[I’m not the only one gearing up for a new school year at the moment—so are my 11th and 10th grade (!!!) sons. That includes my 11th grader taking AP US History, a complicated and controversial and very AmericanStudies high school class. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of APUSH contexts—share your responses and your thoughts on all things high school US history for a crowd-sourced weekend post sure to make the honor roll!]
On two
elephants in the room when it comes to AP courses, and a way to respond to
them.
By the end
of high school, I had a running joke about the College Board/ETS employee who
was enjoying a very nice (and quite lengthy) tropical vacation thanks to just
the money I and my family had spent on standardized tests. There were plenty of
tests that contributed to that armored car’s worth, but at the top of the list
have to be the six AP Exams priced at over $70 a pop. I haven’t looked at the
current costs (by this time next year I’ll know well, as my son is taking two
AP classes next year), but I have to believe they have likely gone up
significantly over these last 30 years. To put it bluntly (and a bit
reductively to be sure), I think there are aspects of the AP
system that are a scam (and I’m not alone in thinking it, as that
hyperlinked article illustrates), or at the
very least a racket (ditto). And even if there were ways to justify them, these
substantive costs unquestionably make AP classes like APUSH less available to
all American students than would be ideal.
The costs
aren’t the only factor in that exclusionary issue: so is the standardized test
that concludes APUSH (like all AP courses). I’m not talking here about the “teaching
to the test” problem, although that is certainly a problem worth considering
in any class which builds to a standardized test. No, I’m thinking here about
the demonstrable racial and cultural biases
in standardized tests as an educational and assessment tool, the ways in
which they have long since been proven
(and proven,
and proven)
to discriminate against students of color and other learning communities. That’s
a problem with any and all standardized tests, and one of many reasons for
example why so many colleges have begun
moving away from them in admissions processes and decisions. But it’s
doubly a problem when such a test is the overarching focus of an entire high
school class—and triply a problem when we’re talking about a class like APUSH,
that overtly focuses on historical and social and cultural subjects.
That last
point might compound the problem, but I would also argue that it offers a way for
APUSH teachers, students, and classes to respond to both of these interconnected
problems. I know that they can’t ignore the AP Exam, and I’m not suggesting
that they should—instead, I’m suggesting that they take a meta-testual (that’s
my own term, and I kinda dig it) approach, thinking as part of the course about
how the test itself offers a case study in these issues and themes of economics
and class, of race and culture, of exclusion and inclusion. That doesn’t have
to be the whole conversation, of course, but it can and should be part of the
discussion, as a way to engage honestly and thoughtfully with the class’s own
flaws and limits, and at the same time as a way to transcend them through (or
at the very least utilize them to engage) the vital subjects that they, like
every part of APUSH, exemplify.
Next APUSH
context tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Contexts or stories for APUSH or high school history you’d share?
Great teachers you’d highlight?
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