Southeast Texas P-16 Council

The College Board is making changes to the AP courses that give more emphasis on what Colleges say they need:  better understanding, better ability to reason and apply knowledge.

The revisions are also designed to accomplish the following broad goals:

• Enable teachers to design curriculum that best serves the needs of each student
• Articulate clearly the connection between the revised course and its corresponding exam
• Prepare AP students for advanced college and university courses
• Continue to reflect the best practices of our talented AP teachers

Changes planned include

“In collaboration with the National Science Foundation, master AP teachers and eminent educators from universities and colleges, the AP Program has spent several years evaluating and revising AP Biology. This collaboration has led to a powerful new course, endorsed enthusiastically by higher education officials, with benefits for all members of the AP community,” the AP site says

AUSTIN — Feb 10, 2010 – Texas was recognized today by the College Board as one of 20 states with the greatest percentage of students earning scores of three or higher on Advanced Placement (AP) exams.
Tests are scored on a range of one to five. Colleges and universities typically give college course credit to those who earn scores of three, four or five.
Among students in Texas’ high school graduating Class of 2009, 76,875 or 28.7 % took at least one AP exam during high school, compared to 26.5 % for the nation. That represents a substantial increase from five years ago when 53,339 or 21.8 % of the state’s graduating seniors took an AP test sometime during their high school career.
In Texas, 14.9 %of the graduating Class of 2009 earned a score of three or higher on an AP test, compared to 12.5 percent of the Class of 2004 who did so.
Social sciences tests, which include history, government, economics and psychology, were the most popular tests taken by Texas students. They experienced their greatest success on English AP exams.
You can read the report for Texas here