LS offers nine AP courses to students; these classes offer a more rigorous line of study for students interested in the topics, as well as an opportunity to earn college credit. Of course, with these options for harder classes, comes more stress surrounding college applications. Students often worry that fewer AP courses will make them less competitive to selective colleges, especially with other schools, such as Needham High School, offering upwards of double the AP courses LS offers.
Leslie Patterson, LS’s Curriculum Director, has noted that the number of AP courses offered at LS may not necessarily disadvantage students during the college application process. During this school year, LS plans to reach out to college admissions officers for their perspective. One college admissions officer has already shared that students at LS are not being negatively impacted due to LS AP course offerings. “The fact that people view AP classes as necessary and important can create a stressful learning environment.” It can feel contradictory to reduce AP classes to just another checkbox, especially considering why they get added to the curriculum in the first place. When teachers feel particularly passionate about a subject area, they can submit a proposal for a new course (AP or otherwise). This means that the addition of AP courses would be specifically driven by a love of learning, but the stigma that comes with an AP title often detracts from this notion.
To avoid this issue, the English department offers no AP classes at all. Danielle Weisse, the department coordinator, feels that LS English courses offer “a richer experience.” She mentioned that books taught in AP classes are often reflected in our curriculum anyways. When invested students from LS choose to self-study the exams, they frequently get scores of fours and fives just as if they had taken an AP English class. Ms. Weisse also explained that the English department’s belief is “getting to dive into the themes and genres in context, the way we have it in our curriculum, is overall better training for the mind.” This demonstrates how LS values intellectual curiosity over the pressure to take a standardized assessment.
