By JOSEPH KELLARD
Through the years, this transformation of AP - a program that offers high school students college-level courses to earn advanced placement in higher education - has met with some criticism from students, parents and others who claim this policy waters down the program's quality and lowers its standards. Kevin Sheehan, chairman of Oceanside's social studies department, continues to battle such charges.
"They're not true because the AP courses are externally set," Sheehan said. "...The courses won't allow [a school district] to water it down."
After he arrived at Oceanside High School in 1994, Sheehan said there was a philosophic shift in the district's AP program born of a broader trend in public education to make programs more "inclusive." He adopted this philosophy to Oceanside's AP program. Previously, if students weren't recommended for AP courses at OHS, they would have to appeal to be reconsidered for the program. Among the students who survived this appeal process, Sheehan found they "seemed to do OK" in AP, he said, "because there was some kind of motivation" - a defining factor for success in the program, he added. Sheehan reflected on all the students he'd blocked from AP, and was unwilling to continue as that kind of gatekeeper. His department gave him the green light to adopt an open-door AP policy, he said, so long as students met the standards.
"I think Oceanside was kind of a leader in allowing kids to challenge," Sheehan said, adding that the program at OHS has since seen tremendous growth and success.
Just this year, for example, 452 upperclassmen took AP courses and will take 886 exams, up from 401 students who took 869 exams in the 2003-04 school year. Out of this last group, 63 students earned the status of AP Scholar, meaning they scored in grades of three or higher on three or more exams, and 25 students were Scholars with Honors, having received a 3.25 average on all AP exams and grades of three and higher on four or more exams. Further, there were 45 Scholars with Distinction and 15 National Scholars, the latter earning an average grade of four and grades of four or higher on eight or more exams.
Oceanside has 26 of the 36 programs AP offers, ranging from art history and world history to English literature and calculus to computer science and physics. Being college-level courses, they are typically more difficult for high school students, particularly requiring more reading and writing. And while AP students are not required to take the exams, most do at the strong urging of their teachers and department heads at OHS.
Bob Ledlie, an associate principal at OHS who oversees AP testing, said that since half the format of the exams are written analysis and problem solving, students must know their subject to pass.
"You can't just wing it when half your exam deals with what your thinking is on a subject, say, how you analyze a poem, or how you solve a physics problems, or how the Industrial Revolution began," he said.
"The number of students who have taken the AP exams and done well, has shown steady, steady growth," said Dr. Corry Banach, superintendent of curriculum. "I think this says a lot in terms of the students' motivation in terms of learning and in hopefully acquiring college credit."
Colleges vary in where exactly they place AP students. Ivy League schools, for instance, may put AP students in their 201 courses, while other schools may place them in 101 courses and give them college credits, Ledlie said.
Another criticism students and parents level against AP is that it involves too much work. But unlike Regents programs, AP is optional, and unlike some other school districts, Oceanside adopts the approach that if a student finds the work too burdensome, he or she can opt out of the course at any time. Sheehan conveyed stories in which students and parents "panic" over the amount of work AP demands, but that ultimately "they find their own levels and make the right choices," he said.
Conversely, if during a semester a student wants to get into an AP course, departments at OHS are willing to admit them, Ledlie noted. "We'll do that, and if the student enjoys digging deeper into the material, reading more books, the debates and discussions that go on, then it's not too much at all," he added. "It's what the course is."
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