Getting School to Involve in Course Selection
In the modern education system, there’s a rapid rate of growth in availability of AP curricula to students. Correspondingly, the average number of AP classes that a student is willing to take also increased. For instance, the mean AP subjects per school rose from 804 in 2007 to 898 in 2016. In comparison, the number of students who took three exams skyrocketed from 95,903 in 2006 to 230,819 in 2016. Amidst the debate about whether students should take more college leveled subjects, due to the stress and lack of extracurricular activities experienced by these students, I believe the school should only choose certain students to take those courses base on their previous grades, time management, and activities outside of school.
According to a San Francisco Chronicle article, many students appear to have “overextended themselves” in high school by placing too much focus on coursework. Because AP curricula are college courses, they usually require students to put in extra work and effort to be successful. In many cases, students have to sacrifice their sleep in order to achieve their ideal academic goals. Van Ryn, a high school junior student, stated that there were times when she only ran on four hours of sleep to prepare for a test, and that she “had never experienced this much stress, over such a long period of time”.
According to Dr. Charles, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family & Preventive Medicine, if the amount of sleep lost is more than a few hours, not all of it will be recovered. Lack of resting period will not only affect the overall well being of a student, it also causes concentration difficulties during classes, resulting in grade drops and even more stress. Since the schools have so many years of experience, they know exactly how the college leveled courses will affect students. Sometimes when a student gets sick because the overloading school works, parents will usually blame it on the school. To prevent that from happening, schools should acquire the power to be selective about the students who they think will manage the AP curriculum according to their scores in previous classes. Although that doesn’t mean those students will prevent stress, at least they are the ones who will not give up on their sleep entirely.
Another challenging factor about AP courses is that there’s a lot more homework with the college level courses, which means that in order to succeed in those classes, students have to sacrifice some of their extracurricular activities. Although this doesn’t sound too bad for some people, but for someone who’s not so good at time management, it can means that they have to get rid of extracurriculars completely. This includes sports, working experiments, volunteering hours, and even study time for SAT and ACT. When the time comes for college applications, these factors can lead to a great disadvantage due to the fact that although AP grades are important, colleges also put activities outside of schools into consideration. Therefore, if students chose to achieve a higher score in AP classes at the expense of their outside-school activities, instead of giving them any benefits, it will actually hurt them. Because the school has been observing students’ extracurriculars schedules and their time management ability, they should be allowed to give only certain students the permission to choose college leveled classes. Otherwise, students might not be aware of how much time they will be spending on their courses and end up sacrificing everything they do outside of school.
Despite knowing about the pressure, some students are still willing to take as much AP classes as they can. One of the most common reasons why is because they wanted to earn college credits, and they readily load themselves with a bulk of work whether their counselors consider it as a good idea or not. However, this requires students to earn at least a 3 out of 5 on their final AP exam, and many colleges prefer at least a 4 as a requirement. This put a tremendous amount of pressure on the student, because they literally have to learn and able to recall all the information of different subjects from the beginning of the school year till the end in order to prepare themselves for the exam.
Furthermore, taking AP courses is not even the only way to get college credits: students can enroll in dual credit courses at the local community college to obtain both high school and college credits. Dual credit grade students based on their coursework over a semester. After passing the course, they receive a college transcript. If the school doesn’t get involved in the students’ course selection and place a limit in the amount of college leveled class that they can take according to their level, those who wish for credits will most likely to select the greatest amount of APs they can fit into their schedule. By placing a standard for students who will have permission to sign up for AP classes, it does give the students (who are desperate enough about pursuing their dream) the opportunity to find another way to get closer to their goal in a less stressful situation.
Giving school the ability to select appropriate students to take AP courses is definitely essential. Due to the fact that they know exactly what the students will experience, they know which students will be able to take the pressure and which will not. Thus, the school will not only protect the well-being of a student, it can also help students to achieve their ideal status in grades, sports, and social life. Although selecting AP courses freely does help students to gain college credits, school should still play a part during student’s course selection by setting standards based on their previous grades, effectiveness in planning, and amount of after-school activities to help students reach their maximum level in every area.