Re: Poor students improperly charged for AP tests in NYC

[Csubstance@aol.com]

In a message dated 6/18/06 10:15:42 PM, ElsaHaas@si.rr.com writes:

<< I wonder whether the same thing has happened in other places? Anybody want
to start an investigation?  >>

Having taught AP in Chicago's general high schools for several years, I think 
the real investigation needs to be done revealing how many AP advantages are 
given to students at affluent suburban high schools versus those at general 
inner city high schools. 

In the Chicago area, some suburban high schools offer almost every AP course 
in the catalogue. Kids begin taking AP in 10th grade. And the schools allow 
classes with fewer than 15 students. When I was job hunting last year in the 
Chicago suburbs (I'm blacklisted from teaching here, but had to try), I kept 
running into high schools where hundreds of students were taking dozens of AP 
exams every year.

In Chicago, the new school system's budget reduces AP offerings again but in 
a really nasty way. High Schools can offer AP, but only if they can maintain 
class sizes of 28. Now this may be possible (although unwise) in high schools 
with many qualified kids, it eliminated AP in many of Chicago's general high 
schools. 

You can call a class "AP" and call it "calculus" but if the students haven't 
mastered (not just taken) trig and pre-calc, what's the point. When I taught 
AP English (literature), we read everything from Conrad (early) to Tolstoy 
(Anna Karenina as the big novel, in March). Students who didn't have a real 
background in literature by the time they took that class were not ready for it, no 
matter how high their self esteem.

The promotion of AP in the abstract, without reference to the underlying 
class realities facing all of our high schools, is really nasty. It again blames 
the victim. A child who is working 30 hours per week (as some of my AP students 
were) is going to have a hard time reading "Anna Karenina" and doing all her 
other tasks, not matter how hard she works. To demand that schools serving the 
poor and working class get more AP classes without solving these other p
roblems is cruel. And to continue to show "Stand and Deliver" as if that noxious 
thingy were more than right wing propaganda is unfair to the children and their 
teachers. Expectations are bunk if you don't have the resources to make them 
real.

George Schmidt
Editor, Substance
www.substancenews.com