Advanced Placement

and International
Baccalaureate
Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?

BY:

Sheila Byrd
WITH:
Lucien Ellington
Paul Gross
Carol Jago
Sheldon Stern
FO R E WO R D BY:

Chester E. Finn, Jr. and

Martin A. Davis, Jr.

November 2007
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute is a nonprofit organization that conducts research, issues publications, and directs action projects in ele-
mentary/secondary education reform at the national level and in Ohio, with special emphasis on our hometown of Dayton. It is affiliated
with the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. Further information can be found at www.edexcellence.net, or by writing to the Institute at 1701
K Street, NW, Suite 1000, Washington D.C., 20006. The report is available in full on the Institute's website; additional copies can be ordered
at www.edexcellence.net. The Institute is neither connected with nor sponsored by Fordham University.
Advanced Placement
and International
Baccalaureate
Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?

BY:

Sheila Byrd

WITH:
Lucien Ellington
Paul Gross
Carol Jago
Sheldon Stern
FO R E WO R D BY:

Chester E. Finn, Jr. and

Martin A. Davis, Jr.

November 2007
 Contents

Contents
★ ★ ★ ★

Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
By Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Martin A. Davis, Jr.

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
By Sheila Byrd

REVIEWS OF COURSES AND EXAMS

Advanced Placement
Biology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Calculus AB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
English Literature & Composition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
U.S. History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

International Baccalaureate
Biology SL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Mathematics SL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Language A SL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
World History SL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

★
 Foreword

Foreword
★ ★ ★ ★ By Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Martin A. Davis, Jr.

Over the ten years of Fordham’s modern existence, we have panned vigorously for gold—curricular gold.
This quest has frequently left us disappointed, as our reviews of state standards have consistently shown
that expectations for American primary and secondary students are typically weak and watered down.

Worse, at the high school level, state standards have few teeth. Because fewer than half of U.S. states require
high school students to complete exit exams or standardized end-of-course exams, schools may choose to
follow their state’s standards, or not.

But a push to improve high school standards is on. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings would like to
extend the No Child Left Behind Act to cover high school and has announced her desire to “align high
school standards with college and work.” The National Governors Association agrees, stating that “all young
people should take a rigorous college-prep curriculum.”

Increasingly, what people mean by phrases such as “rigorous college-prep curriculum” is the Advanced
Placement (AP) or the International Baccalaureate (IB) program. We wanted to know if these programs are
as good as conventional wisdom thinks they are.

Both have been around a long time (fifty and forty years, respectively), enjoy a reputation for academic
excellence, and are growing in popularity. But are they academically sound, or given to flights of education-
al whimsy? Have they resisted the postmodernist silliness that infects so much of the academy? Do their
curricular frameworks, study guides, and sample tests stand up to scrutiny?

To find out, we recruited Sheila Byrd to lead our investigation. We could think of no one better. She has
taught English in District of Columbia public schools, as well as in international schools in Italy and Japan.
She’s also a founding director of the American Diploma Project, and a former deputy executive director of
the California Academic Standards Commission.

Sheila, in turn, persuaded five scholars to assist with the project. We’ve trusted these folks before; each
played a prominent role in our reviews of state standards. Given the seriousness with which their work has
been taken by both friends and foes of Fordham, we knew that their reviews of the AP and IB courses would
be thoughtful, astute, and fair. ★
In history, we turned to Lucien Ellington of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga to review IB World
History and its “Americas” option, and to Sheldon Stern, formerly of the John F. Kennedy Library, to review
AP U.S. History. Both are defenders of history courses that are chronologically structured and content-rich,
eschewing the trend that emphasizes social-studies-like “themes” such as continuity and change.

Paul Gross handled the reviews of AP and IB biology courses. A former head of the Marine Biological
Laboratory at Woods Hole and former provost of the University of Virginia, Gross understands that students
cannot develop the creative and critical skills needed to ask the probing questions that lead to scientific
advances unless they first learn the terminology and hard facts of science.

For English, we asked Carol Jago to review the IB course and Sheila Byrd herself to handle the AP course.
Ms. Jago directs the California Reading and Literature Project at UCLA and edits the quarterly journal
California English. Both of them respect the study of literary criticism but understand the importance of
mastering a core set of great literary works.

David Klein advised on the reviews of AP and IB calculus. A professor of mathematics at California State
University, Northridge, Dr. Klein has long held that students must master analytical skills first—and not
depend overmuch on calculators to replace brainwork.

5
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
Foreword

We are grateful for their hard work, sound judgment, and keen analytical skills. We also appreciate the work of
the many staff members who contributed to this study, including Fordham intern Heather Cope. We also thank
Anne Himmelfarb, who copyedited the report, and Holli Rathman, who created the pages’ appealing design.

