In AP classes, it's not just students doing homework College Board reviews teachers' curriculums, lists classes that make the cut Friday, November 02, 2007 • BY JOHN MOONEY • Star-Ledger Staff They are the academic holy grail of most American high schools, the courses that students shooting for the most competitive colleges want on their transcripts. Covering more than 30 topics from calculus to drawing and often counting toward college credit, the Advanced Placement courses and their corresponding exams are taken by an estimated one in four high school graduates nationwide, including more than 30,000 a year in New Jersey. But facing questions that AP classes were getting so popular they might be getting watered down, the College Board last year began reviewing them to ensure they lived up to their billing. Yesterday, the board went public on its Web site -- https://apcourseaudit.epiconline.org/ledger/ -- with a national list of classes that had made the cut, allowing parents, students and colleges to examine the validity of what is being advertised by the local high school. Teachers like Christine DiCanto, the AP Chemistry instructor at Piscataway High School, went through the mill the past year to justify a class she'd been teaching for five years. In an "audit" repeated in thousands of high schools across the country, DiCanto submitted a 14-page syllabus and course description to a reviewer for the College Board. "Everything but the kitchen sink," she said. After some give-and-take on how to describe her class's lab work, DiCanto eventually was sanctioned by the College Board, a nonprofit group that oversees the AP program and the SAT college entrance exam. "It probably took 15 to 20 hours," she said. "I was wondering how high their standards would be. ... But I applaud them for not taking the easy route and just looking at scores." Students who take AP classes are often tested at year's end, and it's up to individual colleges whether to grant credit. Still, the new stamp of approval should give parents, students and college officials some assurance about what is going on in the classroom. "We understood that college admissions offices were curious if schools were needing to water down the curriculum to accommodate this great growth," said Thomas Matts, who directed the audit for the College Board. "And AP teachers responded in both quality and quantity." Nationwide, about two-thirds of the 130,000 courses submitted were approved immediately, Matts said. Most of the others made enough changes to make the list, he said, with just a few thousand still under review. Most New Jersey teachers and administrators interviewed said the reviews confirmed their approach or helped them fine-tune classes -- although some complained of the extra paperwork. "I would say it was minimally unpleasant," said Catherine Rodrigue, assistant head at the Peddie School in Hightstown. "Many did feel that it at least helped them organize their materials." At Peddie, two-thirds of the students take at least one AP test and 17 AP classes are offered, from music theory to Chinese. Almost all were approved without trouble, but there were a few hiccups. The AP Spanish class won approval after resolving a technical disagreement about how a poetry reading was listed. A physics teacher whose students commonly scored high marks on AP exams has been stalled by a requirement for more lab time. "Maybe we'll call it Physics Honors," she said. "We're still waiting the final word, but if it means we can't have the label, that's OK. We'll still have the results." Newark has made a big push to expand AP offerings, and won approval for 44 classes in 10 high schools. Over the last year, the district brought in consultants to work with AP teachers to develop their classes. Annie Liontas, an AP English Language and Composition teacher at Barringer High School, submitted 13 pages to the College Board and breezed through. Still, she thought the exercise had limits. "Anybody can put together stuff on paper and say this is the 150 books we'll read," she said. "Not sure you can tell from it what is a good AP class or not. But it was helpful for me. I was able to see other people's take on it." John Mooney may be reached at jmooney@starledger.com or (973) 392-1548 © 2007 The Star-Ledger. Used by NJ.com with permission.