College Board to discontinue the AP CS AB exam

re: College Board to discontinue the AP CS AB exam

Bryan — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 22:46:43 GMT

Unsure just how it's all going to shake out but I have gone up in my admins eye’s with this news. As I cover a more real world load of material then what the AP was doing and given my program has grown not gotten smaller these past 13 years in the long run I think it will help. More teacher’s will start moving beyond the limits AP put on the curriculum and I think you will see an up swing in the number of students going into Comp Sci and EE programs.

Is There A Future For High School Computer Science?

Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information from Alfred Thompson — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 19:27:12 GMT

OK that is a fairly provocative title. But I think it is actually a fair and reasonable question. The

re: College Board to discontinue the AP CS AB exam

Alexandrovich Romanovsky — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 02:16:33 GMT

The announcement says that these exams will be dropped after the 08-09 year, so students currently enrolled in the classes can still take it for next year

re: College Board to discontinue the AP CS AB exam

Alfred Thompson — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 02:33:56 GMT

Right - the test will still be in place next year. Dropping it before then would be very disruptive to schools.

re: College Board to discontinue the AP CS AB exam

John Morrison — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 04:01:40 GMT

I don't see this as all bad. The field is in flux and the AP ppl can't keep up.

re: College Board to discontinue the AP CS AB exam

Eric Aderhold — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 08:01:38 GMT

I'm disappointed to hear about this. I took an AP computer science course in 2002-03. It was only technically designed to prepare students for the A exam, but I with a small amount of additional study (quick internet tutorials on pointers and Big-O notation, IIRC) I was able to earn a 5 on the AB exam. That test got me out of having to take the first semester programming course when I got to college.

Now, why exactly did I choose to take the AB exam when my course was only designed for the A test? I took the course during my senior year and I had already picked a university by the time I had to choose my AP exams for the year. My university offered credit for the first semester of programming for CS majors for good scores on the AB exam. For the A exam, they offered credit in a very basic programming course that is worth no credit for majors and is not even offered very often. If other universities have similar policies, this will make the AP CS program essentially useless (in terms of academic credit) for people who intend to major in the field. Hopefully they do end up adding some of the AB topics into a unified AP computer science exam and universities take that into account when assigning credits.

re: College Board to discontinue the AP CS AB exam

Baker — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 17:14:49 GMT

@Eric,

Most colleges offer their own placement tests for courses if you don't have an AP score to show for it. Many colleges require you take that placement test EVEN IF YOU HAVE an AP score. So the placement issue is no biggie.

The credit issue is a different matter, but more and more colleges (I think) are limiting the amount of credit you can actually get for AP courses. Since more and more high school students are coming to college having taken 3,4,5...8 AP courses, the college does not want you to give you credit for all that because they lose tuition money for every course the give credit for. I think the average for most colleges is now somewhere around 3 - they'll give you credit for up to 3 AP courses. Top tier private colleges usually don't award credit anyway - only placement.

As APs continue to proliferate they become less and less like real college-level courses and more like nationalize high school curricula. I predict colleges will be awarding less and less credit for APs as a result.

re: College Board to discontinue the AP CS AB exam

Tom Indelicato — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 18:09:16 GMT

Funny how "colleges will be awarding less and less credit for APs", while at the same time they are really pushing high school students to take more and more AP courses.

The College Board decision to drop the AB exam (the wrong choice of the two, IMHO) will have wide repurcussions. Our school currently offers the AB course only, because we have a C# programming class as a prerequisite. THAT one semester course is almost the A curriculum (essentially just missing the case study), so suggesting that schools could just drop down to the A course is not so simple. Perhaps we could have C# in the fall, with the optional APCS-A in the spring, but this will need investigation.

re: College Board to discontinue the AP CS AB exam

Comp Sci Guy — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 23:19:16 GMT

I believe this was absolutely the correct decision on the part of the College Board. Computer Science is not even a valid subject in regards of education any longer. Therefore all of those "nay sayers" above me just accept the truth that we as computer science people are in a useless field. So take the APCS-A class because that's all you're going to get, and don't complain about it because you're certainly not going to get the AB course back. Enjoy another day of work in an obselete course with no benefits.