Information Parents Want to Know
What Books are on the AP Exam?
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Have you been misled about the AP English exams?
Junior and senior Blue Valley students may take AP (Advanced Placement) Communication Arts (English) classes. These classes prepare them to take one of the AP English Exams in May. The tests are scored from 1 to 5. A student who scores 3 or higher may receive full credit for a freshman English course at a participating college. We initially reported on AP exams in the following article. For more specifics on the AP program, go to http://apcentral.collegeboard.com.
We have repeatedly heard Blue Valley school officials defend their book choices for AP classes using the argument that "the book is used on the AP exam." While there is a grain of truth to this statement in that almost any book may be referenced on one of the AP English exams, this statement is also very misleading. The argument implies that the books the Blue Valley school system has chosen for their AP classes are the best choices to study in order to prepare for high AP exam scores, and that if we replaced one of them (such as titles with gratuitous sex and vulgarity such as Song of Solomon or Beloved) we would be jeopardizing our kids' ability to score well on these exams.
In our search* to determine what books have been most frequently referenced on English AP exams, however, we have found that not only does Blue Valley NOT use the most frequently referenced books, they have replaced some time-tested classics that are most frequently found on the exam with f-word-laden titles. For example, classics such as Moby Dick and Great Expectations are NOT used in the Blue Valley AP classes, but together, they have been referenced 12 times in a twenty-year span of English AP exams! Instead, our teachers have selected books such as Black Boy and All the Pretty Horses which, according to our information, together have appeared only once on the English AP exams during the same twenty-year span.
Furthermore, it is important to note the specific titles referenced on an AP exam are only suggestions in order to answer the "open" question portion of the exam. (Students are not obligated to use these suggestions and may use other titles to make their point). In fact, one AP English teacher in another school district publicly stated that any open question could be answered successfully by the student test taker using only one book -- Crime and Punishment (assuming that the student knew this book extremely well of course).
All of our research -- including the wording of the AP exam itself which clearly states that there is no specific required reading list as well as what books have historically been referenced on the AP exams -- leads us to the same conclusion. There is NO AP REQUIREMENT to fill our teens' minds with explicit descriptions of sex, violence, and profanity that describe several of the current choices that are used in the Blue Valley AP classes. Rather, the AP exams are much more concerned with the student's grammar and writing skills.
Are you satisfied with your student's writing skills? Are your children consistently being assigned solid examples of excellent literature that model the skills and habits you want your children to learn? Please take a moment to read the excerpts of the books your children are being assigned in Blue Valley here at classkc.org, or better yet, read these books yourself. Then you decide -- are these selections REALLY intended to help a child score well on an AP exam?
*The source of information for this article comes from a 1997 article written by Joseph Prendergast, a high school English teacher in the Fairfax County VA school district, and updated in 2003 by Robin Tulloch who studied the frequency of titles referenced on AP exams from 1981-2001.