses examined. AP Chemistry, Biology and Physics were found to be too sweeping in scope, lacking the depth of a good college course. The study's authors concluded that the practice and understanding of laboratory work--a critical piece of college-level science--was given short shrift both in the AP teacher's manuals and on the exams. They lamented that a "significant number of examination questions ... appear to require only rote learning" rather than a deeper understanding of science.
The emphasis of breadth over depth is a charge commonly leveled at AP history courses as well. Teachers who oversee the U.S.- and European-history classes frequently complain that there is little time for discussion or debate in these fast-paced romps through a half-millennium or more of names, dates and battles. Dennis Kenny, who teaches the AP U.S. History course at McNair, has to keep an eye on the clock and calendar to make sure he covers the sprawling curriculum in time for the May exam. "We're usually struggling the last few weeks just to get to the Reagan years," he says. This fall, with a presidential campaign under way, Kenny would have loved to draw some lessons from current events, but, he laments, "there's no time. The kids love when we break away and talk about today's election, but I'm looking at the clock--and that's not a good thing."