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People familiar with my long association with the Advanced Placement Program were probably surprised to see the title of my talk when they read the conference program. Let me assure everyone from the outset that I am still a big fan of AP Calculus. Were it not for AP Calculus, I might not be a high school teacher today, let alone a speaker at a national NCTM conference. That is why I will begin this talk by citing a few of the many wonderful, positive contributions the AP Program has made to education over the years, not just at the secondary level but at the collegiate level as well. Then, after I have hopefully convinced you that I am still a friend of AP, I want to bring a few concerns out into the open that I have been brooding about for several years, reluctant to share them publicly because of my loyalty to my many AP friends. The only reason I am setting them before you today is that I have come to believe my concerns are now widely shared, and it is time for someone to point out the proverbial elephant in the living room. Moreover, I believe AP will get far gentler treatment from me, an avowed friend, than from the authors of some recent media articles questioning the future of the program. But first the good news: let us review some of the proud history of Advanced Placement.

In 1954 a group of mostly collegiate educators got together at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, to design a national program through which high school students could get credit for taking college-level courses in high schools. This program, called College Admissions with Advanced Standing, operated under the funding of the Ford Foundation for two years before it was taken over by the College Board and renamed the Advanced Placement Program. There were already students taking college-level courses at certain elite prep schools before 1954, and many of them were being granted credit and placement by colleges who recognized the strength of those schools. The idea behind AP in those early days was to give a bright student from any secondary school the same recognition for college-level work, while also enticing more colleges and universities to establish policies for granting credit and placement.

From the very beginning, mathematics adhered to a highly rigorous standard for what should be considered a college-level course. While other disciplines wrote course descriptions that amounted to richer versions of existing senior year courses, the mathematics committee, at the urging of its chairman, Swarthmore professor Heinrich Brinkmann, would settle for nothing less than a full-year course in single-variable calculus. This made AP Mathematics a true "fifth-year" course, a distinction that continues to set it apart from other AP courses today. It has always been assumed that students interested in AP Calculus would somehow accelerate their mathematical preparation to finish a rigorous precalculus course by senior year.

The original AP mathematics course was called "AP Mathematics," and it was essentially the course we call Calculus BC today. The AB course was added in 1969 when the committee realized that a semester of calculus at some colleges would equal a year of calculus at others. To serve a wider variety of students and colleges, the AP Committee decided to offer two courses with somewhat arcane names (AB and BC), so that BC students could get a full year of credit from any college, while AB students might get a semester of calculus credit at college X or a year of calculus credit at college Y, depending on the scope of the college's actual freshman course. Eventually no college dared to admit being college Y, so AB became the half-year course and BC became the full-year course.

In 1955, 285 students, most of them from just two schools in New England, took the first examinations in AP Mathematics. It took 12 years for the number of exams to pass 10,000, and the volume stood at about 15,000 when I began teaching at Baylor in 1973. My predecessor Bryce Harris, who was an AP consultant at the time, actually wrote a paper speculating that the exam volume might one day reach 50,000, but that it would probably not be possible to organize a reading of free response questions for that many exams. Incredibly, as AP celebrates its 50^th anniversary, the exam volume in AP Calculus has reached 225,228 – that's nearly a quarter of a million – and AP readers continue to read solutions to six free response questions for every student.

The numbers alone tell a great success story, but the impact of AP Calculus on mathematics education goes well beyond numbers. Let us also acknowledge that the AP program has probably been the most effective medium for professional development that American secondary education has ever known. It doesn't matter that teachers come from different schools, different districts, or even different states, if they are coming together to share the same concerns about teaching the same material to students who will eventually be measured by the same assessment. The common course description gives teachers the opportunity to share ideas on everything: classroom management, pedagogy, assessment, and, most helpfully, the actual mathematics they are teaching. Most AP teachers are not only willing but eager to engage in this kind of professional dialogue. The College Board , with its one-day AP workshops and AP summer institutes, provides the main medium for sharing, but AP Calculus has also fostered the formation of local teacher consortiums throughout the country, while professional organizations like NCTM and its state affiliates also address AP topics wherever and whenever they meet.

