What does it mean to be "college ready"?

Speaker 1 So if we assume AP is better than other things, then it's a more rigorous course. It helps in admissions. Right? But the money part of it, the credit only comes from taking the test. So College Board is kind of like, you know, a person with a hammer who who like, everything is a nail. Like, the test is the solution for all the things. And it's really to me, it's it's testing because we don't believe or trust teachers. Teachers.

Speaker 2 Hello and welcome to an advanced placement episode of our podcast at the Human Restoration Project. My name is Nick Covington and I'm a social studies teacher from Ankeny, Iowa. Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that this special episode is only made possible by supporters who have donated to our May funding drive. Shout out to all who have donated any amount, but huge thanks to our top three donors at the time of this recording, Ryan Boren, Shelley Buchanan, and Donald DeLand. Regardless of when you're hearing this, if you find this podcast and our resources insightful and valuable to your personal and professional learning, consider supporting us at any time at humanrestorationproject.org/donate. Today, I am joined by Akhil Bello. According to akhilandfriends.org, Akhil began his career in a truly hands on fashion. He was a test tutor responsible for shepherding thousands of students through exams and training hundreds of instructors, always in the pursuit of empowering students to achieve educational success. Now Akhil is a highly sought after speaker and frequently presents at high schools, colleges, and conferences about education, access, and preparation. A nationally recognized authority on standardized testing, Akhil has advised universities and currently serves as senior director of advocacy and advancement at Fair Test, the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, where he is responsible for building resources and creating tools in support of the organization's mission of advancing quality education and equal opportunity. He last joined our podcast in July 2021 with the release of our 51 page learning loss handbook, which you can find on our website. Akhil helped us contextualize the term, understand the use of standardized test scores, and particularly the marketing behind test companies' push to accelerate learning through diagnostic tests and prep materials in response to pandemic education. Now, over the next two weeks, nearly 3,000,000 high school students are expected to take nearly 5,000,000 advanced placement exams, including my own students, where the stakes are no less than the potential for college credit amounting to tens of thousands of dollars for individual test takers. Also at stake are hundreds of millions of dollars for the billion dollar nonprofit College Board, whose proprietary advanced placement program is its largest single source of revenue. With the College Board also shepherding the SAT through an era of increasingly test blind admissions, what could possibly go wrong? In this episode, Akhil and I discuss the history and context of the College Board, and how the AP program in particular fits into College Board's vision for college ready admissions, how that very vision is undermined by the emphasis on a three and a half hour exam in May, and what we could be doing instead to crash the gates and actually improve accessibility and equity in the admissions process in the absence of the advanced placement signifier. As a heads up, there's just a few seconds of crosstalk at the beginning of this episode owing to internet lag issues. So forgive me for that. You can find Akil on Twitter at Akilbello, a k I l b e l l o, and at akilbello.com. Enjoy.

Speaker 1 I'm Akhil Bello. I am my day job is senior director of advocacy advocacy and advancement at FairTest, which is the National Center for Fair and Open Testing. It's an advocacy organization that advocates for more responsible, transparent, and limited use of standardized tests. I am also a thirty year test prep veteran. So I've been teaching people to fill in bubbles since 1990, and I've taught pretty much every test that doesn't require real knowledge. So I've never taught AP explicitly

Speaker 2 because you actually have those stuff. It's such an interesting tension or even just such an interesting perspective of yours being critical of that testing space and while also being part of the test prep side of it. Just as, like, a side note, how do you mesh those things? I mean, yours is one of the better critical voices of that, and yet it's, like, it's such a necessary or required part for students to get in through those gates. How do you how do you Oh, I mean do that for yourself?

