I must admit that sometimes I wish there was no such thing as Advanced Placement. While I understand the potential value of the program, I think it often limits what a high school teacher can do. When there is a curriculum that must be covered, it prohibits a teacher and/or student from stopping on a topic of interest and going into depth about that subject (the old argument about the benefit of depth vs. breadth). So I don't agree with everything this author says. I for one am not implying that we are "better than" the AP curriculum. I also don't believe that the AP curriculum is necessarily a stand-in for a national curriculum. But that is just my (very brief) opinion. I'd be interested in knowing what other people think.
Many students are unaware that there are colleges and universities that DO NOT require standardized test (SAT, ACT) scores. Although there are different approaches, these are called "test optional" schools. Bowdoin, Wake Forest, Middlebury, Connecticut College, DePaul, Denison, Dickinson, Rollins, George Mason, and Montana State are just a few of the schools that have some sort of test optional admissions. You can see a complete list at www.fairtest.org/university/optional. There are however, some differences in their approach, as this article explains, so be sure to read the fine print!
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