We all recognize that NCTM deserves much credit and praise for fomenting fifteen years of academic reform through the promulgation of the NCTM Standards, but we should not underestimate the role that the AP program has played along the way. The push toward calculus reform in the colleges and the emergence of graphing calculator technology combined to bring about some profound changes in the AP Calculus program during the 1990's, and it was the aforementioned professional development network of the College Board, with its workshops, institutes, and trained consultants, that enabled those changes to occur. Moreover, they occurred virtually overnight if measured on the scale of evolution in American education. Since most of the AP changes were nicely aligned with the vision of the NCTM Standards, AP teachers became the first wave of reform in most American high schools, and AP teachers became the missionaries who preached the good news to their colleagues at professional meetings and in the school coffee rooms.

Another enormous benefit that American mathematics education has enjoyed from the AP Calculus program has been the professional interaction between college mathematicians and high school teachers that has resulted from the annual AP reading of examinations. Were it not for that interaction, it is doubtful that either group would encounter the other at all, let alone develop an appreciation for each other. Some of the most influential officers in the Mathematical Association of America have been deeply involved with the AP Calculus program over the years, and that involvement has inspired them to work with many other programs that seek to improve secondary mathematics education. Going in the other direction, high school AP teachers have joined their college colleagues as governors of the MAA, executive committee members of the MSEB, authors of textbooks and articles for college journals, and contributors to professional conferences. I realize that correlation does not imply causation, and that good teachers might be inclined both to get involved in AP and to get involved in other things, but consider this simple fact: AP teachers are accustomed to getting together with teachers from colleges and other schools to talk about mutual concerns, while most non-AP high school teachers, sadly, are not.

I could go on and on about the blessings that the AP Calculus program has brought to the world. They have the best, most focused teaching materials, the best course-related web site (AP Central, with more than 370,000 registered users), and the most carefully designed summative assessment in American education. They showed us how to bring technology into the classroom, how to assess mathematical understanding when students are using it, and how to adapt when the technology changes. And let us not forget that, for many thousands of high school students, the AP experience is the high point of their education, the validation of their college aspirations. It is no wonder that parents, teachers, students, administrators, college admissions counselors, congressmen, cabinet secretaries, and presidents all agree that the AP program is today the very definition of excellence in American secondary education. This finally brings me to my point, which is that I respectfully disagree with that hypothesis.

As great as the AP program has been and will continue to be, it is not the very definition of excellence in American secondary education. Moreover, since being cajoled into assuming that role, it has jeopardized the mission by which it was once defined, and the consequences are being felt throughout the high school curriculum, most strongly in mathematics. I hope I have praised AP sufficiently to convince you that what I say from here on in is with a great respect and abiding love for the program; however, it is my great respect and abiding love for the students affected by AP that leads me to raise my concerns in this public forum. So here we go.

Once upon a time there were 11 AP courses, one of which was mathematics. Today there are 34 AP courses, soon to be 37, and three of them are mathematics (Calculus AB, Calculus BC, and Statistics). This gives students a lot more variety from which to choose, and while variety can be a good thing, you know what they say about too much of a good thing. For starters, how many AP courses should a student take? Three out of eleven is a pretty respectable number, but how about three out of 37? If you want to stick with the same respectable percentage, you would need to take 9 or 10. Would any student ever want to do this? You can bet that, given the chance, some will. Given an irresistible incentive, many will. While 48.1% of all AP students still graduate with only one AP exam taken, the top students are being persuaded to take more and more.

I remember vividly the first time the AP program ever made me uncomfortable. It was the early 90's and I was invited to a special luncheon at which a number of special "AP Awards" would be given. The award winners were students who had performed the best on the greatest number of AP exams. I remember the numbers were stunning – all 5's on nine or maybe even more exams – and the students were as spectacular as their success implied. They were introduced to thunderous applause, and their schools were naturally praised for encouraging the level of excellence that their students had attained. While I was impressed by the students, I was surprised that the College Board would hold them up as some sort of educational triumph. Could they not see what dangers lurked at the end of this road? As they lined up on the stage, you could almost see the disappointment on the faces of the students who had taken the second-most and third-most exams. Somewhere in the audience, their competitive parents were thinking the same thing: if only we had taken a few more AP courses, we could have been the best! As much as I loved AP, I was upset by the idea that a student's level of excellence would be measured by the number of AP courses he or she had taken. I was even more upset by the suggestion that what these students had done reflected positively on the academic mission of their high school. I reported my feelings later to Wade Curry, the AP Director at the time, but I am not sure they had much effect. That luncheon turned out to be the beginning of the AP Scholars program, which continues to this day.

