Status Updates From Shortchanged: How Advanced ...

Oy vey, I have reached the point in this book where Abrams critiques the contemporary AP Program, and her critique is rather flimsy

“By selling a low-quality product to underprivileged communities, the College Board runs the risk of reproducing inequities while pretending to ameliorate them.”

That’s one hell of an opening chapter.

"When totalitarian dictatorship triumphs in the modern world, truly 'liberal' education is the first object of attack, since it is one of the most obvious bulwarks against the brutalization and atomization of the individual" (Abrams, quoting from the 1952 Blackmer Committee Report, General Education in School and College).

So much of the American higher educational system, developed in the 1950s was focused exclusively on the education of white boys. Perhaps not surprising since it was only white men who were developing the system. "The committee's sense of liberation, ... did not align with the one that emerged into the mainstream during the civil rights movement in the ensuing decades" (60).

"[Conant] celebrated the optimism and public-spiritedness of the progressive reform movement, but warned that "complex social and economic changes" had rendered [John] Dewey's vision for public education outdated" (22). James Bryan Conant, one of the architects of the AP program, wrestled with the still-dominant philosophy of John Dewey, which he felt no longer served American public education.

In the intro, Abrams points out that the College Board no longer advertises the number of AP exams it "sells" per year. I thought that was an interesting choice of word -- it really is selling a product. In a footnote, she points out that the most recent year this data was available was for 2021 and includes a link to the PDF of it.