AP Tests Are Good No Matter What!

Here’s a hot issue in education…this article was written by Jack Gillum and Greg Toppo entitled “Failure Rate for AP Tests Climbing.”  It’s interesting how the two camps perceive results in two very different ways…sometimes that leads me to believe that the answer should never be so black and white but address all facets of the issue being studied.

Right off the bat, you can tell which way the authors lean about the data collected from AP test scores.  Perhaps if you look specifically at numbered scores you would come to that same conclusion as well.  My question is…how many truths or facts are formed solely on numbers without further uncovering more of the non-analytical bean counting data?  We don’t live in a world of “line drawn down the middle” realities…our world is so incredibly co-mingled and interconnected that attempting to pinpoint a specific cause, in this instance, isn’t appropriate nor is it beneficial.

Switch gears here for a minute…another article was written in response to the above mentioned one by Jay Mathews entitled “Class Struggle.”  Now when you begin to uncover the other part of this tale…you should see the AP tests in another light.  When you take into consideration the myriad of other factors, increased number of students taking the exam, the rigorous grading scale used to tabulate the grades, the varying criteria that each school, each district, or regions use in identifying which students should or should not take the exam you unearth the complicating factors which blur the lines between comparisons.

My thoughts overall are…2 thumbs up if more students are attempting to enroll in AP courses.  After all the point is to create more challenging courses to increase learning and advanced analytical thinking beyond memorization right?  I don’t think we should discourage that type of initiative at all.  Of course we do know that having more students take the course will mean that there should be more numbers of students who don’t pass.  Then again would we still consider that a failure of the test or a success of the behaviors and attitudes of rising up to the challenge?  We’ve all said that failure isn’t necessarily bad…for the greatest minds have had probably more failures in their lifetimes than the average person which helped them get much closer to their goals.