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Shortchanged: How Advanced Placement Cheats Students
" Shortchanged is a brilliant book."― The Washington Post Author and high school English teacher Annie Abrams reveals how the College Board's emphasis on standardized testing has led the AP program astray. Every year, millions of students take Advanced Placement (AP) exams hoping to score enough points to earn college credit and save on their tuition bill. But are they getting a real college education? The College Board says that AP classes and exams make the AP program more accessible and represent a step forward for educational justice. But the program's commitment to standardized testing no longer reflects its original promise of delivering meaningful college-level curriculum to high school students. In Shortchanged , education scholar Annie Abrams uncovers the political and pedagogical traditions that led to the program's development in the 1950s. In revealing the founders' intentions of aligning liberal arts education across high schools and colleges in ways they believed would protect democracy, Abrams questions the collateral damage caused by moving away from this vision. The AP program is the College Board's greatest source of revenue, yet its financial success belies the founding principles it has abandoned. Instead of arguing for a wholesale restoration of the program, Shortchanged considers the nation's contemporary needs. Abrams advocates for broader access to the liberal arts through robust public funding of secondary and higher education and a dismantling of the standardized testing regime. Shortchanged illuminates a better way to offer a quality liberal arts education to high school students while preparing them for college.
240 pages, Hardcover
Published April 25, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
May 17, 2023
Abrams’ thesis, at first glance, is deceptively simple. The College Board is a corporation, and corporations’ raison d’être is to make money. Therefore, an expansion of the program like we’ve seen over the past twenty years should make us look more closely at whether it’s benefiting the students (which it isn’t). But her book is also a close, heavily sourced examination of how AP came to be and what it turned into up until today, and the problems with AP go beyond mere profit chasing. Its original founders were flawed and elitist, but their vision of a humanistic education is not to be dismissed. Which is all the more enraging in the 21st century, now that they’ve been dismissed.
The College Board, in expanding and pushing the program, has expanded and pushed a standardized, regimented model that facilitates test taking and purports to empower students for college acceptance—as opposed to genuine engagement and learning—at the expense of the very habits of mind the program was interested in cultivating. The CB has revealed much about itself over the past several years—that it caves to pressure from right wing politicians, that it makes over half a million a year peddling its exam, that it does not encourage or even allow for teacher autonomy. Abrams shines a light on all this and suggests, gently, we can do better. She’s right. We can. But we first behave to start having the difficult conversation about what education and equity are supposed to look like, what they’re supposed to be for.
The College Board, in expanding and pushing the program, has expanded and pushed a standardized, regimented model that facilitates test taking and purports to empower students for college acceptance—as opposed to genuine engagement and learning—at the expense of the very habits of mind the program was interested in cultivating. The CB has revealed much about itself over the past several years—that it caves to pressure from right wing politicians, that it makes over half a million a year peddling its exam, that it does not encourage or even allow for teacher autonomy. Abrams shines a light on all this and suggests, gently, we can do better. She’s right. We can. But we first behave to start having the difficult conversation about what education and equity are supposed to look like, what they’re supposed to be for.
January 7, 2025
I would actually give this 3.5 stars if I could. As much as I appreciated Abrams’ thorough and methodical detailing of the history of the AP program in Part I of the book, the second half, titled “Accountability,” seemed much more a disjointed diatribe than a cogent argument. Abrams’ antipathy for the program is palpable; her prose practically seethes with disdain. At some points this hyper-critical tone detracts from her credibility. Still, I wholeheartedly agree with much of her main argument: that the College Board is a self-serving racket that has over the past decade or so drifted further and further from its original intent. However, I maintain that experienced educators can still work within the AP framework to help promote critical thinking and thoughtful engagement with course content. Unfortunately, experienced educators are becoming a rare commodity in many public schools — a problem much bigger than AP.
June 3, 2023
Dr. Annie Abrams makes no effort to hide her distaste for the AP program. As a former AP English teacher and college instructor, Abrams has the gravitas of experience and someone who has thought deeply about the meaning of a liberal arts education, the purpose of schooling, and how the ubiquitous College Board fits into the long-running dialogue between students, faculty, and democratic society.
The first half of Short Changed is where Abrams is strongest. Her research on major reformers in education like James Conant, John Dewey, and Alan Blackmer is thorough. The thesis that elite white men shaped a program designed for elite white students is uncontroversial. In fact, for the first 90 pages of the book, I wondered if Dr. Abrams would ever get to the contemporary AP program that I was part of in the 1990s as a student and in the 2000s as an educator. While Dr. Abrams’ prose is crisp and her argument cogent, it takes time for readers to connect the first half of her book with its subtitle: How Advanced Placement Cheats Students.
As good as Abrams' research is in the first half, the latter part of Short Changed disappointed. Abrams focuses on four AP subjects in particular: AP U.S. History, AP English Language, AP English Literature, and AP U.S. Government and Politics. Her critique of the AP English programs developed by College Board is generally sound. The courses have blurred distinctions and the essay rubrics that guide 55 percent of the students’ exam score is highly suspect since moving from a holistic evaluation to a more analytic rubric divorced from much of what teachers and students might love about writing. However, Abrams’ criticism of the AP English program reads like a laundry list of reasonable fixes: modify the exam and/or essay rubrics, clarify the curriculum to further distinguish the language and literature programs, and shorten the number of units to promote depth over breadth.
