On Dropping AP Courses

A Voice From the Developing Movement

By Bruce G. Hammond

Recent news coverage of the College Board’s Advanced Placement program has probably caused some head-scratching. An article this past fall in these pages described the explosive growth of the AP program, which has more than doubled in the past 10 years. ( "Advanced Placement Courses Cast Wider Net," Nov. 3, 2004.) Less than three weeks later, a story in The Wall Street Journal declared in its headline: “Elite High Schools Drop AP Courses” (Nov. 23, 2004). The Journal article described a small but growing number of independent schools, including the one where I am the director of college counseling, that choose not to participate in AP or any other standardized curriculum.

To most people, schools that opt out of the AP program probably seem like educational spoilsports. Do we think we’re too good for AP? Are we afraid that our students won’t score high enough on the exams to justify our schools’ exalted reputations? The AP program has its critics, but most people agree that the courses represent a reasonable facsimile of introductory college-level work. Why should independent schools be cutting the AP curriculum just as it is becoming all but universal in the public sector?

I cannot speak for all the schools that have dropped or are thinking about dropping Advanced Placement, but as the convener of a group of counselors at non-AP schools, I have heard the views of many. The case against AP consists mainly of what good teachers know in their bones about education: that students learn best when they can immerse themselves in hands-on work, and that the best learning involves genuine discovery rather than the mere ferreting out of information already hidden away in the teacher’s brain. Modern research tells us that the human mind does not absorb knowledge so much as construct knowledge. Students who initiate and control their learning process retain far more than those...