Speaker 1 I think I I started in test prep. Right? So that was sort of my first job while I was in college. Not my first job, but it was it was one of my earlier jobs in college. So I've been doing test prep forever. And I think it's in doing test prep that I gained an understanding and become more critical of the test themselves. So as I learned more about their flaws, their limitations, the research behind them, the pseudo objectiveness, you know, all of those things, that's actually what led me to being critical of the test. And the way I look at it right now is the test as they are currently used and exist and when I say test, I generally mean large scale admissions test. I put APs in a slightly different bucket, and I put accountability test in a slightly different bucket. I think they have overlapping issues, but they're not quite the same. But generally speaking, standardized, you know, standardized admissions test, you know, what I ended up coming to is that the way that they're used especially is hugely problematic. And I can tell you that because I've spent so long, people pay me money, and in six weeks, they move a standard deviation. So I will happily drive myself out of that business because it's a bad business to be in.

Speaker 2 Well said. I mean, my goodness. You have to you have to know the game to play it. You know? You gotta know your enemy, I suppose, in order to to fight it. The AP inhabiting a little bit of a different space than the admissions exams, the last time that we had you on our program was to discuss that concept of learning Lawson and how it was being leveraged then by the testing industry to sell accelerated learning programs, additional diagnostic tests for students in schools. And I think, especially at the height of the pandemic, we saw more universities adopting those varying degrees of test optional, test blind, admissions. And, of course, that story wouldn't be complete without bringing in the college board, which is kind of at the center the nexus point, I suppose, of both of both halves of the testing and the advanced placement program that they are also the owners of. And I I just read a stat today that said that AP curriculum, which is, you know, ubiquitous throughout American high schools, makes up nearly half of the college board's billion dollar revenues. I think it pulled in about $466,000,000 in 2016.

Speaker 1 So I believe it's their single biggest moneymaker.

Speaker 2 Is it really? Okay. So that 466,000,000 the the the difference then is combine is SAT and other other things in there too? SAT,

Speaker 1 SpringBoard, student search

Speaker 2 Got you. Trainings,

Speaker 1 all the other little things they're dabbling their hands in. Okay.

Speaker 2 I was wondering if then maybe you could just provide some history. I guess it goes back a long ways, but some context for the college board and, I guess, AP courses, in particular, for for the context for this. And how how do AP courses fit into the college board's purpose or their vision for college admissions, and maybe kind of explore a little bit of the tension between their established purpose and where they are in practice? I don't know. Unpack that for us.

Speaker 1 So once you go down the college board rabbit hole, it is a very strange thing. Right? Because if you go back far enough, you end up at at the origins of testing and the eugenicist who started it. Right? And then and I think that that's an important starting point because they haven't fully separated themselves from those origins. And so there's an elitism, a a somewhat problematic origin story to standardized testing as a field, right, to College Board as a company and to the AP program as a product. Right? So the AP program itself, I wanna say it started in the fifties. It started because kids at the the administrators at Andover, Exeter, and some other hoity toity place. Right? They basically got together and said, when our when our when our poor little snowflakes are ending up in college, they're clearly bored because they've had such a great high school experience. They're way too smart for your piddly colleges. So what we want to do is give them accelerated work in high school, and they get credit for that in college because they're brighter than the other generic people you're admitting. Right? And Gotcha. I'm exaggerating it a little bit, but it's not far off. So it was their phrases, like, the initial meeting like, College Board has on their website a summary of the early meetings of the group that put together the AP program. And one of the phrases they use that that floored me was it was for ables the ablest students. Right? Those who would Direct quote. Right. Like, those who would benefit from advanced instruction, like, things like that. Right? That's just very clear and demonstrative of the type of elitism and snobbery that centered around the program's creation. It was essentially designed to give students in these highly exclusive places a leg up when they went to college because they thought they were too good for these basic classes in college. So it was designed as a program for exclusion. Right? It started at the elite boarding schools. Elite, not the right word, but we'll call it that for now. Started at the country club schools. Right? And, eventually now to their credit, we can interpret this whatever we want to. At some point, seventies, eighties, nineties, college boards decides to expand the program and to actively aggressively start expanding the program. And they have been continuing that of late. There is sort of an aggressive expansion of the program, which also if you kinda look at it from a historical lens, not very many years ago, a bunch of private schools said maybe we're gonna reject AP. Why would that be? Ah, correlated with the expansion of the program because now the unwatched masses have access to APs. Okay. So so there's a interesting sort of history of it's not simply let's develop a more rigorous curriculum to help push forward education. It's less developed programs that allow this small cohort of students to show that they're better than the others and to reap the benefits of showing this. And it really wasn't gonna take off until Harvard came in and said that they were going to accept it as well. They came in late into the conversation but decided they were gonna accept it as well. But if you fast forward to today, what you have is College Board aggressively expanding the program, which you can cynically look at that and say College Board is ex you know, aggressively marketing their most valuable product. Or you can listen to College Board's marketing, which I can't. I don't know the conversation behind it, so I'm not gonna say what they've decided to do or what motivated it. But you could also say that they're they're looking to expand equity and give more people access to this blah blah blah blah blah. There's there's sure. That is the language that's also used there.