On AP U.S. History, a survey course typically given junior year and taken by nearly 470,000 students, Abrams’ analysis falls flat. Comparisons are made to non-typical survey courses like Yale’s “Climate and Environment in America, 1500-1870,” Georgetown’s “The U.S. in the World to 1945,” and Johns Hopkins University’s “Black Baltimore Archives–From Frederick Douglass to Billie Holiday.” I found it discomfiting that Abrams spends so much time building a case against the elitism of College Board and then uses as examples courses from universities even more elitist (Yale admitted 4.6 percent of undergraduate applicants in 2022). The evidence that some elitist colleges no longer accept any AP exam scores for credit (Harvard, MIT, Stanford) is out of sorts for an argument about the undemocratic nature of College Board’s influence on education. I could not help wondering how many of the 2 million AP students who sit for exams each year would have any chance getting accepted to these institutions, and whether this factored into an analysis which prizes highly specialized, small seminar courses functioning at highly specialized, small colleges with depressingly-low admissions rates. Even so, these same institutions market summer enrichment camps far more expensive than AP exam fees to high school sophomores and juniors who pay steep tuition in hopes of having a better chance at getting in. The overwhelming majority will not. I wonder how many professors at Harvard, Stanford, or MIT would even consider teaching at a local high school, regardless of what curriculum was offered. It seems that Dr. Abrams praises universities for things only accessible to a very small percentage of the nation’s students by design. None of it is scalable given any public school system that I’ve encountered without radical changes in school funding, teacher pay and benefits, and the role of school boards and state legislatures in shaping education for the majority of the nation’s high school students.
AP U.S. History is a course with a chronology of 1491 to the present and is far more reflective of a freshman-level college history course taken at community colleges (the biggest educators of post-secondary students) and large state universities than the aforementioned examples provided by Abrams. As a high school student, I found the course engaging with spirited debates and discussion throughout. My teacher hardly mentioned the exam, though we all took it in May of that year and most of us passed. The problem with Short Changed is that it is looking for the spirit of the classroom and democracy in a PDF of the curriculum. The framework is overloaded with illustrative examples, units, and themes from various periods. As a long-time AP teacher (mostly AP World History and AP European History), I affirmatively deny that the beautiful, socratic back-and-forth at the heart of any worthwhile humanities course can be found in a PDF. It is the role of the teacher--whether AP or not--to bring life out of the students, texts, and class culture. In my own work as a school accreditation committee member (not affiliated with CollegeBoard), I’ve visited dozens of high schools and seen first hand the role of the teacher in providing food for thought, a forum for spirited debate, and analysis of problems stunningly relevant to today’s youth. It is happening right now, in AP classes across the country! Dr. Abrams does not acknowledge any of the good happening in these spaces. AP students are not reading 200-page curriculum frameworks written by a bureaucracy. But they are engaging in debates about school busing, historical mock trials of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, writing DBQ essays about the commercial development of the United States, and thinking about primary sources in a manner very much in keeping with Abrams’ desire to promote the liberal arts.
A lot of text is spent on AP Classroom, a fairly new digital platform used by some AP teachers to supplement various courses offered by AP. Here, Abrams badly misunderstands how AP Classroom is commonly used. It is not a replacement for teachers, traditional classrooms, or engaging with the humanities. Rather, it is a bank of optional resources that teachers may use, should they find it useful for their students. In my AP European and AP World History courses, I use the multiple-choice questions as a review tool a few weeks prior to the AP Exam. All multiple-choice questions on these exams have a stimulus, which could be a primary source, political cartoon, map, chart or table relevant to a particular time in history. This is in sharp contrast to the old approach of AP history multiple-choice questions which was fact-driven, rather than reading comprehension and analysis driven. Should a teacher dislike any particular question set or stimulus, nothing whatsoever presses them to use either AP Classroom or that question. In fact, it’s fairly easy for a teacher to make their own questions and put it in AP Classroom for students to practice with, a feature especially useful for distance learning during the pandemic or when students are absent from school.
Dr. Abrams mentions that A.I. is grading essays for students on AP Classroom. There is no autonomous grading of any free response question of any kind in AP U.S. History, AP European History, nor in AP World History: Modern. The only autonomous grading is in the multiple choice, because there are objectively correct answers. The Short Answer Questions, Document Based Questions, and Long Essay Questions which comprise 60 percent of the history exam are still scored by teachers, whether inside or outside of the AP Classroom platform. As for the official AP exams in those subjects, they are scored by college professors in the field and veteran high school AP teachers trained to use a rubric published by College Board. Dr. Abrams has legitimate concerns about the rubrics used for AP English courses, but makes no mention of any rubric used in AP U.S. History or AP U.S. Government, courses she spends considerable time on in the book.
Per Abrams, the AP U.S. The Government and Politics course is lifeless, void of the controversy and engagement which make the subject fascinating to so many political science students at university and beyond. On this, she is correct. I have a political science degree and also took AP U.S. Government and Politics in high school. The course is stripped down and mechanical. And that too is worth mentioning. The AP program is not one class, but a body of more than thirty different programs, some considerably stronger than others. It is up to schools, school districts, state departments of education, and colleges to determine which programs they will offer or grant credit for and which they will not. Dr. Abrams herself mentions a number of colleges that will not grant college English credit for AP English. College Board has no authority over these institutions, nor can they dictate credit-granting policies.
Traditionally, students were granted “advanced standing” rather than actual credit used for graduation. This allowed students to accelerate past introductory courses for which they were proficient in to begin more advanced studies in coursework very much akin to that prized by the author herself. Courses like AP Calculus and AP Microeconomics have been independently reviewed by college professors and the gist of their reports is that the AP exams are often more challenging than a final in first semester calculus or economics at most colleges. This feedback is used to modify standards every few years or when needed. When larger problems exist, College Board can redesign the entire Course and Exam Description, something that has happened to several of the programs Abrams references in book. If certain institutions disagree with the redesign, they may drop the course as a requirement or lobby the College Board for change, both of which occur frequently in America blue and red. Abrams paints Advanced Placement in broad strokes, missing the forest of accessibility for the trees of fixable issues with regard to curriculum frameworks and digital platforms less nefarious than readers are led to believe.
Short Changed did make me think about my work and the myriad far-reaching external influences on it. The book is thoroughly researched and poses important questions for the general public and school leaders. Dr. Abrams admits in her conclusion that there are no easy solutions for the dilemmas regarding College Board nor the nature of education within American democracy. I have no qualms about this and empathize with her helplessness as a fellow educator of high school students. Ultimately, Dr. Abrams is someone that the AP program should consult when engaging in dialogue with the community about the efficacy and future of its programs, particularly in English Language Arts. Do I think it the fault of College Board that our American school system is not what was envisioned in the early part of the 20th century? Absolutely not. There are too many disparate pieces and too many conflicting political agendas for any one organization to take credit for the mess we’re in today.
