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.'"

Comments

Waving the white flag

[alfredo]

You don't need advanced skills to flip burgers.

Without AB?

[nebaz]

How am I supposed to get 30 lives in Contra?

Re:Without AB?

[alfredo]

Cheat like everyone else.

Re:Without AB?

[nebaz]

Also, without AB, I'd just be normal.

Re:Without AB?

[crispin_bollocks]

Fortunately, there will still be Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-ABAB-Start

Re:Without AB?

[default luser]

I feel obligated to explain the above joke, because nobody with mod points got it in over a day of posting.

Without ab, I'd just be normal.

ab-normal?

IT'S FUNNY, LAUGH!

This is a shame

[vsage3]

I took computer science AB when I was in highschool and it was a great class if you looked past the god forsaken code project you had to modify that had something to do with fish. I learned all about algorithms, data structures and other important topics that I would not have gotten formal exposure to until, well, never because I didn't major in CS. One huge drawback is that it's taught in Java now, which is absolutely terrible for learning the fundamentals (I took it when it was C++)

What is the biggest shame is this course was hugely popular in my tech-oriented highschool: Like 50 people took the AB exam every year out of my class of 120 or so. While I understand TCB is trying to cut the cost of making unpopular exams, keeping computer science A is a joke because AB wasn't all that fast and A doesn't even count for credit at my university; It's basically just a waste of time.

Re:This is a shame

[jorghis]

I keep hearing people say things like "course X used to be in C++ and now its in java and thats bad". What exactly is it that is so great about C++ for learning fundamentals that you dont get in java? The only thing I can think of is understanding pointers and how memory is laid out. But that really falls outside the scope of algorithms and data structures which is what intro level CS is really all about.

Re:This is a shame

[Wordplay]

Part of the problem is that with Java, you have to learn class/object semantics up front in order to be at all useful. This clouds the lessons of the fundamentals in ways that simple structured language semantics do not.

Another part is that Java already has reasonable solutions in the standard libraries for any fundamental structure. This makes all work purely academic. This isn't necessarily a big deal, but can affect motivation.

Also, understanding pointers and how memory is laid out is a pretty fundamental thing, wouldn't you say? If we lose that, then any mid- or low-level language becomes esoteric.

I think it makes much more sense to teach starting at the mid-level (C, C++-without-classes, perhaps even a modern flavor of Basic or Pascal) then radiate outwards to both low-level (ASM) programming and higher-level (C#, Java, Delphi, etc.) languages, as well as to non-C-likes (LISP, Haskell, etc.).

Re:This is a shame

[Wordplay]

I didn't take AP CS--it wasn't available to me in the 80s, when I was in high school. I'm just speaking CS education in general.

The same arguments apply for early undergrad courses, which have also moved towards Java in many schools (probably the real reason the AP courses have moved too).

I do understand that you have to learn the algorithms, despite the presence of the standard libraries. I'm saying some of the impact is lost when you know there's a perfectly good built-in solution right over there.

To be fair, the same is true for C++ and the STL, which is why I'm a fan of C for initial language learning. It's low-enough level that there's not a lot of functionality built in, but still reasonably platform-generic.

Frankly, I still prefer (modern) Pascal over C. The readability factor is nice for teaching. However, it's so out of vogue now in the US (Delphi is still reasonably popular in Europe and Asia) that it's difficult to make a case for spending a lot of time in it.

Re:This is a shame

[plasticsquirrel]

Java is an object-oriented language. In any real object-oriented language, you need to learn about objects right away. C++ is a hybrid language that is arguably one of the worst languages for beginners to learn, since it takes the ugly details of C, and adds on half-baked OO ideas that are simply optional.

A language such as Scheme will teach better program design, and teach high school students good program design from the start. The problem with teaching programming in high school, and even at the university level, is that students are often taught convoluted language semantics (every detail in C++) rather than program design and logical reasoning. Scheme is simple to the point that it can be picked up in a day or two, and then the rest of the class could focus on real problem-solving. This is the MIT approach, with their intro course (6.001).