Speaker 2 So it is so interesting, isn't it, the way that as the program expands, then as it kind of infringes on that elitism, they have to find a new benchmark for that. And I think when you were talking about that, the first thing that I thought of is my own experience as a teacher of the program when several years ago I don't remember if it was before or after the redesign of, like, the AP humanities. Mhmm. But I remember some of the state schools and some of the schools that my students were applying to that had previously accepted threes as counting for their college credit bumped it up in in many cases for fours or even fives. Yep. So even if they even without the kind of extremity of just denying AP credits, kind of raising that bar to only capture, say, the top 10% of test takers Yep. Is sort of is sort of, you know, an elitism unto itself, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, I think that's

Speaker 1 that to me is also an interesting positioning for the AP program. Right? Because to me, the value comes from the classroom experience, not from the test. Right? But as far as Right. And the the the classroom experience, if we assume that the course is more rigorous than regular courses, which I'm gonna I'm gonna not express an opinion on that, I don't think I've ever taken an AP course, and I've certainly never taught one. So if we assume AP is better than other things, then it's a more rigorous course. It helps in admissions. Right? But the money part of it, the credit only comes from taking the test. So College Board is kind of like, you know, a person with a hammer who who like, everything is a nail. Like, the test is the solution for all the things. And it's really to me, it's it's testing because we don't believe or trust teachers. Right? Like, that that's why we have to have a test that's not written by the teachers because we don't trust the teachers. Right? Which, again, I can understand some of the debates there. But I think it's a really interesting and bizarre approach to say rather than create a system that fixes problems in education, let's just create these tests that stand apart from it, that have all these problematic correlations, that have all these issues on top of it. Yeah. Go ahead. They're gonna say because, you know, in the end, it boils down to we don't trust teachers. We don't trust the schools. We we want to be able to say private school x is better than public school y, and, therefore, let's use APs to you know, let's use testing as this, quote, unquote, objective thing.