The first half of Short Changed is where Abrams is strongest. Her research on major reformers in education like James Conant, John Dewey, and Alan Blackmer is thorough. The thesis that elite white men shaped a program designed for elite white students is uncontroversial. In fact, for the first 90 pages of the book, I wondered if Dr. Abrams would ever get to the contemporary AP program that I was part of in the 1990s as a student and in the 2000s as an educator. While Dr. Abrams’ prose is crisp and her argument cogent, it takes time for readers to connect the first half of her book with its subtitle: How Advanced Placement Cheats Students.
As good as Abrams' research is in the first half, the latter part of Short Changed disappointed. Abrams focuses on four AP subjects in particular: AP U.S. History, AP English Language, AP English Literature, and AP U.S. Government and Politics. Her critique of the AP English programs developed by College Board is generally sound. The courses have blurred distinctions and the essay rubrics that guide 55 percent of the students’ exam score is highly suspect since moving from a holistic evaluation to a more analytic rubric divorced from much of what teachers and students might love about writing. However, Abrams’ criticism of the AP English program reads like a laundry list of reasonable fixes: modify the exam and/or essay rubrics, clarify the curriculum to further distinguish the language and literature programs, and shorten the number of units to promote depth over breadth.
On AP U.S. History, a survey course typically given junior year and taken by nearly 470,000 students, Abrams’ analysis falls flat. Comparisons are made to non-typical survey courses like Yale’s “Climate and Environment in America, 1500-1870,” Georgetown’s “The U.S. in the World to 1945,” and Johns Hopkins University’s “Black Baltimore Archives–From Frederick Douglass to Billie Holiday.” I found it discomfiting that Abrams spends so much time building a case against the elitism of College Board and then uses as examples courses from universities even more elitist (Yale admitted 4.6 percent of undergraduate applicants in 2022). The evidence that some elitist colleges no longer accept any AP exam scores for credit (Harvard, MIT, Stanford) is out of sorts for an argument about the undemocratic nature of College Board’s influence on education. I could not help wondering how many of the 2 million AP students who sit for exams each year would have any chance getting accepted to these institutions, and whether this factored into an analysis which prizes highly specialized, small seminar courses functioning at highly specialized, small colleges with depressingly-low admissions rates. Even so, these same institutions market summer enrichment camps far more expensive than AP exam fees to high school sophomores and juniors who pay steep tuition in hopes of having a better chance at getting in. The overwhelming majority will not. I wonder how many professors at Harvard, Stanford, or MIT would even consider teaching at a local high school, regardless of what curriculum was offered. It seems that Dr. Abrams praises universities for things only accessible to a very small percentage of the nation’s students by design. None of it is scalable given any public school system that I’ve encountered without radical changes in school funding, teacher pay and benefits, and the role of school boards and state legislatures in shaping education for the majority of the nation’s high school students.
AP U.S. History is a course with a chronology of 1491 to the present and is far more reflective of a freshman-level college history course taken at community colleges (the biggest educators of post-secondary students) and large state universities than the aforementioned examples provided by Abrams. As a high school student, I found the course engaging with spirited debates and discussion throughout. My teacher hardly mentioned the exam, though we all took it in May of that year and most of us passed. The problem with Short Changed is that it is looking for the spirit of the classroom and democracy in a PDF of the curriculum. The framework is overloaded with illustrative examples, units, and themes from various periods. As a long-time AP teacher (mostly AP World History and AP European History), I affirmatively deny that the beautiful, socratic back-and-forth at the heart of any worthwhile humanities course can be found in a PDF. It is the role of the teacher--whether AP or not--to bring life out of the students, texts, and class culture. In my own work as a school accreditation committee member (not affiliated with CollegeBoard), I’ve visited dozens of high schools and seen first hand the role of the teacher in providing food for thought, a forum for spirited debate, and analysis of problems stunningly relevant to today’s youth. It is happening right now, in AP classes across the country! Dr. Abrams does not acknowledge any of the good happening in these spaces. AP students are not reading 200-page curriculum frameworks written by a bureaucracy. But they are engaging in debates about school busing, historical mock trials of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, writing DBQ essays about the commercial development of the United States, and thinking about primary sources in a manner very much in keeping with Abrams’ desire to promote the liberal arts.
A lot of text is spent on AP Classroom, a fairly new digital platform used by some AP teachers to supplement various courses offered by AP. Here, Abrams badly misunderstands how AP Classroom is commonly used. It is not a replacement for teachers, traditional classrooms, or engaging with the humanities. Rather, it is a bank of optional resources that teachers may use, should they find it useful for their students. In my AP European and AP World History courses, I use the multiple-choice questions as a review tool a few weeks prior to the AP Exam. All multiple-choice questions on these exams have a stimulus, which could be a primary source, political cartoon, map, chart or table relevant to a particular time in history. This is in sharp contrast to the old approach of AP history multiple-choice questions which was fact-driven, rather than reading comprehension and analysis driven. Should a teacher dislike any particular question set or stimulus, nothing whatsoever presses them to use either AP Classroom or that question. In fact, it’s fairly easy for a teacher to make their own questions and put it in AP Classroom for students to practice with, a feature especially useful for distance learning during the pandemic or when students are absent from school.
Dr. Abrams mentions that A.I. is grading essays for students on AP Classroom. There is no autonomous grading of any free response question of any kind in AP U.S. History, AP European History, nor in AP World History: Modern. The only autonomous grading is in the multiple choice, because there are objectively correct answers. The Short Answer Questions, Document Based Questions, and Long Essay Questions which comprise 60 percent of the history exam are still scored by teachers, whether inside or outside of the AP Classroom platform. As for the official AP exams in those subjects, they are scored by college professors in the field and veteran high school AP teachers trained to use a rubric published by College Board. Dr. Abrams has legitimate concerns about the rubrics used for AP English courses, but makes no mention of any rubric used in AP U.S. History or AP U.S. Government, courses she spends considerable time on in the book.
