AP or not AP may not be the question

The Brookings Institute published a paper that questions the traditional wisdom that AP courses help prepare students for college.

It cites an overemphasis on measurable statistics that are attempting to quantify the elusive nature of improved educational outcomes. The data are not encouraging:

For instance, in 2009, the U.S. Department of Education's research arm, the Institute of Education Sciences, conducted an exhaustive review of research on college preparation and found "low evidence"--the weakest category--that academic preparation for college was effective at improving classroom outcomes. The reviewed studies included a wide variety of methods of college preparation, from increasing the difficulty of academic standards to matching curricular topics to known college courses. 

These methods also notably included increasing the quantity of advanced coursework taken in high school, such as Advanced Placement classes. None of the methods was found to have a strongly predictive positive impact on college readiness.

Indeed, in 2013, Dartmouth stopped accepting Advanced Placement credits after 90 percent of students who scored a perfect "5" on the AP Psychology exam reportedly failed the university's own test.

More evidence from later in the article:

We thus examined whether these patterns held up in a nationally representative database of U.S. students progressing from high school to college in the 1990s. Analyzing thousands of transcripts from the Department of Education's National Educational Longitudinal Study, we found confirmatory evidence that advanced high school courses apparently do little to prepare students for success in college coursework.

Specifically, we showed that students with one more year of high school instruction in physics, psychology, economics, or sociology on average have grades in their first college course in the same subject just 0.003 to 0.2 points higher on a four-point scale. For example, for students of similar race, socioeconomic status, and high school standardized test scores, those who took a year of high school economics earn a final grade in their college economics class 0.03 points higher than students who have never encountered that subject before. What’s more, these trivially small differences hold even for students who took exactly the same college course.

Here is some analysis of the reasons why the authors believe this gap exists:

What can explain why high school course-taking is so weakly related to college grades, both in our study and in previous ones? It is not that high school students are not learning. Rather, it is more likely they often learn the wrong things, do not sufficiently focus on the critical thinking commonly needed in college, or simply forget much of what they learned.

For instance, the ability to analyze evidence and pen a persuasive essay is central to much of college. Most colleges mandate at least a semester course of intensive writing and argument, as it is presumed that even students from top high schools are insufficiently prepared with this essential skill.

Additionally, studies on long-term retention of high school coursework suggest that students forget much or most of what they learn. Students who remember a few basic concepts may hold a head start that quickly diminishes as college classes rush toward advanced material. The little information that is retained from high school may explain the very slight advantage from prior coursework that we observed in our study.

The authors argue for a stronger emphasis on the need for more innovation and experimentation. In other words, the jury is still out.

Here is the link to the full article:  How important are high school courses to college performance?