Re:This is a shame

[Wordplay]

Here's the thing:

It's computer science, not applied programming. Those two things are different, but the latter has been sold as the former, more and more.

I hear what you're saying, and you're making good arguments for Java as a beginning applied language. In my college days, it was VB that they used for that, for many of the same reasons (except there was no command line at all).

However, I think a beginning computer science course should start at a somewhat lower level. It's important to understand the why and how, not just the what, and I think that should be introduced from the beginning.

Re:This is a shame

[TaliesinWI]

Or you could take AP Pascal, like I did in H.S. (Class of 1992). Problem is, they pretty much had to have the math teachers draw straws to see who got "stuck" with the ten brainiacs who took the course, and you also had stuff like "Pascal has bad string handling because it's a math language" (which isn't technically true) and then you find out that it doesn't have a built-in function for doing anything other than square or square root. You had to code your own exponent function, which wasn't a big deal, but it made you wonder why they bothered with a built in half-assed function in the first place.

Also, we did it completely wrong IMHO. We learned the material that was on the A part of the exam for most of the year, which was basic structured programming, etc. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then, for the last MAYBE two weeks, we tried to learn what was on the B part, which was (mainly) stacks and pointers. For one thing, that was kind of bolted on to Pascal back in the day. For another, you can't really teach this "this is why you should care about this" in a mere two weeks. You can spit out a few examples in a vaccuum and hope that your students regurgitate them, but in our case that went so poorly that I think out of the ten of us in the class - all of which had 3.8 (unweighted) GPAs or higher, over half of us didn't bother taking the AB and of the other fraction of the class, only two of them got a 3 or higher on it, which was what the colleges wanted for credit. The rest of us (me included) were perfectly happy to "relearn" how pointers and stacks worked in a freshman college level C course.

Problem is, that was right when OO was kind of taking off, and everyone and their fucking sister was trying to bolt OO philosophy into EVERY CS course, even when good old-fashioned procedural thinking would have been fine. So you weren't learning C, you were learning just enough C so they could teach you C++...

Sometimes you just need a hammer and not a super-duper compressed nail gun.

Re:This is a shame

[mawillia]

Actually,

Our AP CS class back in the 80's had nothing but 3 commodore pets and one MicroVax running some flavor of Unix (thank god!) tied to 12 VT-100s. We were living high on the hog.

We spent the first 6 months learning first to hand assemble code for the Pets and program it using their built in screen based memory editor. We had to write simple multipliers/dividers, etc. It required learning about memory, registers, and basic ALU structures.

Only after this point were we "graduated" to the MicroVax and were given the choice of working with C or Pascal. I'll tell you what: no-one complained about having to learn vi(1), and everyone appreciated the power of a good compiler and why higher order languages were wonderful inventions.

To this day, that course was by far the most valuable class regarding computer programming I've ever taken. It really has provided me with a great deal of appreciation of what's already been done for me in terms of tools.

I happen to work on embedded systems, with C++ when I can, C when I need to and assembly when nothing else will do. I've met a lot of college grads that just cannot work in the embedded world with nothing but Java courses from their college background. There's a lot of software out there running on OS's (or not) that don't provide run-times with built in garbage collection, etc.... I'm not sure that's such a bad thing...

Re:This is a shame

[Torvaun]

You forgot reverse engineering. Assembly is really the only decent way to do that, presuming you don't have the source.

Re:This is a shame

[Hemogoblin]

I also wrote that exam in C++, and I must have written it at the same time as you because we also had that fish case study. Ironically, my teacher didn't tell us about the case study until a week before the exam. Instead of working on the case during the semester, I spent 99% of my time creating my own text adventure. Making my own game was great, because I kept having to learn things so I could add more functionality. I don't think I ever learned any subject quite as well; it's amazing how motivated you can get if you enjoy the activity. In the end, missing out on the case study didn't hurt me, since they provided all the code for the case at the back of the exam anyway.