Per Abrams, the AP U.S. The Government and Politics course is lifeless, void of the controversy and engagement which make the subject fascinating to so many political science students at university and beyond. On this, she is correct. I have a political science degree and also took AP U.S. Government and Politics in high school. The course is stripped down and mechanical. And that too is worth mentioning. The AP program is not one class, but a body of more than thirty different programs, some considerably stronger than others. It is up to schools, school districts, state departments of education, and colleges to determine which programs they will offer or grant credit for and which they will not. Dr. Abrams herself mentions a number of colleges that will not grant college English credit for AP English. College Board has no authority over these institutions, nor can they dictate credit-granting policies.
Traditionally, students were granted “advanced standing” rather than actual credit used for graduation. This allowed students to accelerate past introductory courses for which they were proficient in to begin more advanced studies in coursework very much akin to that prized by the author herself. Courses like AP Calculus and AP Microeconomics have been independently reviewed by college professors and the gist of their reports is that the AP exams are often more challenging than a final in first semester calculus or economics at most colleges. This feedback is used to modify standards every few years or when needed. When larger problems exist, College Board can redesign the entire Course and Exam Description, something that has happened to several of the programs Abrams references in book. If certain institutions disagree with the redesign, they may drop the course as a requirement or lobby the College Board for change, both of which occur frequently in America blue and red. Abrams paints Advanced Placement in broad strokes, missing the forest of accessibility for the trees of fixable issues with regard to curriculum frameworks and digital platforms less nefarious than readers are led to believe.
Short Changed did make me think about my work and the myriad far-reaching external influences on it. The book is thoroughly researched and poses important questions for the general public and school leaders. Dr. Abrams admits in her conclusion that there are no easy solutions for the dilemmas regarding College Board nor the nature of education within American democracy. I have no qualms about this and empathize with her helplessness as a fellow educator of high school students. Ultimately, Dr. Abrams is someone that the AP program should consult when engaging in dialogue with the community about the efficacy and future of its programs, particularly in English Language Arts. Do I think it the fault of College Board that our American school system is not what was envisioned in the early part of the 20th century? Absolutely not. There are too many disparate pieces and too many conflicting political agendas for any one organization to take credit for the mess we’re in today.
May 14, 2023
I think every good organization should periodically stop and ask "why are we doing what we're doing?" That time is now for high schools caught up in the AP arms race, and Abrams' concise book collects the facts to begin that discussion.
While tracing the historic origins of the AP program, Abrams makes clear that the AP of today is not the AP of 5 or more years ago, and that it is no longer providing students with a true college-level experience. Yet students and parents - and high schools - are caught up in the race for more AP courses in hopes that student college apps will "stand out."
Yet in terms of who really benefits from the expansion of AP, Abrams makes the key point that "The main beneficiaries of AP are College Board executives." (p. 157). This is what I've suspected for several years.
While College Board runs down the sidelines of being a "non-profit" and claiming they are bringing equity to HS education, facts such as CB collecting $48 million in investments in just 2019 (p. 158), and bringing in over $1 billion in "program service revenue" in 2019 (p. 159) highlight that CB is not motivated by magnanimity.
As a HS physics teacher, I've had an interesting relationship with AP. I recommend this book to teachers, administrators, and parents in order to frame the question "why are we doing what we're doing with AP courses?" I think this book a great catalyst towards starting that conversation.
While tracing the historic origins of the AP program, Abrams makes clear that the AP of today is not the AP of 5 or more years ago, and that it is no longer providing students with a true college-level experience. Yet students and parents - and high schools - are caught up in the race for more AP courses in hopes that student college apps will "stand out."
Yet in terms of who really benefits from the expansion of AP, Abrams makes the key point that "The main beneficiaries of AP are College Board executives." (p. 157). This is what I've suspected for several years.
While College Board runs down the sidelines of being a "non-profit" and claiming they are bringing equity to HS education, facts such as CB collecting $48 million in investments in just 2019 (p. 158), and bringing in over $1 billion in "program service revenue" in 2019 (p. 159) highlight that CB is not motivated by magnanimity.
As a HS physics teacher, I've had an interesting relationship with AP. I recommend this book to teachers, administrators, and parents in order to frame the question "why are we doing what we're doing with AP courses?" I think this book a great catalyst towards starting that conversation.
February 28, 2025
Any book that deepens and clarifies my thinking is okay by me.
August 12, 2023
As a teacher of AP Euro and APUSH for 12+ years, I agree with a lot of her claims - the rubric teaches formulaic writing, the curriculum is too burdensome, the privatization of College Board is dangerous to public education. Yet this book fell flat for me because the author never really PROVED her argument. It felt like she went into her research with an argument already in mind, cobbled together some evidence, and then made her argument - without fully connecting the two. She is VERY critical of College Board, but I never felt like she proved her point (much like her criticism of formulaic AP essays). Her lack of a solution also fell flat. She also seemed to ignore a lot of issues she brought up - why are only wealthy schools dropping AP programs? How can we support students of color to have more success in school (AP or otherwise)?
October 6, 2023
As the parent of teenagers who have taken a couple of AP classes, I was keenly interested to read Dr. Abrams's critique of the program. Unfortunately, I found this book to be naïve and thinly reasoned.
I largely glossed over the first half of the book. It seemed to be a distillation of various primary and secondary sources describing James B. Conant, a Harvard president and 20th century educational theorist. Frankly, this material seemed to be book ballast, only loosely related to the advertised topic of the book. Conant wasn't directly involved in setting up the AP tests, although his ideas might have contributed to the rationale for setting up the program.
As motivation for the book (p. 4) the author cites their disorientation at moving from teaching humanities at the college level to teaching humanities at the high school AP level. The two experiences were non-equivalent and the author blames the AP program for not living up to its ideal of providing an early taste of college coursework in the high school environment. The pervasive flaw in the author's reasoning is to imply (throughout the book) that if only the AP program didn't exist, or were better set up, then all the high school students currently served by AP could share the experience of a first-year seminar at an Ivy League school, or a senior seminar at an ultra-elite high school like Sidwell Friends.