Speaker 2 I was gonna say so much of that dovetails too with the arguments against the colleges that have gone either test blind or test optional in the process because then they say you have to rely on the students' GPAs and, well, look at the problems regarding grade inflation and the consistency across those things too. Not to get too far ahead of myself, but I I when I was thinking about the kind of the the alternatives and and and what we could do instead of this, one place that my mind went to was, of course, that AP curriculum, which is own, developed, the proprietary intellectual property of college board. And, of course, in order to teach those classes, you have to submit a syllabus that gets approved directly by, you know, some poor person at the college board who has to click through and read and make sure it checks all the all the boxes and things. And I sat down with my AP Euro curriculum, and I actually saw that this is the post redesign here that it purports to teach, what, six historical thinking skills, three reasoning processes across nine units of study spanning 570 and seven themes, and then is assessed over three and a half hours in May using three different writing rubrics and a 55 question multiple choice test. So when when I kind of think of, well, what could I do instead of, we call that a more rigorous curriculum. But when I look at the students that I have in front of me who are particularly motivated or enthusiastic about learning history or being in in my class in particular, I don't know, with the reputation that I have in my district. But but I I I sometimes I get a little bit sad, I suppose, about what I could be doing with those kids instead of just trying to hammer through to get to a test in the name of, quote, unquote, rigor. Like, how I I could teach an issues in modern nationalism course for dual credit with a community college rather than try to box it up and replace it with a generic history survey. So so I I think rigor is kind of that word at the centerpiece of all of this. And and I think one kind of concern is that as testing falls out of favor post pandemic and students and schools become more reliant on AP, kind of given the tension there between rigor, equity, as you just talked about, and that issue with elitism and differentiating deserving students from less deserving students, what what kind of claims does the college board have to to meet those notions that they are providing somewhat of a more rigorous or equitable curriculum for underserved communities? Give them a leg up, in that admissions process or, you know, replace a curriculum in their homeschool that lacks that certain kind of rigor. I I don't know what what's out there as far as combating that narrative.

Speaker 1 That's a good question. I think that the ultimate challenge is I think the problem is the marketing of it. I think that's really the core of the issue is that when they begin to try to pass off their curriculum as the gold standard, nothing else comes close per like, all the marketing of it and the selling of it is actually the problem. Right? If you just told me it's a challenging program, it's a challenging course, great. Right? It it you know? But when they start saying taking a test prepares you for college. Right? When they're like right? Then it becomes like, it's just product placement. It's just it's just marketing of a of a product. Right? So I don't know that I have particular issue with the exist I don't have issues with the existence of challenging curriculum. I question whether college board is the right agency to have the the the position of power that it does and the gatekeeping authority that it does within you know, when we're talking about college access. Because even as you were just thinking or when you were just speaking, you know, talking about elitism and colleges using it more, that's actually a small subset of colleges. You know, I don't know how many. You know, I wonder what percentage give credit for a's and or for threes and fours versus fives. And I believe that Yale only gives credits for fives. So there's this weird tension between, no. You have to accumulate all of these things, but the accumulation of them costs money. Right? 70% of high schools have some kind of AP program, but the volume and scope of AP that's offered is far greater in private schools and in wealthier districts. You can't buy your way to equity. Anything that costs money isn't going to solve the problem of inequity. Right? And so college boards, expensive AP curriculum, no matter how good it is academically, isn't really going to solve the problem of in the fancy school district up the street where kids have a disposable $5,000 to buy AP prep. Of course, they're gonna pass the test at a higher rate because they're not just going to class. They're getting an AP tutor. Right? And so there's all of those issues. I was just speaking to a friend yesterday who said in her school district, the teacher of I wanna say it's AP physics has his own thing he does, and he gets kids to fives all the time. And then the end of that conversation was, and they've been taking practice tests since December. And I'm like, what? Wait. What? Since December to May, they've been taking, like, weekly or something like that AP practice. That's not a rigorous curriculum. That's test prep. And so, of course, they pass at a higher rate because they're doing a ton of test prep, and that that, like, should be that to me kills the value of the program because now it's not about enriched academic experience. It's not about a more thoughtful academic process and learning to think and all that. It's about test prep. You know? So there's challenges that it that it brings up when you're thinking about what is the purpose of it and what does it do and who does it serve.

Speaker 2 I wanna add to this as well, the the kind of monopoly that the college board has on that curriculum in terms of the people who are allowed to give an input into what that curriculum looks like and kind of thinking then again what college credit is awarded for which AP courses. Again, to give a credit, college credit for a course like AP European history, which might be taught in a place that is, you know, the the vast majority of students are, like, nonwhite or of non European backgrounds and not have the option to take a similarly designed or similarly rigorous program that is actually designed by, like, local stakeholders with input from parents in the community and and with students too. I think about the the things that we choose to give those college credit to and who yeah. And and who designs those programs compared to the other wonderful set of things that we could actually have students accomplishing, say, out in the community, or, you know, having kids run and design, say, their own, film projects or, you know, all the other kinds of things that you can't submit for them, those the similar kinds of college credits. But, again, if you do AP test prep for six months in the lead up to an advance the the exam and get a a four or a five. You're we're gonna call that good, and that'll take care of some of your electives there.