Perhaps the exam is unpopular due to the way the course is taught. If I was forced to work on that case study all semester, I definately would not have learned as much as I did. Maybe the AP board needs to cut the exam, restructure the program so it's more fun and interesting, and then re-release it.

Re:This is a shame

[i.of.the.storm]

I'm saying some of the impact is lost when you know there's a perfectly good built-in solution right over there. Huh. As long as your teacher doesn't let you use the built-in classes until you've written your own, I think it doesn't really matter. And if you never find out about their existence until you've already written your own LinkedLists, Stacks, Trees, HashMaps, etc, you now have a perfectly working class to use for other things and know how the class works behind the scenes.

Re:This is a shame

[GaryOlson]

Our Agricultural Placement class back in the '80s had two Border Collie pets running around some flavor of sheep (thank God!). Our wagon was tied to 12 draft horses; and we were living with the hogs. We spent the first six months learning how to assemble our ropes..... Now git out of my corn field, you young whippersnapper!

Re:This is a shame

[Eli Gottlieb]

Actually, the MIT course has switched to Python.

Re:This is a shame

[mangastudent]

Actually, the MIT course has switched to Python.

Except that most of what was in 6.001 will be taught in Java in the new 6.005, which for its type of material is Not Even Wrong.

Even the AI course will be switched to Python. Very soon, the MIT EECS undergraduate curriculum will be entirely purged of Scheme/LISP, although due to some furious demand (especially outside of the department, since 6.001 is generally useful while the new introductory curriculum is strongly focused on both EE and CS) there is talk of a reduced, 3/4 size return of 6.001. Someday. Maybe.

I've just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the MIT computer science program permanently.

As a Chemistry major who was fortunate to take 6.001 about the last time Sussman gave it, I'm not sure what to think about the changes. Programming languages and the content of 6.001 are the only things that I find really interesting in CS, and I think it's hard to deny that we're in a Dark Age in this general area.

And perhaps MIT is redefining what "CS" means in a good way, it's just not anything I'm very interested in, nor qualified to judge. Ableson and Sussman fully support the new curriculum BTW, and Hal has been heavily involved in the development of at least 6.01. Sussman has always believed introductory EE and CS should be taught together, and 6.01 and 6.02 most certainly do that.

On the bright side, the new introductory course 6.01 (don't know if this is true about 6.02) is very instructor intensive, enough so that they are enlisting all interested upperclassmen to help in the labs and such, which I think is a very good thing; you don't tend to really learn your subject until you try to teach it.

And with enrollment down so sharply, there are now likely enough professors and graduate students to support these new intense courses; MIT's historical practice of not allowing a fashionable department to get "too big" is once again validated (think of areo/astro in the '70s). The much lower enrollment is an opportunity to teach in a very different way, with more emphasis on building things, an MIT tradition from its founding.

But it is safe to say that an MIT CS or CS focused degree (most students do the combined major that is heavy in both) will mean something very different in four years.

Bright side

[weston]

CS instructors at the high school level will have much broader latitude in what they teach. You could go a vocational route (say, Rails), or a different theoretical route (say, The Little Schemer).

I also think it's possible that the contents of AB need to both go into A. It's been a long time since I took them both (1989), so things may be different, but my recollection is that the contents of A alone really weren't much beyond pragmatic familiarity with basic imperative programming, the kind of stuff that your basic "Teach Yourself X in Some Ridiculously Short Period of Time" book can actually teach you.

That said, if what they're doing has the effect of dropping the study of data structures and algorithms from the high school curriculum -- if dropping B really means there will be less CS in the classroom -- then this is a really poor move.

HS Computer Science

[Goobergunch]

I suspect that this decision won't help the current paucity of valid Computer Science courses in high schools. I'm still annoyed by the number of Microsoft Office or HTML courses that get passed off as CS. On the other hand, I guess it's possible that this could encourage more people to take APCS A (as there would be no real two-year commitment as there can be now), which would be a good thing. Hopefully some of the AB material can be folded into the new A course, as it would be a pity to lose AP-level high school instruction on big-O algorithmic analysis and data structures.

