East Reacts to AP American History and Biology Changes

The College Board began offering an Advanced Placement curriculum for high schools over 50 years ago. The organization hoped these advanced classes would provide students who wished to go above and beyond the basic curriculum a chance to take advanced, college-level classes. In 2009, AP was faced with the highest number of failing grades in years. Now, they have announced they will implement changes to their courses with a total revamp of the AP United States History (AHAP) and AP Biology curriculum’s.

Last month’s preview of what the College Board refers to as the “New A.P” showed that they plan to provide a more in-depth curriculum framework of how they suggest the class be taught. While there is no clear plan for AHAP, the formal AP Biology Curriculum framework provides the teacher with guidelines and learning objectives as to how they should teach each unit. Some units will even include pacing suggestions for how long the class should spend on a certain topic.

Advanced Placement teachers, like AHAP teacher Vicki Arndt-Helgesen, believes her students often find the amount of material they are going to cover each year is daunting and, in her opinion, it is. Current AHAP student Tyler Germann admits that when he first saw the work load he would encounter he felt the same way.

“When we got our third or fourth book, I was like ‘Oh my gosh,’ he said. “But after a few weeks I got used to the homework and after the first ‘dessert’ (test) I learned these assignments really help you.”

Currently, according to Arndt-Helgesen, her AHAP class has to cover from the pre-Colombian era all the way to 2000 in a single year. This feat, she explains, is something not even a college class would attempt. According to the College Board “new” AHAP curriculum will include more pre-1607 history. Arndt-Helgesen has her concerns as to whether the added history will help or hurt her class.

“[You ask yourself] ] ‘What is it that this does?’,” Arndt-Helgesen said. “‘Does this end up helping us or does it end up creating greater stressors for our kids?”’

Course curriculum won’t be the only thing changing in the upcoming years with the “New AP.” According to the College Board, students can expect major changes when taking the end-of-year exams. With the new, clear guidelines the College Board is attempting to provide students with a better understanding of what will be on the exam. This is something AP Biology teacher Kimberly VanNice hopes will bring up the scores on the AP Biology exam. Last year, she estimates that only 12 students of her 28 students took the exam. According to her, of those 12 students most of them scored very low. This is not an uncommon trend. Last year the AP Biology exam received the most failing scores nationwide.

One of the major changes VanNice is looking forward to is the pacing suggestions with the course guidelines. She hopes it will provide a clear understanding of how much time should be spent on certain topics.

“That will help a lot,” VanNice said. “[It will say] you should spend a quarter on this and a quarter on this. It will help you, if you’re not there by the end of the quarter, to know you are behind.”

VanNice believes that the changes will help her teach the concepts much better than she is able to now. Right now, she says, she is forced to take out certain units simply because of time. With so much to cover, she feels she isn’t able to include more fun, hands on projects.  Arndt-Helgesen faces the same problem in AHAP. In her opinion, the large curriculum takes away time to do “value-added” activities, like reading extra articles. VanNice hopes the new outlined objectives will give her a more specific guideline to follow.

“[With the current curriculum] I feel like I have to teach everything in Biology which is not possible but there are no real guidelines that say this is important and this isn’t,” VanNice said.

Arndt-Helgesen agrees that it is impossible to teach everything in her class and feels she has to let herself off the hook for it. In her opinion, if you teach a good history class students will walk away with a good understanding of it, even if you miss something here and there.

Other changes to the AP exam include scoring and questions format. The College Board plans to add more essay questions to the AP Biology exam in place of multiple choice questions. Also, with these changes students will no longer need to worry about losing a quarter point for each incorrect answer on the exam.

The College Board released a formal outline of the AP Biology class will look like starting in the 2012-2013 school year but the fate of AHAP is still unknown. However, Arndt-Helgesen feels confident she will be able to accommodate any changes that are made, in fact, she has already started to think about how she will change the way she teaches.

“I’m really awed by how much [the students] grow,” she said. “The growth is pretty cool. It’s worth all of the stress.”