To be recognized today as a National AP Scholar, you must receive an average grade of at least 4 on all AP exams taken – a reasonable goal – and you must receive a grade of 4 or higher on at least eight of your AP exams. In the year of the aforementioned luncheon, that kind of performance would have put you in rare company indeed. In 2003 there were 2,157 National AP Scholars, each of them performing well on a minimum of 8 AP exams. In 2004 there were 6,152 AP Scholars – nearly triple the number of the year before, and a whopping 21,379 students who were eligible to become AP scholars based on the number of exams taken. Are these the best and the brightest students American education has to offer? You can bet that the students think so; that's why they wanted to be National AP Scholars. I, for one, would never question their academic worthiness, and I doubt they would experience any difficulties getting into their colleges of choice. But should we rejoice that 21,379 students graduated in 2004 with eight or more college-level courses under their belts? Somebody must be rejoicing, since that number is 745% of the corresponding statistic in 1994. Incidentally, three students in 2004 had managed to amass 20 AP exams over a four-year period, just in case you are wondering if that could be done.

The reason for this AP arms race, of course, has nothing to do with getting "advanced placement" in college; it has everything to do with getting into college. Ironically, as AP gradually became the definition of excellence in American high school education, AP courses came to be viewed more and more as excellent high school courses and less and less as college courses. What, after all, should a college do with a student who has scored 4 or more in 10 AP courses? Admit her as a junior? I doubt that the student would be thrilled by the prospect. In fact, advanced placement was probably never a motivation for her when she signed up for those courses; she was motivated by her parents and college counselors, who assured her she would need those AP's on her transcript to get into her college of choice. While colleges will often deny "bean-counting" when it comes to AP courses, they pointedly stress that AP courses lend luster to a transcript, and they admit harboring doubts about students who have the ability to take multiple AP courses and opt not to do so. In light of those two realities, they do not have to count the beans; the high schools will do it for them.

I will begin with the controversial assertion that a college course in subject X is not necessarily the best course a high school student can take in subject X. Our Physics and Biology colleagues have actually been trying to make this point for years. If a student has already enjoyed the experiences of exploration and discovery that are at the heart of the scientific method, and if that student is ready to soak up a lot of content as efficiently as possible, then that student is ready for AP. Unfortunately, the kinds of honors science courses that used to feature enriched explorations and laboratory projects are today being replaced by AP courses that stress content knowledge, analysis, and synthesis of ideas. There was never enough time in AP science courses to allow for discovery; now there is not enough time in the entire curriculum for discovery, since the students are being rushed into more and more AP courses by the bean-counters.

The situation is even worse in mathematics, where success in AP Calculus is dependent on four years of pre-calculus preparation: traditionally Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, and Precalculus. Underlying that, one would hope, is a strong middle school program that exposes students to many foundational topics in developmentally appropriate ways. This classical preparation, when done well, is not a bad chunk of mathematics, but we should remember that it has been around for a long time, pre-dating the 1989 report, A Nation at Risk, that lambasted American education in general, and mathematics and science in particular. It also pre-dated the TIMSS report, which showed us lagging behind most of the industrialized world in mathematics. In truth, not all mathematics or education professionals are satisfied with the traditional four-year American sequence of pre-calculus preparation. Many have tried valiantly to inject more relevant mathematical topics into the mainstream curriculum – finite mathematics, probability, statistics, matrix applications, and so on – what have been called the "quantitative literacy" topics – but they often remain in the back pages of textbooks, assuring that they will rarely be taught. It is not because people deny their importance in the real world; it is because of what has been called the "teleological influence of calculus."

So what happens when the DAMKDS are imposed upon the schools? A predictable sequence of events ensues. At first the young, inexperienced teachers are terrified by the DAMKDS, while the older teachers claim to have so many other issues on their minds, like coaching and retirement, that the DAMKDS are the least of their problems. The department chair calls a meeting and tries to put things into perspective, saying look, the DAMKDS are important, but if we just keep teaching mathematics the way we always have, the DAMKDS will take care of themselves. The teachers, of course, are not convinced. For one thing, the parents are obsessive about the DAMKDS, and in teacher conferences the DAMKDS are all they ever want to talk about. For another thing, the administration seems intent on measuring teacher performance by their DAMKDS scores. So, the first thing you know, teachers are abandoning their lesson plans, willing to drop a topic completely if the DAMKDS don't have it in them. Soon the department chair notices that teachers are spending entire class periods teaching directly to the DAMKDS. In the end, everyone laments the fact that they could have undoubtedly covered much more interesting mathematics if it had not been for the DAMKDS.