Demographic reasons?

[Goobergunch]

I found this in another article on the subject and thought it deserved mentioning:

Mr. Packer said the decision was made principally because of demographic considerations.

Only a tiny fraction of the members of underrepresented minority groups who take AP exams take the tests in one of those four affected subject areas, he said.

The College Board has made it a priority to reach such students, including those who are African- American and Hispanic.

I can understand the College Board wanting to concentrate their resources a bit more, but I still don't think that slashing the curriculum is the way to do it. Of course, maybe I'm biased -- my high school APCS courses were great and I don't think we got much of anything from the College Board in the way of support.

Re:Demographic reasons?

[thejuggler]

Why not encourage more African-American and Hispanics to take more CS courses? Then these courses will meet their educational objectives.

Instead, their response is to punish those that wish to learn so they can look like they are helping minorities.

Re:Demographic reasons?

[CSMatt]

Instead, their response is to punish those that wish to learn so they can look like they are helping minorities. Later in life they call this Affirmative Action.

I took AP CS A

[JimboFBX]

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.

Re:I took AP CS A

[glitch23]

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.

I'd really like to know what her teaching method was given the combination of cheerleading and CS usually don't go together despite our daily wishes.

Re:I took AP CS A

[Doctor Faustus]

I'd really like to know what her teaching method was given the combination of cheerleading and CS usually don't go together despite our daily wishes.
Push to the left!
Push to the right!
Pop up, push down
Byte, byte byte!

Very Disturbing

[twocows]

I'm currently enrolled in AP Computer Science AB, and I can say without a doubt it has been one of the most useful classes I've taken up to this point. I'm frustrated and confused at this news. I suppose the upside is that fewer computer science courses will conform to the strict Java-only curriculum, allowing for educations in other programming languages besides Java, such as C/C++. On the other hand, it may just mean less material is taught in high school computer science courses. If I had to guess which is more likely, I'd have to go with the latter.

other subjects, too

[bcrowell]

They also cut Italian, Latin literature, and French literature.

As a college teacher, I'm uncomfortable with the place that AP exams now occupy in our educational system. When I went to college, it was considered unusual to take AP exams, and nobody had ever heard of a GPA higher than 4.0. Now, with AP classes counting +1 on the GPA, Berkeley is turning away a sizable fraction of all students with 4.0 GPAs. In other words, you essentially can't get into the flagship schools of the UC system unless you have a lot of AP exams to puff up your grades. In one way this is good, because the old system encouraged kids not to take challenging coursework in high school. But a lot of rural and inner-city high schools don't offer AP courses, or don't offer more than one or two, or they offer them, but they're not at a high enough level to prepare you for the exams. There's something horribly wrong with a system of government that taxes working-class people in order to support public education, but effectively excludes their kids from getting the full benefit of the system they're supporting with their taxes.

Looking over the contents of the CS exams, I can't help getting the impression that this is vocational education masquerading as something more academic. It all seems to be focused on the OOP fad, and on being able to code in Java. Stacks and queues are only covered on the AB, not the A level!?!? The hardware part seems pretty lightweight, and there's virtually no theory AFAICT.

Re:other subjects, too

[novakyu]

As a college teacher, I'm uncomfortable with the place that AP exams now occupy in our educational system. When I went to college, it was considered unusual to take AP exams, and nobody had ever heard of a GPA higher than 4.0. Now, with AP classes counting +1 on the GPA, Berkeley is turning away a sizable fraction of all students with 4.0 GPAs. Don't worry—on many college applications, they will simply renormalize the GPA down to 4.0 (I think UC Berkeley's application tells you to ignore extra weight placed on AP classes and scale "5.0" down to 4.0, but I could be remembering wrong—it's been years since I had to fill out an application for college).

Also, some colleges will do something that's ... even better—i.e. they tell the student to re-scale their entire GPA, if the maximum grade point achievable is higher than 4.0. That should nicely backfire on those asshat schools offering "4.3" grade point for A+ or 5.0 grade point for the B.S. (and S. doesn't stand for "Science") that is AP.

