How can kids benefit from taking the AP? I guess to be able to put down on their transcript that they took the course. Most check the box that prevents the scores from being sent to the college, or they should, because of the difficulty of the exam. I think it’s got to be one of the hardest AP exams given.
It doesn’t matter if the scores are sent in, because we know that the colleges largely ignore AP language scores when placing freshmen in their language classes, because they don’t like the loss of income from students who are actually given advanced placement credits in languages. This has been done for years.
We’ve talked about how the College Board makes all decisions based on the bottom line of profit, but here we see the universities doing the same thing. If they were to give advanced placement credit to entering freshmen, they would be giving up income- generating credits from each incoming student.
So they give their own placement test, placing everyone according to it. It helps, certainkly, that most incoming freshmen don’t know shit from their high school language classes anyway, so not only do they get to scoff at what high school teachers do, they also get that extra money.
I had a kid from Chatfield High here in Denver arrive in my five credit transferable community college class with four years of high school French who placed into the college’s beginning 101 class. That’s how that works.
It is just so odd to think about College Board and university financial officers crunching numbers over profit indicators relative to placement of incoming freshmen who have taken the AP. It truly is a business to them. And the colleges work with the lending corporations to create a giant industry. I have heard that college debt surpasses general credit card debt in our country.
And how does the high school benefit from the AP? We are not into financial gain, we are into approval. Why would we teach five classes or more per day for what we are paid if money were our bottom line? No, many of us just like people to like us. As for the school, in my district there is a complex point rewarding system where for each AP student the school gets ranked in a certain way by the district.
A few months ago, when discussing setting up this French AP class next year, I looked into the principal’s eyes and she said that the scores didn’t matter. I said fine, thinking how just having the course on my students’ transcripts would help them, which is my only concern.
Am I selling out? Do I need to up the level of my academic integrity on this deal? Was my agreeing to this new AP course a cop out? I don’t think so, because my kids are mainly immigrants and have enough against them already, and the exam costs them nothing, and I never give homework, and class is not stressful, and I do want to help them in life.
But it does ring kind of false, all of it. Think about that. A school that knows that most of the kids will fail the AP and yet, year after year, because some millionaire Lincoln graduate pays for all the exams, we run it that way where it’s based on appearances, what looks good, points awarded by the district, the term AP classes up on the marquee in front of the school on Federal Boulevard, etc. etc.
The school gets the plaudits of having a lot of AP exams given each year in a high poverty area, the four percenters feel the brunt of the pressure – way too much pressure – for three to four years, and the teachers also suffer under that AP pressure that only we who have done for years and years, not really knowing why we subject ourselves to it, know.
Who gets the money? The corporation, of course. We get the approval. If we work hard enough for our masters.
