by Bronson Schmidt ’25
December 10, 2024
The opinions expressed here are strictly those of the writer and do not reflect the views of University School of Nashville or the Peabody Press.
Five, four, three, two, one…
These five numbers are the possible scores that a student could receive on an Advanced Placement exam administered by the College Board. These five scores contain multitudes; they can provide college credit, bolster one’s college application, quantify students’ knowledge of a subject, and most of all, define the end of the school year.
For years, the inclusion of AP courses, and by extension, AP exams, has been a contentious subject in the USN community. AP classes are a staple of USN’s high school curriculum, having existed in the school for decades as the ebbs and flows of curriculum changes have shaped their quantity and structure. However, despite USN’s tradition of offering AP classes, there appears to be better alternatives to AP classes that benefit students’ livelihood and intellectual development far more. Furthermore, the current implementation and philosophy around AP classes may actually be harmful to the entire student body’s mental and academic success. The age of the AP is reaching its end, and for all of the right reasons.
In order to understand why AP classes can be done away with, it’s important to understand the reasons why schools offer them in the first place. AP classes appear to offer four distinct advantages to students, and while these advantages do intend to benefit the student, every single one of them is either unstainable for the future of high school-college relations, or else can be fulfilled better by other alternative curriculums. Every possible aspect about AP courses is either misleading or improvable.
The first so-called advantage of AP courses is that they prepare students for an exam which may give them credit in college.
This is a real and tangible effect of taking the AP exam; as much as 90% of US universities, do accept AP credit as a replacement to a first year core class or semester of a core class in college.
However, this fact creates major problems. First, if you are not applying to a school that considers AP credit, your exam score will not benefit you in college. Second, many colleges only accept AP credits from core classes such as Language, History, Math, and Science, subjects which every single USN class covers. This means that the mere existence of AP courses being offered intrinsically limits the scope of AP courses to more common, and possibly less exciting and contemporary, fields of study.
Finally, students may apply to AP courses merely for the replaced class in college, even if they’re not interested in the topic, leading to one less class slot for a class they are truly interested in, and a higher chance that they will be unhappy in the AP class selected. USN’s mission statement states that “USN fosters each student’s […] love of learning”, and so it is against the foundation of the school to perpetuate a system which doesn’t reward taking classes out of a love of learning.
The second so-called advantage of AP courses is that AP classes look good on a student’s college application.
However, this may not be as advantageous as it seems. Colleges have access to the full list of AP courses available from applicants school, and so they will see if a student has chosen not to take an AP course. Because colleges value students who take the most rigorous course load possible, and AP courses are valued as rigorous, two huge problems arise:
If there is a field of study which has both an AP class and non-AP class equivalent at USN, choosing the non-AP class will be viewed as less rigorous by a college, incentivizing some students to take the class that looks better on their application rather than the one that may better suit them. A good example of this is how the physics requirement at USN can be fulfilled by either a USN-facilitated Physics I curriculum, or an AP Physics I curriculum. Other examples are RUSH vs. APUSH, senior English seminars vs. AP English Literature, and in terms of rigorous vs. less rigorous, BC Calculus vs. AB Calculus.
If there are AP classes that a student has chosen not to take, even if they’re not interested in those topics, the college will see that a student has not chosen the most rigorous course load. This incentivizes students to prioritize maximizing the amount of AP classes taken, which is certainly not good for a balanced schedule, nor a personalized academic experience.
In order to solve the problem of rigor being limited to AP courses, there are two solutions: either offer exclusively AP courses if an AP class is offered for the subject, or do not offer any AP courses at all. The first option is far too burdensome for both students and teachers, but the second option may yield the path forward to not just more freedom in students creating their schedules, but also more freedom in the intellectual stimulation and nurturing of curiosity that USN is beloved for.
The third so-called advantage of AP courses is that they offer intellectually challenging college-level coursework.
This is an advantage which is grossly exaggerated. While AP courses do provide college-level coursework that is challenging, academic challenge is not exclusive to the AP curriculum. The only advantage that the College Board provides in this regard is that there are so many online resources and suggested structural starting points for teachers following an AP curriculum, but USN teachers absolutely have the ability to create and maintain their own unique curriculums that rise to the same level of intellectual challenge or go above and beyond it. The mere existence of the AP vs. non-AP examples present in the evaluation of the second so-called advantage of the AP course shows that USN teachers have the ability to create comparable classes. Not only are USN teachers able to create challenging coursework, but the course structure of College Board may actually fall below the standard of USN classes.
Take a curriculum like AP Chemistry for example. The field of such a vast breadth like chemistry holds a plethora of complicated topics. Yet instead of offering a controlled deep dive that logically builds off each subtopic of the curriculum, the mandated AP Chemistry curriculum throws in units that seem to have no connection to the rest of the course, while introducing topics that are either too complex or too time sensitive to fully dive into.
AP Chemistry is just one example of how the curriculum itself can be a burden on the more than capable teachers who present the material, like Mr. Flatau. In fact, Flatau has constructed a different order to the curriculum than College Board recommends, because he understands the flaws and imperfections that AP Chemistry has built in. This is a theme common across every AP course at USN, and the restrictions of a mandated curriculum do not end here– the very nature of AP courses limit the creativity and intellectual curiosity that hand-crafted USN curriculums can offer.
The fourth so-called advantage to AP courses is that they provide the opportunity to explore interesting and curiosity-stimulating topics.
The mere concept of this idea is an absolute farce. While AP classes can offer semblances of this goal, teacher crafted curriculums will always far exceed what AP curriculums are capable of in terms of stimulating curiosity and reflecting the beauty of education.
USN’s teachers are undoubtedly one of the best parts of a student’s USN experience. They have the ability to ignite and expand upon curiosity itself, teaching students to not learn for the sake of validation, but to learn for the sake of learning. It is doing the talents of USN teachers a great disservice by forcing them to teach someone else’s worse curriculum. Additionally, for every AP class that a teacher takes on, that is one less class block that could potentially be filled with their own unique course. The best part about USN’s AP curriculum is how the teachers meld the curriculum into something greater than its constituent parts, which is just a small example of how much more adept teachers are at creating uniquely USN courses.
AP classes are no doubt a highlight to many students’ education. But every single benefit that AP courses come with are superseded by the benefits of a personally well crafted curriculum that USN teachers can offer. But there are even more disadvantages to AP classes beyond their inferiority to USN. AP classes cause student stress around heavy course loads and exams, and furthermore, their exams don’t even provide feedback! But individual teachers can provide feedback, and teachers can respond to overbearing course loads in their own curriculums by editing the curriculum in real time.
When considering the lack of intellectual stimulation in AP courses with their diminishing relevance in the college process, and when considering the vast array of Independent Studies, MSON classes, and teacher crafted curriculums, the answer to the problem of AP classes becomes clear.
The age of the AP needs to end; the age of the crafted course must begin.