Frankly, the best investment I made in high school was taking a few lower-division science classes in community colleges. If you are in California, they are likely to be transferable to U.C. campuses, and, by jolly, you learn a lot more there than in these supposed "college-level" classes. Oh, and did I mention, that for many counties in California, attending community college classes might be free for high school students, unlike these overpriced worthless tests?

Re:other subjects, too

[doktor-hladnjak]

High schools are all about selling students on this idea that taking AP exams will get them out of courses in college. It's true at most colleges, but not really the elite ones. I passed something like 9 AP exams in high school, which got me out of exactly 1 class at Berkeley. I only had to take one semester of writing instead of two. I could have skipped the first semester of calculus, but decided to retake it which looking back was probably a good thing. I graduated in the Letters and Science college ultimately (BA in CS), but I seem to vaguely recall that College of Engineering and College of Chemistry counted more AP classes. The main thing you get out of taking AP at Cal, is that you've already completed some units which can give you a slight registration preference after your first year. Also, it means you may be able to graduate early or just not worry as much about taking a full load every semester so that you can get to the 120 or so units required for graduation.

Overall, I don't believe AP classes are really equivalent to the college courses they replace at any substantial university, but they're a much better use of a student's time that whatever non-AP class they'd be taking in high school instead. Generally, they have the more motivated teachers and students, which means less time wasted in classes with behavior problem students and lame teachers. With so many kids coming into college needing to take so many remedial courses, AP has really just become the new college prep.

I've always viewed students getting credit for CS61B by the AP exam as a big loss though. There's just no way anybody who took AP CS in high school got the same rigor as CS61B at Cal. That said, I can see why students would rather bypass it and get on to advanced coursework more quickly. I taught that class as instructor of record in Summer 2004, so I admit I'm a bit biased.

Re:other subjects, too

[jellie]

I just graduated from EECS at Berkeley last year. Admittedly I kinda sucked at programming and engineering, but that's another matter.

Berkeley will take almost all AP exam scores for credit, provided you get the minimum score. I found AP courses to be nothing like the level of college courses, save for straightforward things like calculus and history, where the material (IMO) is generally the same everywhere. Most of the AP courses just counted toward units; I had junior standing after my first semester. Since I took easy classes that first semester, I qualified for the engineering honor societies :P That was good because my grades fell after that semester.

Anyway, even if you do get credit for them, I would strongly recommend you retake the classes that matter most. IIRC, you must take the CS and physics classes for EECS anyway; AP credit won't count for fulfilling the major's requirements. You can use AP credit for calculus (Math 1A only), general chemistry, econ, etc. Good luck!

Re:other subjects, too

[gatzke]

AP exams are even worse than just limiting rural students. Students optimize their GPA by not taking non-AP courses. They won't take band because it is graded, but not honors. They won't take pre-engineering courses since they have not be honors certified. They take study hall instead. ???

I just recently realized I would have finished a few places higher in my HS class if I had dropped band and jazz band... I was apparently not sophisticated enough to think about optimizing my GPA. I like to think I ended up with more scholarships than most of the rest of my class because I was well rounded :-)

Really?

[BSDevil]

Having gone though several international high schools (located across Europe), they all offered CS A and AB.

When I finally took it (A, in Grade 11) it was taught as a combined A/AB class by the school's Director of Technology. It wasn't as formalized a most classes - we simply took over the computer lab and its whiteboards for our classroom - but it was small, intense, and with a smart group of people. We finished the AP spec about halfway through the year, so for the second half we just did a bunch of code projects, only one of which was the standard AP one (this was the year before they brought in the aforementioned god-awful fish tank project). Independently, when I went to (public) school in Canada, AP CS A was offered as well, with the usual caveat that the school board wouldn't pay the testing fees (but would teach a class on it).

If you say it's unavailable outside the US, you need to compare that against the availability of other AP classes - do you mean that the French national school board won't offer them, or that the American School in Paris won't?

Other Courses were also cut.