This is unrealistic. Certainly, 18 and 19-year old students at Yale might take seminars on topics such as “Climate and Environment in America, 1500-1870” or “The Age of Hamilton and Jefferson” (pp. 112-113). That's what happens at top colleges where the star professors get to teach their own specialized research interests and where the students already learned the broad brushstrokes of U.S. history back when they were 16. But where did those Yale students learn the basic timeline of U.S. history? I'm glad that the AP program is available to do this job in at least a semi-objective manner, and for a far broader cross-section of America than future Ivy League students. The author accuses the AP program of "papering over" underlying educational disparities (p. 120) by providing a dry, overly-regimented simulation of college, but what would happen if we got rid of the current AP classes? We'd better reveal how bad a job the politicized state education boards are doing with the U.S. history curriculum... and then what? Teacher revolt followed by educational utopia? I don't think so.
The author also doesn't like how the College Board has recently started offering canned course resources (e.g., videos and online skill-checks) to teachers, instead of just providing the end-of-year exam as in prior decades. But is this necessarily a sinister outcome, merely because the AP program might be trying to increase its market? The author struggles mightily to suggest so (p. 110-111). Apparently, once young teachers get used to the canned College Board content, they will become complacent and never learn to teach for themselves. Or maybe the College Board is just making the canned resources optional **for now**, and then will snap the trap on America once we get used to them? (OK, I'm caricaturing the book now, but the book's paranoid tone here invites a little caricature).
One last topic of interest to me: The author faults the dry, rubric-based manner in which the AP program trains teachers to grade student writing. I agree: this is demoralizing to students and I wish high-school humanities teachers would do better than this. But still, I doubt that the AP program is the root of the evil here. Writing is graded in pretty much the same way in the IB program. And I suspect that the trend in state-based standards of learning is also towards a check-the-box approach. So let's do a thought experiment: eliminate the AP program. Do teachers then have more time, attention, and skill to write multi-paragraph analyses of each student essay? I'm skeptical.
It would be nice if every AP classroom in the humanities were as good as a first-year seminar at an Ivy League college. I'll bet some of them actually are. But if most aren't, does it follow that "Advanced Placement Cheats Students", as advertised in the book title? I'm inclined to say no.
Perhaps the real problem is that the College Board oversells the extent to which an AP class is really equivalent to an excellent college class. The College Board is certainly motivated to engage in this sort of puffery, because it supports their marketing pitch of helping students avoid taking annoying general education requirements in college. Tellingly, the elite colleges pay no heed to this marketing. But disappointment at such puffery shouldn’t extend to negating the value of the AP program as a college prep curriculum.
I largely glossed over the first half of the book. It seemed to be a distillation of various primary and secondary sources describing James B. Conant, a Harvard president and 20th century educational theorist. Frankly, this material seemed to be book ballast, only loosely related to the advertised topic of the book. Conant wasn't directly involved in setting up the AP tests, although his ideas might have contributed to the rationale for setting up the program.
As motivation for the book (p. 4) the author cites their disorientation at moving from teaching humanities at the college level to teaching humanities at the high school AP level. The two experiences were non-equivalent and the author blames the AP program for not living up to its ideal of providing an early taste of college coursework in the high school environment. The pervasive flaw in the author's reasoning is to imply (throughout the book) that if only the AP program didn't exist, or were better set up, then all the high school students currently served by AP could share the experience of a first-year seminar at an Ivy League school, or a senior seminar at an ultra-elite high school like Sidwell Friends.
This is unrealistic. Certainly, 18 and 19-year old students at Yale might take seminars on topics such as “Climate and Environment in America, 1500-1870” or “The Age of Hamilton and Jefferson” (pp. 112-113). That's what happens at top colleges where the star professors get to teach their own specialized research interests and where the students already learned the broad brushstrokes of U.S. history back when they were 16. But where did those Yale students learn the basic timeline of U.S. history? I'm glad that the AP program is available to do this job in at least a semi-objective manner, and for a far broader cross-section of America than future Ivy League students. The author accuses the AP program of "papering over" underlying educational disparities (p. 120) by providing a dry, overly-regimented simulation of college, but what would happen if we got rid of the current AP classes? We'd better reveal how bad a job the politicized state education boards are doing with the U.S. history curriculum... and then what? Teacher revolt followed by educational utopia? I don't think so.
The author also doesn't like how the College Board has recently started offering canned course resources (e.g., videos and online skill-checks) to teachers, instead of just providing the end-of-year exam as in prior decades. But is this necessarily a sinister outcome, merely because the AP program might be trying to increase its market? The author struggles mightily to suggest so (p. 110-111). Apparently, once young teachers get used to the canned College Board content, they will become complacent and never learn to teach for themselves. Or maybe the College Board is just making the canned resources optional **for now**, and then will snap the trap on America once we get used to them? (OK, I'm caricaturing the book now, but the book's paranoid tone here invites a little caricature).
One last topic of interest to me: The author faults the dry, rubric-based manner in which the AP program trains teachers to grade student writing. I agree: this is demoralizing to students and I wish high-school humanities teachers would do better than this. But still, I doubt that the AP program is the root of the evil here. Writing is graded in pretty much the same way in the IB program. And I suspect that the trend in state-based standards of learning is also towards a check-the-box approach. So let's do a thought experiment: eliminate the AP program. Do teachers then have more time, attention, and skill to write multi-paragraph analyses of each student essay? I'm skeptical.
It would be nice if every AP classroom in the humanities were as good as a first-year seminar at an Ivy League college. I'll bet some of them actually are. But if most aren't, does it follow that "Advanced Placement Cheats Students", as advertised in the book title? I'm inclined to say no.
Perhaps the real problem is that the College Board oversells the extent to which an AP class is really equivalent to an excellent college class. The College Board is certainly motivated to engage in this sort of puffery, because it supports their marketing pitch of helping students avoid taking annoying general education requirements in college. Tellingly, the elite colleges pay no heed to this marketing. But disappointment at such puffery shouldn’t extend to negating the value of the AP program as a college prep curriculum.