Speaker 1 So I think One of the fun things in terms of you're saying about which classes they selected in that initial AP meeting report that and it's funny because College Board published this in one of their magazines. Like, here's the history of the AP program, the first meeting that happened. I think if I remember properly, it was, like, the languages that they chose in the beginning. It was, like, no Spanish but Latin because, like basically, I said Spanish was for the plebes. Right? Like, alright. Of course. Of course, you did. Right? Like yeah. It's like Latin and Greek, not Spanish because you know?

Speaker 2 Well and and then even the AP European history is a holdover from that same line of thinking about Western civilization or classical education kind of being, being upheld compared to all other kinds. And even even a class like AP comparative government doesn't have anywhere near the numbers of test takers than an APUSH or an AP Euro does, at least in the humanities. Because I'm I'm just speaking within my own wheelhouse here. I don't know about Litz and Langs and physics and computer science, but it's so interesting. Yeah. But I so I wonder then, like, how do we break that stranglehold? How do we overcome the gatekeepers? How do we I wanna say the language that I've heard in the past is how do we crash the gates? How do we and, really, the shift is about power. It's about putting power back in the hands of the educators in the classroom who know their students the best into communities who know their schools the best and what's gonna work for their kids, not what's gonna work for the college board board of directors making six or seven figures, however much they do, at at a school far away. How do we how do we crash the gates and take the power back?

Speaker 1 Yeah. That's hard. Right? Because I think that there's systemic issues. We've been sold for several hundred years a particular definition of academic accomplishment, of what's quality and what isn't. And there's those who want to uphold that system where Latin is valued, but Spanish isn't. Now on the other side of that, that system also led us to huge problems with segregation and and and particular schools not getting stuff. You know? And testing did expose some of that. And testing does expose, hey. These places are struggling, right, or at least struggling by this definition. So how do you balance those two contrary things where there is value to exposing that if we're holding out algebra two as the metric of success, this school hasn't passed this algebra two test in the same rate as this other school. Right? That's fair. Because if we let them just administer the test locally and they didn't teach algebra two in that school, they just taught algebra one, you'll never find that out. For me, I think the biggest or one of the problems is the way we talk about those things. Right? I think one of the problems, especially in testing, is it's been equated to ability, aptitude, all of these things that have new genesis, origins, and language to it. I would have far fewer problems. It's like, you you get a one of the AP. It means, hey. You know, probably a bunch of stuff you weren't taught. There would be very little issue with that, but that's not what you get. You get, oh, you got a one on the AP. You're not college ready. Mhmm. Right? You cannot go to an elite school. You're relegated to community and then there's all of this language of that undermines confidence, ability, you know, that that doubles down on stereotypes and all that sort of stuff. So I think part of the the easy thing for all adults to do right now is to check themselves with the language they use around what these things what assessments reveal. Generally speaking, assessments reveal what was taught or how you performed. Mhmm. Right? I've been doing SAT prep for thirty years. I guarantee you that if I take the SAT a timed full length SAT right now, nine out of 10 times, I'm not getting perfect score. I'm just not that careful. I'm not that carefully person. If you follow me on Twitter, you know the volume of typos in my tweets. Two reasons. One, I don't care. Fair enough. That's not something I care about. Right? And two, that's just not how my mind works. Right. Like so does that mean I'm not colleague like, what does it mean? It means that I'm not a careful person. Fine. If you're gonna say, let's take the test on carefulness, guess what? Akhil's gonna lose every single time. You get a one. Sorry. It's like, hey. It's like like, yeah. You know? You get a one on AP readiness. I'm sorry. Right. On AP carefulness, Akhil got it. I probably get a two because I'm not, like, horrible,

Speaker 2 but I'm just bad enough. It's like, oh, you just didn't see that. Yeah. Okay. Fine. Well, you know, with those scores, you're never gonna be an AP scholar. You're never gonna be

Speaker 1 Just have my certificate.