[richg74]

Although the Computer Science course is obviously the one that most Slashdot geeks will care about, the College Board also cut Italian, French Literature, and Latin Literature. The figures cited in TFA for these three indicate that there were fewer than 4000 students in each -- not very many for a country the size of the US. (Unfortunately, they didn't give numbers for the CS course.) So I don't think anything insidious is going on -- they're just trying to direct limited resources to the places they think the resources can be most effectively used.

The article also mentions the possibility, in the context of the Italian course, of the program being continued if a sponsor could be found. Perhaps Mr. W. Gates and the other hi-tech moguls who are always bemoaning the lack of US workers, and crying for more H1 visas, could pony up a few bucks to support the CS course. I'm sure it would be chump change for Bill.

Re:Other Courses were also cut.

[Pantero Blanco]

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/04/09/32ap.h27.html

Mr. Packer said the decision was made principally because of demographic considerations.

Only a tiny fraction of the members of underrepresented minority groups who take AP exams take the tests in one of those four affected subject areas, he said.

The College Board has made it a priority to reach such students, including those who are African- American and Hispanic.

It looks like there were plenty of students, just not enough of the right color.

Teams Without Trophies - or Competent Coaches

[Doc Ruby]

As one teacher put it: 'this is like telling the football coach next year is the last year you have a varsity team.'

No, it's like telling the football coach that next year is the last year there will be trophies awarded at the championship game. They can still have a team, there just won't be an official ranking.

Of course the AP test credit is a lot of the value of the programme, so cancelling the test is a travesty, and might be a reason to cancel the course, especially if students spend their time taking other courses that award the credit they can use.

But if the teachers are making that kind of analogy, they shouldn't be teaching. Not even CS classes, because thinking with analogies is more important to programming than is instruction in language syntax. It's like a football team with a coach who's really just the second-string halfback.

Re:Teams Without Trophies - or Competent Coaches

[Hatta]

Geeze, this is /. Is there anywhere a sports related metaphor is going to be less understood?

Re:Teams Without Trophies - or Competent Coaches

[temojen]

Interestingly, my AP Chemistry Teacher was the gym teacher subbing for the chem teacher who moved to a new school. We taught him grade 12 chemistry so he could teach the next year, while we taught ourselves AP Chem (I got a 4).

The previous semester, our Chem 12 class had pooled our money to hire a university professor for 3 hours 1 day a week, since that teacher was so bad.

AP Classes in Inner-City Schools

[Nudo]

In my high school, AP classes don't exist. I'm supposed to be going to the best high school in my school district... but we don't get AP classes. It's called the inner-city.

Re:WTF?

[Creepy Crawler]

---(Totally off-topic, but is anybody else not totally thrilled with this redesign?)

I do know that the buttons were changed when I responded to an admin. He, for some reason, didnt like my signature ;)

Re:What does this mean?

[philgross]

"Advanced Placement" or AP courses are advanced courses (supposedly college level) that are offered at some high schools. Unlike the rest of the local- and state-controlled curriculum, AP courses are administered by a national organization, the College Board.

A number of the tests are offered at different difficulties, including Computer Science with the A and AB levels, and Calculus with AB and BC levels.

The College Board has announced that they're dropping four tests, three language tests plus the AB CS class. Since it was short notice with little consultation, and the AB test was the only one with any content that would really be considered computer science (e.g. data structures), teachers are up in arms.

The broader issue is that primary and secondary education vary enormously in quality and funding over the US. This is partly because different states want to do it differently (good), and partly because education is funded almost entirely out of local property taxes, so rich areas have super-schools, and poor areas have lousy schools (bad). The cycle reinforces as rich people move to areas with good schools.

Thus the complaint that only rich high schools can afford to teach AP classes, and AP classes are necessary to get into the best universities.

Oh, and varsity: in American high school and college sports programs, the Varsity team for a sport is the best team, which represents the school in competition with other schools. So if you're not very good at football, you might still be able to play on the Junior Varsity team, but probably not for the the Varsity team. Teacher is claiming that AB-Test-Takers = Varsity CS Team.