Okay. All kidding aside, AP Calculus has the same limiting effect on the curriculum. When you get right down to it, the pre-calculus rope comprises a surprisingly small number of algebraic and geometric strands, especially if you know you are preparing specifically for AB Calculus, which does not involve vectors, infinite series, or polar coordinates. Topics like statistics, probability, matrices, mathematical induction, graph theory, linear programming, and even financial topics like amortization and mortgages that will affect almost every student someday, are given short shrift in the core curriculum precisely because they are not necessary for studying calculus. In fact, if you only concentrate on the topics necessary for calculus, you can get them out of the way pretty quickly, a fact that has come to the attention of the bean counters. Not only has this served to stifle enriched mathematical exploration in the high school curriculum, but it has stifled it in the middle school as well, as more and more schools join the race to offer Algebra I as early as possible. Tragically, it is our best students who are caught up in this race. Can a talented 6^th-grader do Algebra? Certainly. In fact, many 4^th-graders can do Algebra, if you count being able to solve 2x = 6 for x. I can also teach a 4^th-grader to differentiate a polynomial function, if you want to count that as doing calculus. But if you want me to turn a youngster on to the beauty of mathematics, if you want me to teach for understanding, if you want me to produce a citizen who can confidently use mathematics to solve problems long after leaving my classroom, then I will need to take some time with that student, and we will probably need to look at some mathematics that lies outside the pre-calculus mainstream. The good news is that the two of us will have a lot more fun along the way. The bad news is that every year the child wastes expanding those mathematical horizons means one less AP course on the transcript.

I should mention here that many students take AP Statistics, a course that enhances their quantitative literacy significantly. In terms of the teleology, however, AP Statistics has no more effect on the traditional pre-calculus curriculum than AP Chemistry does. It is almost a tragic symptom of our plight that a student who does not take AP Statistics can go through a standard high school curriculum, get a 5 in BC Calculus, go on to take two years of university mathematics, and never learn how to do a simple Z-test using the standard normal distribution.

So, to summarize the teleological effect of AP on the high school curriculum, you have AP Calculus as an end driving a more focused pre-calculus preparation as a means, limiting the potential for horizontal enrichment in the earlier grades. Simultaneously, the end goal of more AP courses on the transcript is driving Algebra I down into lower grades, further limiting the mathematical breadth of our most talented students. Both of these outcomes should be sufficiently undesirable to dissuade schools from succumbing to the teleological pressures, and in fact the mathematics teachers, who understand the dangers, often try to take a stand against them. Cathy Seeley, President of NCTM, recently devoted an entire column in the NCTM Bulletin on the dangers of driving Algebra I down earlier in the curriculum and then followed it up with a web chat. Our voices are not likely to be heard, however, as long as the student with BC Calculus on her transcript in her junior year (and five more AP courses as a senior) gets a college scholarship, while the student with four years of enriched honors courses (capped with BC Calculus as a senior) fails to be admitted.

Meanwhile, the College Board, with all good intentions, has been working for years to bring the benefits of AP-style professional development to teachers in earlier courses. It is probably unfortunate that they have labeled all these initiatives as "pre-AP," which has had the unintended effect of reinforcing the teleological effects mentioned earlier. On the other hand, I have worked on many pre-AP projects and found them to be quite good; in fact, some of the pre-AP materials are good precisely because they are better than pre-AP, i.e., they encourage a richer, more constructive approach to teaching and a broader mathematical curriculum for the students than mere AP preparation might require. It is interesting to note that, if they succeed, these materials might produce more (and stronger) AP Calculus students while ironically, because they take time, producing fewer AP students overall.

Our school instituted a 7^th-grade Algebra I course two years ago, against the strong advice of the math department, essentially because a few parents would settle for nothing else to challenge their gifted offspring. Once the course was in place, every child with an A in 6^th-grade mathematics obviously had to be in it or the parents would be on the phone. Our 8^th-grade Algebra I teacher tried to push the kids the same way he pushed the accelerated 8^th-graders, but he got decidedly different results, eventually reducing the class to tears. Being a good and compassionate teacher, he backed off and sought a level they could handle, which turned out to be a regular section of Algebra I. So, yes, they could handle Algebra I, but (a) they were not enjoying it, and (b) we were effectively turning our best young students into ordinary math students.

College mathematicians, of course, have less sympathy for this insane acceleration than high school mathematics teachers do. They would prefer that we enrich our top students with deeper understanding, more proofs, harder problems, and challenges like the MAA's American Mathematics Competition – which, significantly, does not even ask questions that admit calculus-based solutions. They certainly do not want students getting the mathematics courses out of the way early so they can take AP courses in other subjects. They are not even thrilled by students taking courses beyond calculus at their local universities, as they want to teach those courses to the best students themselves; that is how they woo their mathematics majors.

