By Maddie Nerad
Opinion Editor
And Rachel Waxman
Contributing Writer
Mira Costa’s new Advanced Placement policy is a more effective system to help students succeed in advanced classes but does not support its claim to make AP classes more accessible to lower-achieving students.
Last February, the Manhattan Beach Unified School District Board of Trustees passed a new AP policy, which was a revised version of Principal Dr. Ben Dale’s initial proposal. The policy changed class prerequisites and eliminated the use of commitment forms. The waiver form was also amended, and departments were able to determine their own guidelines on whether or not a student could waiver into a class.
The input of AP teachers and department chairs in the enrollment requirements for their own classes was an essential part of making the prerequisites clearer and more consistent. The clarified prerequisites are more helpful to students who are deciding if a class is in their desired range of academic rigor.
If a student does not meet the prerequisites, he must submit a waiver for approval. According to Costa Vice Principal Ian Drummond, this year, the administration used a department-generated formula, consisting of a teacher review of a student’s state testing scores and teacher recommendations, to determine if a student was admitted on a waiver. This system ensures a student has the necessary skills to excel in the course, opposed to the previous waiver system which only took into account previous grades.
Previously, students were obligated to sign a commitment form which ensured that they could only opt out of the class if their grade was a D or F after completing the first semester. This year, the elimination of commitment forms allowed students to drop a class anytime within the first five weeks of school. According to Drummond, despite the new leniency in dropping courses, there has not been a substantial number of students dropping their AP classes. The minimal class dropping proves that the new waiver system has been effective in placing students in the appropriate course.
In the past, the majority of students who submitted a waiver were accepted into a class, granted that space was available, according to Drummond. Under the new policy, less than 50 percent of students were accepted, proving the new exclusivity of the system, which is important in maintaining the academic difficulty of an AP course.
When creating the policy last year, Dale stated that he wanted it to be less restrictive than the previous system, and the board hoped the policy would allow more students, including the “middle student,” who is neither excelling nor failing and does not meet the prerequisites, to challenge himself or herself by taking an AP course. While the numbers undermine Dale’s initial goal, the unexpected outcome of increased exclusivity positively maintains the integrity of AP courses. Dale claims that his goal is for every student to take at least one AP course during his or her four years at Costa to demonstrate his or her ability to handle college level rigor, but the new exclusivity of the system makes this goal unrealistic.
The new AP policy creates more limited accessibility to AP courses for students hoping to waiver into a class. This ensures that students are placed in the most suitable class for them, and overrides the original goals of Dale and the MBUSD Board to broaden the availability of AP courses.
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