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College Board Kills AP Computer Science AB
jhealy1024 writes "The College Board recently announced it will be getting rid of the Advanced Placement Computer Science AB examination after May 2009. The 'A'-level exam will continue to be offered, though there is no word yet on what will become of the AB-level material (e.g., if it will be merged into A or just dropped). Many teachers of AP CS are upset about the move, as it seems the decision was made without consulting members of the CS teaching community. As one teacher put it: 'this is like telling the football coach next year is the last year you have a varsity team.'"
I took AP CS A and got a 3 on it. When I applied into college they told me I should take the introductory course because most people who got a 3 on the AP test and skipped it would fail the next step up.
I skipped it and the next step up was extremely easy. When I was writing my review of that class I told them I could have learned almost everything they taught me in that semester in a week.
Just goes to show what trash the grader was on the AP test. They probably thought all of my lower case 'j's were 'i's, and probably marked me down for declaring new variables anywhere but the beginning of the function. To put it in perspective, a 3 is supposed to be the same as a C in college, yet I went through college never getting a C in anything and getting predominately A's and B+s in most CS classes- even the ones with a 90% failure/drop-out rate.
Part of it is that the teacher of my AP class, a female cheerleading coach (no kidding), was a decent teacher and could get you to learn a concept like new data structures or pointers in 20 minutes.
It looks like there were plenty of students, just not enough of the right color.
I have a friend who teaches an AP science class at a a local high school. The high school produces about half the National Merit scholars in the county despite the fact it's a tiny school of some 200 students. The science department has battled the humanities department for years over whether to keep AP courses or not. The humanities would just as soon see them gone.
A year ago, the science department almost gave in when the AP organization required each teacher to explain in detail how they met the AP curricula requirements. That added another teacher work day to an already harried schedule. She typically works late into the night grading work and the last thing she wanted to do was to spend an extra unpaid work day justifying her course to the AP organization. She figured it was enough that her average student AP score is 4.8 - the hell with how she does it.
Adding more steps to any program guarantees you'll lose some participants. Perhaps that's what the AP board intended with their new regs.