Speaker 2 Right. I won't get my what's the badge they give for having a five on seven APs or whatever the heck it is? Yes. I never think about that, but that just popped into my brain. They do have that hierarchy of, like, scholarship where as you progress through the APs, you kind of, like, unlock the the higher the higher titles. You know? I I forget what they are, but one of them's gotta be AP scholar or whatever. And then that, you know, distinguishes you yet again from the, you know, the the plebes who got ones and twos on a couple of exams and then decided it wasn't for them. Exactly. I think there is just, yeah, there's so much danger in especially telling students like I, I teach sophomores who are taking an AP European history class, which is kind of, like, held up as being one of the most difficult of the AP humanities courses. And it for a lot of kids, it breaks my heart because, you know, the way I teach the course, just given that it that it's me and and my attitudes about it, is really more aligned to get them to experience and love history and and really get in there and think like a historian. And then, of course, to to respect them and their investment and their parents' finances, there's an amount of it that has to be geared towards understanding and being prepared for a test. Right. And that means that you're gonna have an hour to write a document based question in which you will get seven documents, and there's a seven point rubric that you have to have a context and a thesis, and you have to do these things with the documents. And, of course, it's all ludicrous because take any historian and tell them to write an essay about this prompt and then use the AP rubric, it's probably a farce. Or take any good piece of historical writing and run it through the rubric, and it probably will score very low. So I've made my own controversial statements on the fact that I think teaching kids, training kids to think in a way that scores well on those AP tests probably is training them to be poor thinkers and writers. And Yes. You know, you don't you don't have to agree or disagree with that statement. But No. I I think it's it's it's really interesting to me because it's Yeah.

Speaker 1 I wonder about that all the time. Right? Is it, like, standardized tests are inherently problematic? If we're talking about critical thinking, we're talking about developing learners and things like that. Don't we want the ones that think outside the box? But it's exactly the ones that think outside the box that are challenged on this test. I have students all the time who tell me, well, oh, I was looking at the question this way. I thought it meant that. And it's a completely valid point of view, but the test doesn't reward that point of view. And they have evidence for why they're enforcing their particular narrow definition of things. Right? And I've said this a lot to students for SATs that, like, this isn't a deep test. Right? It it actually hurts the deep thinkers. And think about, like, if you're teaching literature, you've been teaching these kids for years to read bright white light in the poem and interpret it as heaven and death and this and that. And you come to the SAT, they say bright white light. They want you to go, no. No. There was a light. It was bright, and it lacked any hues of other colors. It's like, like, like so I spent all these years learning to interpret stuff, and now you're telling me I have to take the dumbest, narrowest interpretation of the phrase in front of me, and that's all that's credited. It's weird.

Speaker 2 Well and then further, what we were just saying too means the fact that you might have interpreted that differently then gets you this label of college ready or not at, you know, the the ripe old age of 15 or 16 is when they start taking these classes if you're a sophomore. And the thing that I think I I I dislike about teaching APU, I mean, I love having kids that are motivated and want to choose to be in that class, and I've I've loved seeing my numbers grow over the years. And and I think parents are often really appreciative too of the not necessarily the trash that I talk about the college board and the AP test, But but the fact that I know that there's more to it than that Yes. And kind of try to try to walk that line pretty carefully. But the thing I hate to see is then students don't go on to take any more humanities classes after mine or at least elect to take the more, you know, either the, either more AP classes or don't go into any of the more electives after that because they decide based on their experience in AP European history that maybe the humanities aren't for me. Maybe I'm more of a STEM person or maybe I'm this, that, or the other. So they already start to sort themselves by the way that they test or the class made them feel. I only got a two, so therefore, I know that I'm not cut out for this. For 15 and 16 year olds, we're gonna put them in that narrow of a box because they didn't perform well on a test on some day in May when they were 16 years old. Right. I'm out. I'm out. Which is really interesting. Right? Because College Board has this weird dichotomy

