photo credit: Rachel Lehman
When it comes to scheduling, many students look to take AP classes in order to challenge themselves and make their resumes seem more impressive. Often times students don’t realize that AP classes are not all about the content. It is common that a student can do extremely well throughout the course of the school year, and then fail the AP test.
Advanced Placement tests are not a fair judgment when it comes to how well you are familiar with and can relay the content you learned in your AP class.
“…some students may understand the content really well but when it comes to testing they may just not be good at it causing them to score low on the exam,” junior Makayla Younger says.
While students are the ones actually taking the tests, teachers must be familiar with the grading rubrics, and everything that is needed to pass the test.
“The current rubric makes it so that students have to provide a cookie-cutter response which I don’t think is conducive to allowing the student to show what they know… oftentimes the difference between what is counted for credit and what is not is ambiguous, or conversely, the margin is razor thin,” AP United States History teacher Jesse Tierney explains.
Standardized tests are often times frowned upon by students, not only because they require a lot of preparation, but also because they give students little to no freedom over their learning process.
“If I could change one aspect of the AP test it would be how long they are. I believe that the AP tests are too long and that causes students to lose focus and not be able to submit their best work…I would maybe consider doing an individual project or a group project using content learned from the whole year,” Younger says.
Every student learns differently, and with the same testing format for every single student, no matter how well you know the content covered in the AP class, certain students are going to suffer.
“One alternative I can think of would be to include some sort of research project that would allow students to pursue a historical topic/era of their choosing and elaborate on it to a point where they could demonstrate their depth of understanding of American history,” Tierney states.
AP classes are offered to prepare students for the college experience, however, AP exams may not be very accurate when it comes to being exposed to the college atmosphere.
“ I feel like AP classes are too challenging and do not offer different levels whereas college will offer different level classes,” Younger says.
Knowing all of this, AP classes are still very popular amongst high school students looking to get a head start on their future.
“My advice is to take AP classes if you are truly interested and passionate about the subject, and if you have time in your busy schedule to study and complete homework outside of class,” Tierney recommends.
AP classes, amongst many things, are very academically demanding. For some students, this is exactly what they expect, however AP classes are not for everybody.
“I would tell other students that in AP classes it is important to stay on top of your work so that you do not fall behind because that is when it starts to get stressful,” Younger says.