In fact, the only amount of acceleration that makes complete sense from the point of view of a student's mathematical development is that for which the AP program was designed. If advanced placement is the goal, the student should take AP Calculus as a senior, to be followed directly by sophomore courses for potential majors at the student's college or university of choice. AP Statistics can be taken in junior or senior year, concurrently with precalculus or calculus. Of course, if advanced placement is not the goal, if AP Calculus is just a feather in the transcript cap, then it hardly matters when it is taken, as the student will probably take it again in college.

Sadly, the colleges have figured this out. Much to the chagrin of students who actually want to place into the next course, some colleges are making it harder and harder for them to do so. Some departments have raised the required scores to 4 or 5, while others have changed their beginning calculus courses to assume that the students in them have already studied calculus in high school. It is not difficult to justify re-teaching calculus; all a department needs to do is to identify something that differentiates their course from the AP course description. It could stress computer technology, or no technology, or formal proofs, or epsilons and deltas, or colleges could just come out and say that the students have rushed through their foundational mathematics courses so fast that they simply feel they ought to see calculus again. Indeed, as AP courses have increasingly come to be viewed as requirements for college admission rather than as college-level courses, students themselves have become less interested in accepting advanced placement. It is safer to re-take the course than to take the chance of entering the next course under-prepared. In fact, in a sort of ultimate reversal of the AP ideal, the students who are most likely to take the credit are those who have no intent of taking the next course at all; they simply take their credits and run.

Admittedly, many of my concerns are based on anecdotal evidence, conversations with colleagues, and some recent stories that have appeared in national publications and on National Public radio. Someone with access to the colleges should probably do some research to see how widespread some of these trends really are. Whatever they turn up, though, there appears to be little doubt that the AP image has changed over the years. What once was designed to be a program for validating college-level study of a few courses by a small percentage of exceptional students for the purposes of college placement has gradually morphed into a program for validating a rigorous high-school curriculum in a wide variety of courses for the purposes of college admissions. Let us accept that premise for a moment and ask ourselves a question that might already have occurred to many of you: Is this really so bad? If we abandon our selfish mathematical concerns for a moment and take a look at the bigger picture, has the overall growth of the AP program not served to raise the quality of education across the curriculum and across the country? If colleges raise the levels of their beginning courses to assume AP, can't we say American education is better off than it was before?

That question brings me to my final concern. Recall that AP came upon the scene in 1955 to give all high school students the same access to advanced placement that had been informally available to students at the more elite schools. It leveled the playing field, taking away some of the advantage that the better-known schools enjoyed. In the early years, AP workshops were all about equity, spreading the program to more and more schools, the needier the better. I was an AP consultant for 20 years, and I know that our message was always one of empowerment: there are students at your school that can do college-level work, and you can teach it to them. The College Board is here to help.

But now, God help us, there are 37 AP courses. My school does not offer them all yet, but we offer more than half of them, and we are adding more every year. Can all schools afford to do that? Of course not. AP courses require knowledgeable teachers; AP sections are frequently quite small, and AP topics are often quite specialized. In short, AP courses are expensive. Your school can probably justify AP Calculus AB, but you might have to fight for AP Calculus BC or AP Statistics. Your school might have to choose between the two AP English courses. AP Spanish might fly, but your school might not have the numbers for AP German or AP Japanese. AP Studio Art? Maybe next year. AP Human Geography? Never heard of it. So which schools have the resources to offer all those AP courses? The very same ones that used to have the advantage in advanced placement before AP leveled the playing field. Well, now the game has changed, and the playing field might not be so level any more.

Unlike credit and placement, college admission is a zero-sum game. At schools like mine (which have more than our share of advantages), it is the most competitive game we play. If one of our students can get an edge on being admitted to a college of choice by taking more AP courses, they will not hesitate to do so at any cost, let alone the cost of rushing through a few math courses. Parents will measure the worth of our academic program by the number of AP courses we offer, and since we need those students, we will offer as many as we can. If it gives our kids an edge over kids with access to fewer AP courses, well, so be it. We have to do what is best for our kids.