December 27, 2023
Particularly liked the history of how AP got started, as well as how its popularity exploded. I lived through most of the time she covers but feel as though I missed the key players/moments. Wasn't quite alive for the meetings of big thinkers in the 50's considering how high school-to-college transition might be done more efficiently and landing on challenging AP courses for HS students better aligned (in principle -- a big part of her argument is that this hasn't really happened, at least in the humanities that are her main focus) with college coursework. On her account, the exams themselves were initially a bit of an afterthought, just a way to provide some check on whether teachers were really living up to the ideals of the program, as opposed to the teach-to-test-grading-rubrics tail wagging the course content dog that she argues it became.
When I was in high school in the late 70's it existed, and I took the one AP my school offered (US history), but it wasn't talked about a lot, and certainly nobody was ranking schools according to how many APs (or IBs or similar exams) their students took, a la Jay Matthews' "challenge index". And by the time my kids were in high school the backlash against AP-abetted pressure and college admissions over-the-top frenzy was already prevalent.
Anyway, this book filled in the historical gaps for me quite well. There are two other strands i found somewhat less compelling: 1) College Board is a racket and motivated by money. No kidding. It's a for-profit corporation. States are welcome to take over and develop/administer their own tests and curricula. Oh wait, they actually do a lot of that already. The market will sort out (I hope) whether College Board is providing sufficient value as a supplement to that government activity. Rapid demise of the GRE ("GRExit") in my field (clinical psychology) in recent years shows that these things that seem to have an iron grip on a slice of the education landscape can disappear fairly fast if the community so wishes.
2) AP's march toward standardization detracts from all the creative cool stuff you can do in small classes as you inspire students toward personal engagement with the material, pay close attention to their writing, etc. etc. -- many illustrations from exciting-sounding courses at elite high schools (Andover, Sidwell Friends.......) and colleges (Yale, Vassar, Amherst.......), as well as, as it happens, the author's own team-taught high school course that sounds terrific.
As someone who directs a doctoral program existing within straitjacket of national accreditation, I sympathize with the author's frustration. But.........(a) who is going to pay for the small class sizes and extensive teacher training you need to make that great/non-standard/creative Sidwell Friends English course the kind of thing on offer all over the place? and relatedly (b) top-down national bureaucratic here-are-the-6-skills-and-12-key-themes approaches to curricula vs. idiographic/creative-genius courses tension is never going to reach stable resolution -- it's a pendulum swing in the areas I know (teaching, psychotherapy) and, I suspect, many/most of the ones i don't know.
Evolution needs variation, selection, AND retention mechanisms. If we don't have the variation (great teacher who figures out new ways to get kids excited about literature; newer authors added to syllabus.......) and just try to define Common Core-style content ever more precisely, it stagnates. But if we have no selection (Dave Eggers is a better writer than Dave Haaga, and that's a fact whether I like it or not), or retention (A heartbreaking work of staggering genius is, i assume, on more syllabi than Exploring Abnormal Psychology, which i remind you is available at full price from John Wiley & Sons, inc.) mechanisms, students are left just having to hope that they get one of the creative/awesome teachers and not the schlubs who were also [at least in my day] found in decent numbers even in good schools.
Finally, i enjoyed this 2013 quote from College Board president David Coleman, from an argument in favor of AP English essay rubrics moving more toward "expository text" and away from personal essay:
"As you grow up in this world you realize people really don't give a shit about what you feel or what you think." (on p. 130 of this book).
I guess writing a long book review and releasing it into the world makes me a hypocrite on this point, but I do think a high percentage of early undergraduates in the humanities and social sciences have been given the idea (by high schools?) a little too strongly that your own experience and resulting opinion is the highest form of content to include in your writing.
When I was in high school in the late 70's it existed, and I took the one AP my school offered (US history), but it wasn't talked about a lot, and certainly nobody was ranking schools according to how many APs (or IBs or similar exams) their students took, a la Jay Matthews' "challenge index". And by the time my kids were in high school the backlash against AP-abetted pressure and college admissions over-the-top frenzy was already prevalent.
Anyway, this book filled in the historical gaps for me quite well. There are two other strands i found somewhat less compelling: 1) College Board is a racket and motivated by money. No kidding. It's a for-profit corporation. States are welcome to take over and develop/administer their own tests and curricula. Oh wait, they actually do a lot of that already. The market will sort out (I hope) whether College Board is providing sufficient value as a supplement to that government activity. Rapid demise of the GRE ("GRExit") in my field (clinical psychology) in recent years shows that these things that seem to have an iron grip on a slice of the education landscape can disappear fairly fast if the community so wishes.
2) AP's march toward standardization detracts from all the creative cool stuff you can do in small classes as you inspire students toward personal engagement with the material, pay close attention to their writing, etc. etc. -- many illustrations from exciting-sounding courses at elite high schools (Andover, Sidwell Friends.......) and colleges (Yale, Vassar, Amherst.......), as well as, as it happens, the author's own team-taught high school course that sounds terrific.
As someone who directs a doctoral program existing within straitjacket of national accreditation, I sympathize with the author's frustration. But.........(a) who is going to pay for the small class sizes and extensive teacher training you need to make that great/non-standard/creative Sidwell Friends English course the kind of thing on offer all over the place? and relatedly (b) top-down national bureaucratic here-are-the-6-skills-and-12-key-themes approaches to curricula vs. idiographic/creative-genius courses tension is never going to reach stable resolution -- it's a pendulum swing in the areas I know (teaching, psychotherapy) and, I suspect, many/most of the ones i don't know.
Evolution needs variation, selection, AND retention mechanisms. If we don't have the variation (great teacher who figures out new ways to get kids excited about literature; newer authors added to syllabus.......) and just try to define Common Core-style content ever more precisely, it stagnates. But if we have no selection (Dave Eggers is a better writer than Dave Haaga, and that's a fact whether I like it or not), or retention (A heartbreaking work of staggering genius is, i assume, on more syllabi than Exploring Abnormal Psychology, which i remind you is available at full price from John Wiley & Sons, inc.) mechanisms, students are left just having to hope that they get one of the creative/awesome teachers and not the schlubs who were also [at least in my day] found in decent numbers even in good schools.
Finally, i enjoyed this 2013 quote from College Board president David Coleman, from an argument in favor of AP English essay rubrics moving more toward "expository text" and away from personal essay:
"As you grow up in this world you realize people really don't give a shit about what you feel or what you think." (on p. 130 of this book).
