Introduction
In order to complete this activity, I spoke with NH, our Grade 6-12 Principal regarding policies related to our most controversial placement issue, AP classes in our upper school. I also spoke with BM, a history teacher, and YB, the AP European History teacher about placement of students into their classes and the issues surrounding it. Finally, I spoke with a parent who wished to remain anonymous regarding his dissatisfaction with her son’s placement and the change of heart she underwent.
The Issue
Our school offers over 15 AP courses for upper school students which is a huge number for a school our size. Some of the classes are large, with more than 20 students every semester, while others are as small as three or four. Because a student receives a two-point bump in their grade for taking an AP class, enrollment tends to run high and many students unprepared for an AP-level class enroll, often against the wishes of the instructor. However, our policy allows any student who wants to take an AP class to do so, provided his or her parents have met with the teacher and administration and support the decision.
This often leads to students deciding at the end of the term not to sit for the AP exam and, in cases of seniors, to not take the class particularly seriously throughout the semester, confident that they can earn a C which will become an A on their report card. The school has experimented with requiring students int the class to take the exam, but seniors tended to hand in blank exams and simply not report the scores to colleges, which lowered our school’s average score significantly and reflected poorly on the institution. So, the situation is in flux and is complicated.
Our current policy allows any student to take an AP class because we believe that simply sitting in the room in which college-level discussion is occurring will help a student who may not otherwise be “AP material.” Whether we agree or not, this is the policy and, as you might imagine AP placement is a tricky issue.
Teachers’ Perspectives
YB, who teachers AP European History told me that she supports the policy. In her class, which is always large, students are asked to write AP-level essays almost weekly and she is confident that the workload alone convinces many lazy students to transfer out early in the semester. BM, the regular history class teacher who inherits many of these students, agrees that her plan seems to work and acknowledges that, in most cases, this weeding out process effectively allows students to level themselves into groupings that seem to make sense.
They both told me that they’ve almost never seen a situation where a student wants, against the wishes of teachers or parents, to take an AP class they do not recommend. Instead, the push usually comes from parents who are concerned with how non-AP classes will look on a college application and push their children to take the more challenging courses. To understand this wish, I spoke with a parent who did just this and regretted it.
A Parent’s Perspective
The parent, who wishes to remain anonymous, told me that when her second child became a senior, she was concerned about her grades because the first child had done far better and been accepted to Ivy League schools. The mother was concerned that the younger brother’s transcript was unimpressive and pushed him to enroll in five AP classes his senior year. She told me that it is only in retrospect that she realizes that he didn’t want to take the classes and that children are often unwilling to argue with their parents on this point.
The son took the classes, against the recommendation of his teachers and principal and stopped participating in both dramatics and the varsity soccer team to focus on his classwork. His grades were only mediocre in his classes and the highest score he earned on any AP exam was a single 4. Only now does his mother recognize that his teachers and principals knew him well enough to make correct recommendations and that she should have been more receptive to their input.
Principal’s Perspective
I asked NH, our principal if there is anything he feels he could have done differently in this case to better guide the mother’s decision and he said that, in light of our policy on the issue, he doesn’t think so. “Leaving that decision up to the family ties our hands quite a bit,” he said. He didn’t go so far as to say that he wanted to change the policy but he does sometime regret not having a little more force to exert on parents who might not make the most dispassionate decision.