(Good Education) by Liz Dwyer.
IN APRIL, MY 10TH-GRADE SON DID SOMETHING I NEVER MANAGED TO DO IN ANY CLASS EVER: He finished his entire world history textbook. All 1,258 pages of it. Some parents might breathe a sigh of relief over this accomplishment (as in, whew, my kid is not a slacker), but I was skeptical.
“Did you actually learn anything?” I asked him. “Yeah, kinda,” he shrugged, though he admitted that he whipped through some chapters in two or three days. Say what? “Well, we had to finish so we can get ready for the test,” he said.
Ah, yes, the test. By that, he means the Advanced Placement World History Exam, taken by high school students across the United States last Thursday. During the first two weeks of May, the College Board, the nonprofit organization that owns the SAT and the advanced placement program, administered AP exams in world history and 37 other subjects. About 2.7 million high schoolers across the nation took a total of 4.9 million AP exams, which the College Board called “the culmination of their hard work in AP courses throughout the school year.”
