High school and college students were split this week on the news that seven private high schools in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area will remove Advanced Placement courses, according to interviews and a Sidwell Friends administrator.
This month, Bryan Garman, head of school at Sidwell Friends, emailed parents to say AP classes would be removed by the 2023-2024 year because teachers believe the material limits what they can explore in their classes.
Olivia Choi, 17, a Sidwell Friends student, will have taken two Advanced Placement courses by the time she graduates and sat for four AP exams.
“Some places, AP equates to ‘advanced’ in which case, they can be great options for students who want to be challenged academically,” Choi said. “At Sidwell, however, that is not the case.”
Min Kim, 48, assistant principle and academic dean at Sidwell, explained the schoool believes teachers should teach beyond the topics that appear on the tests. The school will continue to offer the AP exams which allows students to continue talking the tests of their choice and may help some get college credit.
Unlike some other high schools, AP courses are not the only accelerated courses offered at Sidwell Friends. In fact, the school has numerous classes that are considered advanced but do not follow Advanced Placement curriculum.
Choi agreed with Sidwell Friends’ decision to end the AP program.
When asked about her feelings toward the removal of the AP courses she said, “students enroll at Sidwell for equality of teaching and highly involved instruction, and I think it’s worth sacrificing the ability to put ‘AP’ on a transcript.”
According to Kim, Sidwell Friends already encourages its students to take exams for subjects that are not offered as APs, such as English, history, and language. Choi believes removing all APs will be beneficial and result in a healthier state of mind for all students.
“I believe removing the option altogether and shifting emphasis away from testing will help to minimize that disparity in course offerings,” concluded Choi.
Other students including Adam Friedman, 17, who attends Woodrow Wilson High School, a public high school in Northwest Washington, D.C. and Najsha Satterwhite, 18, from Luke C. Moore High School, another public school, agree with the schools’ decision to end the program.
They both believe that despite the benefit of taking advanced courses, it is not worth the stress the exams put on students.
Although removing AP courses may be popular among some high school students, Jessy Cashman,19, a rising sophomore at American University, and Wakefield High School alum, is against the idea of removing the courses. Wakefield is a public high school located in Arlington, Virginia.
Cashman took four Advanced Placement exams, and she believes the AP courses are both helpful and important to take before beginning university. The AP courses help students “get out of a high school mentality,” she said.
On the other hand, Cashman experienced that AP courses can become a “number game,” meaning students become competitive with one another over the amount of APs each student takes, or the scores they receive.
Overall Cashman believes APs are beneficial, and that everyone should have the option, but students should remember that “school is not just about tests,” she finished.