Re:GOD CREATED ADAM AND EVE

[CSMatt]

Sterile humans cannot reproduce!! Say NO to the vasectomy agenda!!!!

Better than AP?

[snkline]

Screw AP, here is how I got college credit early: Do well on your ACT (or SAT I guess, never had to take the SAT myself) to qualify for college substitution credits. Try to find out which courses at your local Community College will actually transfer to your preferred university. Apply with your high school and the CC to take those courses for high school credit. Upside: If you choose correctly, you probably only have community college classes two days a week, but only have to go to high school for half a day. Downside: You are probably going to school at night. If you don't pick the courses right, the best you can hope for on transferring credits is some sort of 1 credit in General Science 999999 which doesn't count towards credits for your degree...... (Seriously, I'm lucky I took a Fortran class in addition to my Object Oriented Programming class, since OOP turned out to be... Visual Basic)

Re:GOD CREATED ADAM AND EVE

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it WAS Adam and Steve. that's what happens when you read a poor translation.

AP Board is screwing up in more than one way

[jmichaelg]

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.

Re:AP Board is screwing up in more than one way

[sitarah]

"Adding more steps to any program guarantees you'll lose some participants. Perhaps that's what the AP board intended with their new regs."

No, the College Board introduced the AP Audit because some of their members, the colleges, said that they were seeing too many students with AP classes on their records that were completely half-assed and not even college prep level. The kids took the exam and consistently failed because the teachers were not teaching the exam topics, but labeling regular history as "AP History, take the exam if you feel like".

This was troublesome for both kids and admissions counselors. They thought they were getting a college prep class and/or that they'd be able to score a 4 on the exam, and neither were true. Similarly, the college that admitted them thought that they were either not so smart for failing that AP exam or thought they had a much more rigorous high school career than they did.

On lack of consultation...

[zkiwi34]

It would appear they didn't even consult or even inform the group of people who prepare the curriculum and write the exams either. Clearly, they had already made up their mind to ditch it and didn't want to inconvenience themselves with a justification of it. Ah well, I guess AP/A will now tank, and districts will go "Hmmm, AP/A wasn't getting our kids any college advantage, and now there's just it to offer, so let's save ourselves some money and drop ComSci completely from our course offerings. After all, computers are expensive, where can you find teachers willing to do it etc etc blah blah." I guess the states or the federal government (yeah, it's not a realistic view) might want to take on setting up a decent 9-12th grade ComSci course sequence to make sure that ComSci teaching doesn't completely collapse in the US.

Re:GOD CREATED ADAM AND EVE

[BungaDunga]

Celibate humans cannot reproduce! Say NO to the ANTI SEX agenda!!!

Re: College Board Kills AP Computer Science AB

[bitrunner]

Actually, I don't think it is a big loss. Don't get me wrong. I think it is great that high schools prepare students by learning them some computer skills. However, things I see is that freshmen, in a computer science course, lack the basic skills. They seem to have almost no skills when it comes to math, physics or even general problem solving skills. Heck most freshman can't even spell. (And when they spell something wrong it's not even done in a consistent way). Something else. It seems that students are taught things either wrong, out of context, or in the wrong context. That is really an obstacle, for the student AND a teacher in college. You won't believe how often the phrase "Well, than your computer science teacher in HS had it wrong" sentence is used in the first year in college. So if I would be asked, and actually that question was asked at the ACM SIGCSE meetings this spring, what it is students should be taught the answer would be: Math, geometry, how the solve 'logic' problems etc etc. I do think it is a good idea to teach HS students computer skills, focusing on that would help quite a bit. I don't mind that students are shown some simple programming 'things'. However you won't believe how many students do know how to wrongly create all kinds of code but are not able to copy a zip file from one drive to another and extract it in such a way that it results in an organized way of storing their lab and project work. The wrong 'programming' techniques we can usually fix but the lack of math, logic, geometry, science/physics etc is something that keeps haunting them all the way through college.