As of today, the dominant message from the college recruiters who come to our campus continues to be that students should take as many AP courses as they can handle. They are quick to add that performance matters, lest they be accused of simply counting the number of AP courses taken, but most of them would strongly agree that striving to become a National AP Scholar is a good thing. It is therefore quite common at our school for a good student to take four or five AP's in the senior year, three or four AP's in the junior year, and maybe one or two in the sophomore year. I have already alluded to the effect that this is having on what used to be called our core curriculum and on what used to be out broad-based academic preparation, but now let us talk about the effect it is having on the kids themselves. On the one hand, they are condensing or skipping their college preparatory classes to take more AP courses, rendering themselves less prepared for AP work. On the other hand, they are taking on more rigorous courses, virtually guaranteeing that their lack of preparation will be exposed, probably on a regular basis. So while there are plenty of kids who still experience AP as an affirmation of their ability to do college-level work, there are a growing number for whom AP exposes the fact that they cannot. The sad thing is, were it not for the AP arms race, they probably could!

We should not blame the students. They are still our top students, and they still work hard – often incredibly hard when you consider their heavy AP course loads and their many extracurricular activities. We should not blame technology – it is helping students to learn more mathematics, not less, although it has shifted their priorities. We should not blame the teachers, who are struggling valiantly to fashion a winning hand out of the cards they have been dealt. We should not blame AP Calculus or AP Statistics, as those are excellent courses when taken under sane conditions. Maybe we should not blame anyone. But surely someone must have seen this coming before we wound up with 6,152 students across the country taking eight or more AP courses each. For all its legendary woes, American secondary education is not a vacuum into which you can plunk that many college-level courses for that many kids without sacrificing something else that might actually be important!

Let me end my rant with a few words of hope. I am now told by some college admissions people that they no longer subscribe to the more-the-merrier theory when it comes to AP courses. Their reasons for concern are not quite the same as mine, but I understand them. Apparently, students with too many AP's are now being seen as overly oriented to short-term goals and lacking in academic independence. Also, schools with excellent high school courses that do not happen to be AP courses have apparently made their voices heard. Recent media articles have reported a growing movement among prestigious secondary schools to opt out of certain AP courses, confident that they can offer their students something better, and now increasingly convinced that their students have nothing to lose. Some elite schools have never embraced the AP course descriptions, preferring to design their own courses and let colleges place their students according to their own merits. Once can only imagine what must go through the mind of a college admissions officer when he compares the application of an Exeter graduate with zero AP courses with that of an AP Scholar with six 5's, two 4's, and a 3. Maybe it's not even a tough call. Maybe when everyone in your college's admissions pool has seven or eight AP courses, suddenly you start noticing the French horn player with no AP's who reads a lot of theology books and builds his own airplane out of used automobile parts.

I have also had some great conversations with Trevor Packer, the current director of the AP program, who is truly committed to keeping AP as a positive force in American secondary education and who is truly concerned about any negative effects the program might be having. He has already eliminated the AP Scholars luncheon and may be ready to get the College Board out of the bean-counting business altogether. He hopes to tweak programs like AP Calculus to somehow make it counterproductive to rush through the earlier courses, and he has begun a campaign to convince college admissions officers everywhere that they should not be judging candidates for admission by how many AP courses they have taken. I wish him luck, because that is what it will take to restore sanity to the high school mathematics sequence, especially in the competitive college-preparatory schools.

Meanwhile, as I assess the amount of water that has already flowed under the bridge, I am doubtful that AP will ever be able to re-define itself back to its original purpose, that is, as a program for validating college-level work in high school . One of my favorite quotes about the situation that has evolved is from Bernie Madison, the chairman of the MAA's Task Force on Articulation: "Currently, the greatest growth in the high school curriculum is in courses that have traditionally been taught in colleges. The greatest growth in the college curriculum is in courses that have traditionally been taught in high schools. It is not clear that either institution is serving its clients very well." There is no longer a well-accepted distinction between college-level work and high-school work; indeed, colleges and high schools are teaching pretty much the same courses for about three years of your 16-year education, and the question of which institution gives you credit for one of those courses is fast coming down to a question of where it is you took it, period. The days of getting genuine advanced placement may be numbered.

Maybe after a few years of this the colleges will start to suspect that students from places like Exeter and Andover probably deserve college credit for the courses they are taking, and they will start slipping them credit under the table. Not for every course, mind you, but maybe for ten or eleven truly advanced courses. Then maybe someone will get a grant to study the feasibility of a national program that would make that credit available to students from other high schools based on a fair examination at the end of the course. That would take us all back to where we were 50 years ago when AP began.