Speaker 1 of what are they going to promote and how. Right? The newest advertisement, which I've been laughing at, is they've been running this campaign that, like, no matter what you score in a AP test, it's still I wanna say they say valuable or it still indicates college. Like, all of a sudden, they produce research that said, like, a one or a two. Like, it's some measure of college readiness or something, which is fascinating. Right? Because it's like, wait a minute. The lowest possible score in your test because a one could mean I walked in the room, wrote my name, and scribbled some lines, and then left. And so now because they and to me, it feels like and I don't know this for real, so I'm I'm making assertions here. But it feels like because they wanna expand the use of the product, they've decided that the pitch is just do it, take the test, pay the money. It's all good.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 1 And then add on top of it. Jeez. Like and every this is why I end up with, like, oh, college word is evil. Right? Because it's like, like, every time you turn around, their decision making seems to be about money, not education. When they claim that the twenty minute micro APs were equivalent to the three hour APs during the pandemic. IB and then let's juxtapose it. Right? Because I don't hate all tests. Right? I don't I don't think they're all bad. But the decision from the IB organization, we just can't get them. There's no way to give a comparable test under the conditions that currently exist. IB is like, yep. We're just letting it go. We can't do it. It doesn't make any sense. College board's like, nope. I can slap something together with some chicken wire and spit, and I can create a forty five minute test that is equivalent to the three hour test even though you're taking it at home. I know. No. That's standardized. Well, MacGyver, your college entrance exam. You know? Yeah. And then they they go to colleges and make sure the colleges will take your credit for it. Yep. Which which and all of those sort of behaviors just make me question the motivating factors behind this decision making. Mhmm. Right? At every point to me where it seems there could be a decision that's financially motivated or a better decision or a different decision that would foster better educational outcomes. It always seems to be the one that leads to the greatest financial value for college work. Like, what value is there for students in making the deadline to sign up for the AP in October, November, wherever the hell they put it? They're not helping students. What did it add to the discourse that College Board's president came out after the Parkland shooting and said, oh, yeah. Remember the speech the girl made? She mentioned AP. That's really what we need. Right? Like, things like every but yet College Board won't come out ever when someone misuses scores. North Carolina put out a study that said more than six AP classes don't mean anything to us. It's not particularly indicative of college readiness, this and that. College person never said peep as far as I know about whether that limit should be held to across other colleges. Right? They're not encouraging students to take fewer APs because beyond a certain number isn't particularly good and blah blah. Like, they don't do that. Right. But at every opportunity to push it and say, look. AP is lovely. They take that they take that tack.

Speaker 2 It's almost like a marketing and branding company that is the front for a testing company. Or or the testing is the front for the marketing, maybe, is is the more apt way to put it. Yep. It it's hard not to kinda get stuck in, in sort of a doom loop, I think, about it. Be with my context being an AP European history teacher and and knowing that every day I have to kind of humanize that curriculum and and humanize that for the students that are just in front of me. Like, there's some things that are not changeable, but, at at a systemic level, but I can at least make that process a partnership with the kids in my room. Right? But then, yeah, at at the systems level, on also understanding that that's what I I'm, like, feeding them into that at the same time. So, yes, I we will kind of diverge, and and we'll focus on the the historical thinking and and getting your energy enthusiasm and doing projects that detract from the curriculum and and a timeline that that's set by the college board and whatnot. But then at the end of the day, coming back and making sure that they understand the the seven point rubric so they can get the good score. Right. And It'd be really interesting for me to see, like, what happens to AP programs if the test just goes away? If it was just the curriculum.