I guess writing a long book review and releasing it into the world makes me a hypocrite on this point, but I do think a high percentage of early undergraduates in the humanities and social sciences have been given the idea (by high schools?) a little too strongly that your own experience and resulting opinion is the highest form of content to include in your writing.
July 31, 2023
Ho hum...I guess I didn't realize have the stomach for the deep DEEP dive into the creation of the College Board and AP exams (shout out to Kenyon College President Gordon Chalmers whose name was affixed to the Library where I spent countless hours reading and reading) which becomes increasingly boring, technical, and exhaustive. Then, Abrams relies (thinly) on anecdotes from her teaching career, random asides and non sequiters, and focuses on the tests being too game-able. I agree, there are always students who waste their opportunities, who try to beat the system, who take short cuts, sometimes successfully. But to ignore the countless students whose growth and struggle in a challenging course that is not without its flaws is reckless to be sure. Abrams admits not having a solution (some sort of class that connects to the mores and realities of local communities? I agree with her desire for smaller class sizes), and her scathing condemnation of AP Classroom resources seems to suggest that my students (and I) would be better served if I was writing (!) my own multiple choice questions or continuing to photocopy them from books to use. The class is an imperfect thing, and though I am grateful for Abrams attempting to wrestle with the culture of testing and all that is obscures and neglects, this book ain't what I was lookin' for.
May 7, 2023
This was an interesting look at the historical foundation of the AP philosophy and how it contrasts with the way the AP/College Board operates now. While I agree that AP/College Board is a multi-million dollar profit-making "nonprofit" that focuses entirely too much attention on passing a single standardized test, I do not agree with all of her positions. AP allows more educator freedom in curriculum and materials than does a district-imposed curriculum (especially if the district is moving in a direction of increasing restriction of ideas and materials). The curriculum invites students to interact with and consider challenging texts and to explore their own writing voice. For students in economically challenged districts and situations, AP credits can offer some financial relief in the face of crippling university costs. Depending on the district, administration, the teacher, the students, the classroom environment, and the resources, AP courses can still be a place for open discourse and intellectual growth -- even if a student doesn't take the standardized test at the end.
May 19, 2023
A good read for those who teach AP or those who are educational leaders. It’s good to know the criticism from a historical (and personal) level.
You’ll find it reads like two books: One of historical context and then a critique of the corporation through the various products of AP. (More if the sound bites for this book will come from part two.)
What you won’t find are many solutions for what to do (by the author’s admittance). The few programs mention are somewhat problematic in some ways also.
And, as a point of biased response: teachers and professors help develop the content, the exam questions, do the training, and the scoring of the exams. I believe they are aware of these criticisms but continue to do good work for the sake of students.
Perhaps the bigger question of the book is how to educate in a “democracy” while living and benefiting from a capitalistic society. Tricky business.
You’ll find it reads like two books: One of historical context and then a critique of the corporation through the various products of AP. (More if the sound bites for this book will come from part two.)
What you won’t find are many solutions for what to do (by the author’s admittance). The few programs mention are somewhat problematic in some ways also.
And, as a point of biased response: teachers and professors help develop the content, the exam questions, do the training, and the scoring of the exams. I believe they are aware of these criticisms but continue to do good work for the sake of students.
Perhaps the bigger question of the book is how to educate in a “democracy” while living and benefiting from a capitalistic society. Tricky business.
January 18, 2025
As a former AP teacher, and current teacher of another "advanced placement" program, a lot of Abrams ideas strike home. The curriculum and high-stakes testing had led to a situation where students do not care to learn if it's not on the test.
This book offers an interesting history of the College Board and AP programs, the original goals of the founders, versus the current corporate entity that manages exams for hundreds of thousands of students each year. In short, the program has grown too big, is controlled by too few people, and takes too much control of education out of the classroom.
This book offers an interesting history of the College Board and AP programs, the original goals of the founders, versus the current corporate entity that manages exams for hundreds of thousands of students each year. In short, the program has grown too big, is controlled by too few people, and takes too much control of education out of the classroom.
May 15, 2023
A really fantastic deep dive into the world of Advanced Placement. I found the argument against College Board and the tests compelling. Others may not. In any case, most readers will appreciate the detailed accounting of how we actually got to where we are. While many detailed histories of the SAT have been written, this is the first (I think) of the AP tests. I'll stick in on my shelf beside Nicholas Lemann's "The Big Test" and David Owens' "None of the Above."
July 28, 2025
3.5 stars
Detailed about the committee that created College Board, no solution suggested to address the inequity that the system has created. Fast read overall, provided more evidence for why the current system fails our students and benefits this organization that is now enmeshed in the educational testing industrial complex.
Detailed about the committee that created College Board, no solution suggested to address the inequity that the system has created. Fast read overall, provided more evidence for why the current system fails our students and benefits this organization that is now enmeshed in the educational testing industrial complex.
June 4, 2024
The thorough, principled takedown the College Board so richly deserves. 🔥🔥🔥
May 31, 2023
The author uses the changes in scoring responses on two AP Exams (US History and English) to paint the entire AP program in a negative light. As a former AP Physics reader (grader) and a member of one of the committees that wrote exam items, I found this a very weak argument. I just checked with a current AP Physics reader to confirm that those free-response items are still being graded by real-live physics teachers (HS and college) and that the grading rubrics are not completely specified before the reading starts. Thus, the author's concerns about the scoring of two AP exams are not born out by at least one other subject.
August 3, 2023
The author is combining two distinct issues in an effort to discredit the use of AP classes & their respective tests. The author begins by explaining the original intent behind the creation of AP classes. While that history is all well and good, the author then uses that history to criticize how the AP's are used today.
To say that education has changed since the AP system was created would be a monumental understatement. Obviously education has changed since 1936 when Harvard's president, James Conant, first proposed the ideas that would translate into the current AP system. Understanding the how and why behind today's version of the AP system is crucial.
