Jessica Hatcher’s article posted today contains several inaccuracies. The Dartmouth story has caused some confusion among the higher education community, parents and students and I wanted to offer some background to help clarify things. Also below are some facts regarding Advanced Placement credit policies in colleges and universities around the country.
Based on information from the Annual Survey of Colleges and a recent AP credit policy survey, more than 99 percent of colleges with AP policies grant course credit for successful AP Exams.
As we understand it, Dartmouth’s policy shift reflects two phenomenon that have developed: A) The overwhelming majority of Dartmouth students are using AP scores for placement purposes only, not to graduate from Dartmouth early; and B) Dartmouth is considering some significant shifts to the design of its undergraduate experience, and wants to pilot for the class of 2018 and the class of 2019 a model in which students take a core set of 35 courses on campus. Dartmouth has made clear its intention to continue using AP exams for placement, which aligns with the original intent of the Advanced Placement Program — to provide students with the opportunity to place into the college course for which their AP experience best prepared them. We view this policy shift as a means to ensure students remain on Dartmouth’s campus for the full four years and get the most out of the Dartmouth undergraduate experience.
The College Board supports elimination of college credit for a specific course only when methodologically sound research reveals that AP students are not as well prepared for the subsequent course as students who took the college’s own introductory course. But the condensed psychology exam given to AP students at Dartmouth — as reported on in the media — was in no way a scientific study based on evidence. Concerns from researchers and educators about the validity of Dartmouth’s condensed psychology exam were confirmed when the chair of the Dartmouth College Psychology Department stated the following in a letter to a blog called “Teaching High School Psychology.”
“First, note that this was not a scientific study. Nor did we intend it for public consumption. Indeed, we did not even intend these data to inform decision making at the college regarding AP credit in general. We simply collected these data to inform our own departmental decision making regarding whether to give Advanced Placement credit for Introductory Psychology.”
There is substantial research (from experts outside the College Board) that shows that AP students at Dartmouth and other colleges across the country perform as well as — or better than — students who have completed the introductory course at a college or university. These research studies on AP all demonstrate AP’s comparability to introductory college-level courses in terms of content, skills, and learning outcomes. This research includes:
1. A study of more than 100,000 AP test takers enrolling at 110 colleges. For all nine subject areas studies, AP Exam takers earning a score of 3 or higher earned higher subject area GPAs than non-AP Exam takers. Full report: http://bit.ly/WbKMU1
2. A study of more than 24,000 AP students enrolling at the University of Texas at Austin over a four-year period. Findings: AP students who earn course credit based upon their AP Exam scores consistently outperform their matched non-AP group on most of the college outcome measures. AP students take significantly more credit hours their first year than the concurrently enrolled non-AP students. Full report: http://bit.ly/13MGkl1
3. A study of more than 70,000 students enrolling at 27 colleges. Findings: Students earning a 3 or higher on an AP Exam performed the same as or better than non-AP students in an intermediate-level college course. AP Exam takers earned degrees in less time than did the non-AP cohort. Underrepresented students who took STEM AP Exams tended to major in that discipline. For most titles, students taking AP Exams took more course work in the discipline than non-AP students. Full report: http://bit.ly/WnOQBn
Approximately 5,800 college faculty — including those from the Ivy League and other highly selective institutions — are engaged in designing AP courses and exams, writing AP Exam questions and scoring AP Exams. The direct involvement of college faculty ensures that AP course work is comparable in content to introductory college-level courses and that the examination standards to which AP students are held are what college professors expect from their own students in their classrooms.
Our analysis shows that each year, AP policies shift in 1-3 percent of colleges and universities, with a balance between changes that allow for more credit and changes that allow for less. As the average time to complete a bachelor’s degree at the majority of colleges and institutions has increased to six years, we anticipate that there will be continued reliance on AP Exam scores to place students into an advanced college course and provide them with credits toward degree completion.
It is very important that North Carolina State students and faculty have all of the correct information on Advanced Placement courses and exams.