Starting in 2012, the AP tests are changing. The way AP classes are structured and taught also will change. What does this mean for your son or daughter?

Designed in the 1950s at the behest of the country’s most elite private schools like Andover, Exeter, and Choate, the AP tests were originally called the College Board Tests (from which the College Board took its name). These tests eventually morphed into the Advanced Placement (AP) program, which has since grown to include 1.8 million students taking 3.2 million tests each year – and the numbers keep growing. It has become the norm for students to pile on one AP class after another in order to have the best chance to get into the top schools. Ivy League admissions officers off the record will tell would be applicants that you need to take as many AP classes as possible (and do well in them) to have the best shot for acceptance.

Ironically, the US has academic concerns for its best and brightest students akin to those expressed in academic powerhouses like China, Singapore, and South Korea. The best students in the US are accused of simply memorizing answers for tests and lacking creativity and critical thinking skills that will be required to take this country beyond competing nations.

In recent years, teachers, colleges, and research institutions have leveled stark criticisms against the AP program. According to Harvard math professor Daniel L. Goroff, is that “students who do well on the AP exams have learned to answer the kind of questions that appear on the AP exams, but they may or may not be prepared to think on their own and grapple with conceptual questions at a college level.” By their very nature, AP courses require that students cram huge amounts of information into their heads in order to pass the end of year exams and earn college credit; but as many educators have noted, such practices only encourage students in the belief that education begins and ends with memorizing the right answer.

Such criticisms reached a crescendo during the past decade as the nation’s most elite schools began raising their requirements for AP credit, arguing that students with “passing” AP scores were still performing poorly in higher level college courses. Because the College Board strives for universal acceptance of its AP program, the trend of elite schools eschewing the AP exams finally raised eyebrows.

The College Board has begun a complete redesign of the AP program, beginning with biology and U.S. history – the worst offenders according to many teachers, due to the fact that both courses cover a vast array of information that did not exist when the exams were first created in 1956. In the new AP program, the College Board is trying to design more realistic college level classes that will require more problem solving and critical thinking skills. One of the ways they will attempt to do this will be by altering the makeup of the test so that there are fewer simple recall questions and more thought provoking essay questions.

Because the exams will cover information more in-depth, a prerequisite then for future AP classes will most likely require a student to take non-AP Biology or non-AP US History in order to score at the highest levels of the test. A score of a 5 therefore, will be more representative of an A student in college.

The goal, according to the College Board, is to:

1. Clear students’ minds of unnecessary information in order to focus on bigger concepts and stimulate greater analytical thinking.
2. Reduce the reading load required per week so students can participate in more extracurricular activities and electives.

And yet, as laudable as these goals might seem on the surface, the changes to the AP program are unlikely to actually produce these outcomes. Parents and students who aim to earn admittance into elite and Ivy League schools will still strive for the ever elusive perfect score on AP exams. In order to meet such high goals, these students will enter an escalating education arms race: The numbers of students taking summer college classes or looking for additional tutoring will only rise, resulting in added pressures for students across the board. The gulf between the most driven students and the average students will only continue to increase just as socioeconomic inequality has increased. In other words, far from helping to reduce stress and allow students to focus on broader concepts, the new changes to the AP program are more likely to result in added stress for the highest achieving students and, ultimately, an ever larger gap between the best students and the average students.

When the new program begins rolling out in the 2012-2013 school year, students in AP courses will face a new beast. Although today’s AP courses are considered difficult, their difficulty lies not in the work itself but in the amount of work. In the future, the reverse will be true. This means that students who wish to take AP courses will need to be able to read more quickly and efficiently, write with a high degree of skill, and employ higher level thinking abilities in order to analyze and synthesize information. Students who hope to take advantage of the AP program in the future would do well to begin preparing today. The skills that will be required of AP students are not skills that students can simply pick up in the course of a few weeks. Instead, it is important to focus on becoming a strong, well rounded student by:

• Taking the most challenging courses available
• Taking advantage of intellectual extracurricular opportunities such as Debate, Model UN, or reading clubs
• Reading challenging material
• Emphasizing written skills
• Taking part in gifted programs, either in school or after school at an education institution such as C2 Education

Anything a student can do to improve his or her reading, writing, and critical thinking skills will help to ensure success in AP classes and in college.

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