Say It Isn't So, Gaspar!

Ah, the joy of testing. As a Reader of AP U. S. History Examination essays for the Eductional Testing Service, I have long thought that colleges granted too much credit for AP scores of 3 (particularly) and 4; 5 is the top score on an AP test. Of course, I read history essays. The scores on the AP U. S. History Examination have regularly lagged behind all other disciplines, even the sciences. Perhaps the U. S. history Readers are a better judge of students deserving college credit than colleagues in other disciplines. If this is (fair & balanced) arrogance, so be it.

[x CHE]
Good Scores on AP Science Exams Are Not Good Predictors of Success in College Science, Study Finds
By Scott Smallwood

Doing well in an Advanced Placement science course in high school does not guarantee that a student will do equally well in an introductory college-level course in the same subject, according to new research by scholars at Harvard University and the University of Virginia.

Philip M. Sadler, director of the science-education department at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, presented the research this past weekend at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in St. Louis. The study is part of a larger project by Mr. Sadler and Robert H. Tai, an assistant professor of science education at Virginia, in which they surveyed 18,000 college students about their science education. The results have not yet been published.

The new data come as the Advanced Placement program marks its 50th anniversary, as more students are taking the examinations, and as the program has received high-profile endorsements from President Bush. In his State of the Union address in January, the president called for the training of 70,000 more AP teachers. And the education secretary, Margaret Spellings, recently announced the expansion of the Education Department's AP Incentive program, which hopes to increase the number of students taking AP and International Baccalaureate exams in mathematics, science, and "critical languages" from 380,000 to 1.5 million by 2012.

In interviews on Monday, Mr. Sadler and Mr. Tai both said they strongly favored a rigorous high-school education, but cautioned colleges against handing out too much credit for taking the AP exams. "Colleges should really reassess what they're giving credit for," said Mr. Tai.

Usually, high-school students who do well on an AP exam use the score to place out of an introductory course in college. But Mr. Sadler and Mr. Tai decided to study the impact of the AP program by looking at the students who still took introductory courses in biology, physics, or chemistry.

The College Board, which administers the AP-testing program, says that an exam score of 5 is "equivalent to the top A-level work in the corresponding college course." Similarly, a 4 is equivalent to a midlevel A to midlevel B, and a 3 is about the same as a midlevel B to a midlevel C in the college course.

So one would think that nearly all the students who took a science AP exam, earned the top grade of 5, but still enrolled in the corresponding introductory science course at college, would ace that class. They didn't. About half of them earned an A in the college course, said Mr. Sadler. And, he emphasized, that was after more exposure to the material. Presumably, he said, if the AP score was really equivalent to a college grade, then they should have been able to do well in the college course's exam without even taking the course.

Over all, students who scored a 5 on the AP exam averaged a college grade of 90 in their introductory science course. Students who scored a 4 averaged 87 in the same subject. And students with a 3 averaged 84. The mean college grade for all students was 80. "It certainly helps," Mr. Sadler said, "but it doesn't help as much as many people claim."

The survey indicated that the single best predictor of college performance in science courses was students' mathematical proficiency, Mr. Sadler said. The researchers also found that students who took science courses in high school that emphasized depth over breadth performed better in college.

Mr. Sadler said the AP exams should be strengthened, either by making it harder to earn a 5 or by adding grades of 6 and 7 to demonstrate that students have clearly mastered the material.

Chiara Coletti, a spokeswoman for the College Board, said the group was a "little perplexed" by how the study was being portrayed. She said previous research had shown that AP courses are good predictors of college success. This latest study, she said, seems to be "much ado about nothing."

Ms. Coletti also questioned Mr. Sadler's assertion that this is the largest study of its type. Although the survey covered 18,000 students, only 1,000 took AP courses and just half of those took the exams. "Not only is it not the largest," said Ms. Coletti. "It appears to be the smallest."

Mr. Sadler, though, emphasized that his work was a comparison study, looking at the differences between the hundreds of students who did take the exams and the thousands of others who did not. The College Board has much more data at its disposal, he said, but has not done such research.

"I don't feel very good about their complaining about the sample size," he said, "when they have the data and have not done this type of analysis."

Copyright © 2006 by The Chronicle of Higher Education

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