A long article in this month's American School Board Journal examines whether the tremendous growth in students taking AP courses has been accompanied by slackening of that program's lofty academic standards. Today nearly 950,000 students worldwide take AP courses, more than double the number a decade ago. In the 1990s, the College Board shifted its mission from providing a program for the academic elite to offering an opportunity to any student willing to accept the challenge. According to the College Board's new philosophy, school grades are not to determine access to the program, nor should teachers serve as a gatekeeper to screen out low-performing students. The 11 subjects that were initially offered in the AP program have been joined by 23 others, including courses like drawing and human geography. But are there limits to how much the program can grow without lowering standards and reducing high-level learning? Among the challenges faced by the program are poorly prepared students, a looming scarcity of qualified teachers, difficulty in finding enough college faculty members to grade the exams, and a large number of students (now 31 percent) who enroll in the course but do not take the exam, potentially diluting what it means to take an AP course.
"Is the shine off the A.P. apple?" by Nina Hurwitz and Sol Hurwitz, American School Board Journal, March 2003