Abrams's complaints attack both sides of the AP issue. She is upset that the system has become standardized (both in content and in its tests), while she is equally flustered that those who administer the AP system have created online assistance to reach those students who may not have access to in-person teachers who can teach AP classes. In essence she is criticizing both teachers being required to teach a prescribed curriculum and teachers not begin necessary (because an online option is available) The author also wrongly associates a student's studying for an AP class & test, to equate to that student's entire exposure and education about the topic. (For example, a student studying for one of the AP English tests is not equating that abbreviated studying period to what could be learned in English literature and writing classes over the course of an undergraduate's education.)
AP classes, & their corresponding tests, are used to allow students to place out of entry-level college classes. This can save the student both time and money, by not having to take (& pay for) those entry-level classes. The tests do not prohibit a student from furthering the student's education in the topic the test was taken.
Abrams real argument is with the standardization of any kind of education; not just concerning the AP process. As she writes: "Today, Advanced Placement distorts the meaning and purpose of higher education - it bother literally and figuratively cheapens the experience" (p.167). She is misguided because she refuses to consider that people have changed their minds about what they want their (& their kids') college experiences to be.
The AP process is voluntary, is a useful tool for those who wish to potentially save time and money by testing out of classes, and does not prohibit a student from further studying the topics in which the student took an AP class / test. While Abrams is certainly welcome to have and share her opinions, her views in this book are condescending and highly critical of anyone who does not share her views. Hers is not the only "correct" vision of a college education; nor is the view of others who choose to save time & money with the AP process a wrong perspective.
Ultimately, Abrams is against any type of educational standard: grades, grammar rules, AP classes & tests, and even online AP tests offered to those who may not have that opportunity in their school. The author's closed minded and jaded approach to what defines a "correct" college education, perhaps beginning with the AP process, is unpleasant at best and offensive at worst.
To say that education has changed since the AP system was created would be a monumental understatement. Obviously education has changed since 1936 when Harvard's president, James Conant, first proposed the ideas that would translate into the current AP system. Understanding the how and why behind today's version of the AP system is crucial.
Abrams's complaints attack both sides of the AP issue. She is upset that the system has become standardized (both in content and in its tests), while she is equally flustered that those who administer the AP system have created online assistance to reach those students who may not have access to in-person teachers who can teach AP classes. In essence she is criticizing both teachers being required to teach a prescribed curriculum and teachers not begin necessary (because an online option is available) The author also wrongly associates a student's studying for an AP class & test, to equate to that student's entire exposure and education about the topic. (For example, a student studying for one of the AP English tests is not equating that abbreviated studying period to what could be learned in English literature and writing classes over the course of an undergraduate's education.)
AP classes, & their corresponding tests, are used to allow students to place out of entry-level college classes. This can save the student both time and money, by not having to take (& pay for) those entry-level classes. The tests do not prohibit a student from furthering the student's education in the topic the test was taken.
Abrams real argument is with the standardization of any kind of education; not just concerning the AP process. As she writes: "Today, Advanced Placement distorts the meaning and purpose of higher education - it bother literally and figuratively cheapens the experience" (p.167). She is misguided because she refuses to consider that people have changed their minds about what they want their (& their kids') college experiences to be.
The AP process is voluntary, is a useful tool for those who wish to potentially save time and money by testing out of classes, and does not prohibit a student from further studying the topics in which the student took an AP class / test. While Abrams is certainly welcome to have and share her opinions, her views in this book are condescending and highly critical of anyone who does not share her views. Hers is not the only "correct" vision of a college education; nor is the view of others who choose to save time & money with the AP process a wrong perspective.
Ultimately, Abrams is against any type of educational standard: grades, grammar rules, AP classes & tests, and even online AP tests offered to those who may not have that opportunity in their school. The author's closed minded and jaded approach to what defines a "correct" college education, perhaps beginning with the AP process, is unpleasant at best and offensive at worst.
January 1, 2024
Interesting reading if a bit heavy on the history of the program for my taste. It is very focused on the liberal arts tests of English and history and doesn't touch on calculus or the hard sciences. There is some irony in a teacher at one of the top public schools in the country, where students have to excel on a standardized test to get in, is complaining about teaching to a standardized test. I'm not sure her experience and expectations teaching some of the top high school students in New York City apply equally to typical schools around the country.
July 10, 2023
I'm no fan of the college board in many ways but some of the complaints Annie Abrams puts out are just generally against having a core curriculum and prescribed readings coming from a centralized source. She appears to have gotten a PhD about ten years ago, started teaching public high school, then been generally disillusioned about the state of things. I get it--I can emphasize--but the way the book is written jumps around from 2016 to 1956 to 2011 in order to paint a picture of an organization (the College Board) which is, by its own admission, changing with the times. While I agree with her conclusions (the College Board is a money-grubbing institution and the tests don't really measure whether or not the students understand the material), she seems to have a very rosy picture of the level of general education at the college level being super rigorous with an emphasis on free thought. Maybe in some classrooms but it's a big stretch to say that it's that much different than an AP classroom on average. Overall an okay read, but nothing earth-shattering and definitely not anything that will change the state of things. Anything hot that might actually lead to change is nested in the final chapters where she discusses the very profitable nature of the test and even that seems unoriginal.
One more thing--I don't like AP Classroom (the online College Board tool) very much either. I just don't use it; the difference between me and the author is that I didn't write an entire chapter bashing it.
One more thing--I don't like AP Classroom (the online College Board tool) very much either. I just don't use it; the difference between me and the author is that I didn't write an entire chapter bashing it.
November 20, 2023
Should be mandatory reading for all school administrators. As a retired school administrator I was always skeptical of the merits of advanced placement programs. My skepticism had more to do with the signaling function of AP courses rather than the substance of the programs, meaning, parent pursuit of the label AP, rather than the course content. Having said that, in sitting in on the courses, was impressed by the intellectual level of discourse in the classes, both, from students and teachers. Ms. Abrams description of the college boards revision of the program throws into question the intellectual level of course content, which, from her account, appears to be motivated by monetary goals at the expense of intellectual goals.
July 6, 2024
I'm an AP teacher, and the author really nailed it as far as the business side of AP goes. I disagree with her take on the classes themselves.
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