Speaker 1 Right? If you got credit for taking the class in college rather than credit for a particular score on the test. Right? And I don't know. I have never taken one of the tests, and I don't have as much issues with the tests as I do the SAT. Because at least the AP is only scored on a five point scale, which is also interesting. So the SAT has a 120 different points of distinction because it gives a 120 different scores, and it covers multiple years of curriculum. Right? Like, you're talking about darn like, in math, let's say, it's eight through 11. AP covers one year, so narrower curriculum, but they only have four points of distinction. Something doesn't like so, like, you're telling me that one product is highly more like, the SAT is highly more fine tuned. We can tell you with a 120 points of distinction the difference between students. I'd have many fewer calls with the SAT if it were scored in the AP scale. I actually kinda like the AP scale because it sort of says it's like, we're not going to pretend we can make huge distinction between kids. Sure. Right? I kinda like that. Right? But, you know, it's just interesting to watch how all these products align and how so much of it boils back down to marketing.

Speaker 2 Is there, a silver lining? I I don't wanna be I don't I just don't wanna be a bummer. Like, how how do we change the the damn thing? You know? Like, if you had to, like, wave a magic wand, you know, and say, hey. College this this is probably a question you get all the time, Akhil. But if you had to, like, redesign it in a way that you would think would reach true accessibility and equity and also, you know, meet the demands that we have for students to just be prepared to exist in the world as competent adults, you know, what kind of changes would you make on that admissions process either at the gates or kind of before them? Or I don't know. What what what is that picture like in your mind?

Speaker 1 It would probably do, like, a ten year pause on all the testing. Just the testing part of it. Right? Like, no SAT, no AP tests. Right? Like, I don't know. Five year pause just to take that test focus out of your curriculum. Imagine if you didn't have to worry about, can I get them to a three, four, five on the AP, and you just got to teach the curriculum? Like like, that just changes the game. Right? It's like, it just changes the game. Right? So I would really be interested in seeing that. I think it would also be things like maybe put some limitations on how many APs can be taken, you know, just so that the hunger games ness of it all goes away. Right? That you're not trying to kill the student next to you so that you have one more AP than him so that you could potentially secure the spot of this place instead of that place. Right. Right? I think that we would do things that encourage education and the quest for learning over the quest for test scores and admission. And I think that for families, what they have to do is sort of refocus that to the extent that you can make the decisions that lead towards greater educational value rather than the gamesmanship of admissions. And I'll admit, you know, again, I I live in the contradiction, so I'll fully admit that, you know, I just made the like, know, me and my son who was in tenth grade, we just had the same conversation. We're choosing classes for next year. It was are we gonna do this AP class, or are we gonna do this other class? I wanted him to do I feel like it was, like, data analytics or something like that. Something that was because he's leaning towards business and marketing and journalism and those types of things, not STEM. So why AP calculus? Right? But it's like, but AP looks better for college. Like, I never want that conversation for a fam like, let's just do this because it aligns with what you wanna do with your life, right, and your interests. But it's it's hard because we still live in that system. So I think my magic wand would break down all of the educational the the the links between the educational decisions that you have to make and the gamesmanship of, will I improve my odds of getting into college x and potentially getting money for college x. That would be my magic wand. The upshot of it is if you ignore the noise around it, it is I mean, going to school and learning stuff is pretty cool no matter, like, like, I, as a policy, would prefer a private company not control the curriculum, I kinda think that, you know, there's there's like, if we step back and say rigorous curriculum, learning stuff, I kinda like that. So it's not all bad. Right? Like like like, from that just from that perspective, take classes where you learn stuff and it challenges you. Oh, yeah. That's cool. Right? I think we should do that when we can. Right? As long as, you know, as long as we can control how much stakes are put on it, how crazy the outcomes are, how obsessive we are about perfection because of the opportunities that perfection open the door to.

Speaker 2 Well said. Well, thanks, Akhil, for sitting down and chatting with me here. My pleasure.