The results that Sheila and her team returned to us were mostly encouraging. Our reviewers looked at the
four AP and IB courses most similar to the core content areas in American high schools—English, history,
math, and science—and found that, in general, the courses do warrant praise. In a few cases, they deserve
gold stars. Both biology courses scored As, and the English and history courses all secured grades in the B
range. (Readers familiar with Fordham will know that high grades are hard to come by around here.) Math,
on the other hand, fared less well: the IB math course earned a B-, while AP Calculus emerged with a C+.

On the whole, these programs succeed for two reasons. First, both set high academic standards and goals
for learning that are well delineated for teachers, students, and parents. Equally important, the exams for
both programs are well aligned to their standards, testing students on the content of their courses and con-
siderably more. Students are also expected to make sense of complex, and sometimes contradictory, mate-
rials; to write and defend their opinions about these materials intelligently; and to apply their knowledge
in creative and productive ways. These are all skills that will serve them well in later years—and that should
find their way into state standards, too.

Second, these programs are linked with real-world benefits. AP and IB students not only develop knowl-
edge and skills that better prepare them for college, but they can earn college credit for their efforts—a good
motivation to stay with the program.

That’s not to say that these programs are perfect. Though generally strong, there are some disturbing holes
in their curricula, especially in the math courses and in the reading lists for both programs’ English courses.

And while we’re generally happy with AP and IB, we don’t believe that every school in the country should rush
to embrace them for all students. Though this issue is beyond the scope of our study, it’s worth noting that suc-
cessful implementation of these programs depends on the availability of talented, motivated, and well-educated
teachers. As long as teacher certification regimes, school-district HR processes, and collective bargaining agree-
ments conspire against the recruitment and development of such teachers at scale, particularly in our neediest
schools, then the experiment to radically democratize access to the AP and IB programs is fraught with risk.

Nor can we be certain that these programs will maintain their rigor in the future. The College Board, for
example, is currently revising its history and science curricula to address the criticisms of “progressive” edu-
cators. Under the proposed changes, as we understand them, U.S. history students may spend less time
studying the names, dates, events, documents, and movements important to our history, and more time
★ talking about such themes as “politics and citizenship” or “continuity and change.” Science students may
also spend more time on themes (“science as progress,” for example) and on “investigative” learning, and
less time on the material and terminology required to work at more-advanced levels.

These decisions are not set in stone, and it’s important for individuals and organizations to register their
concerns now. For if the College Board kowtows to trendy ideas on history and science, it is more likely to
do the same when other courses come up for revision.

For now though, AP and IB deserve most of the esteem in which they are held. Parts of the two programs are
24-karat (alignment of standards to exams, the AP and IB science courses), while others are less pure (their
math offerings, for example). But they’re mostly gold and mostly worthy of emulation.

6
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
 Introduction

Introduction
★ ★ ★ ★

The Power of AP and IB

Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate. AP and IB. The names and acronyms roll like mantras
off the tongues of true believers.

For many people committed to strong academic standards, the “advanced” high school courses offered through
the College Board’s Advanced Placement program and, increasingly, the Diploma Programme of the
International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO) represent the curricular gold standard for secondary education.
Admissions directors and professors at America’s most competitive colleges have long encouraged this view.

Federal policymakers have also caught the AP/IB bug. They see in these courses the opportunity to give many
more children access to first-rate curricula, so they’ve poured a lot of money into them. In 2006, for example,
the U.S. Department of Education awarded thirty-three grants, totaling $17 million, to boost participation
among low-income students in Advanced Placement courses and tests. The Department of Education has also
awarded over $2 million to the International Baccalaureate of North America to seed its expansion in Title I
schools, and IBO receives financial support through the department’s Magnet Schools Assistance Program.

Numerous state-level incentive programs also seek to boost participation in AP and IB. Many states, for
example, will pay students’ exam fees; teachers may receive bonuses if their students pass the exams; and
some states are even beginning to require their school districts to offer AP and IB.1

Philanthropists keen to raise academic achievement have given serious money to these programs, too. The
National Math and Science Initiative, Inc. (NMSI), launched by ExxonMobil, gave $13 million to increase to
150 the number of school districts offering AP and pre-AP math, science, and English courses.2 In 2006, the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation made a $16 million grant to help the College Board expand its EXCELerator
program in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Duval County, Florida. Designed to improve graduation and col-
lege readiness rates, particularly for low-income and minority students, EXCELerator is “aimed at dramatical-
ly increasing enrollment and success in advanced courses—especially Advanced Placement (AP) courses.”3

Taken at face value, policies that induce more students to sign up for rigorous high school courses are swell. Only ★
a churl would argue against offering the best educational opportunities to more youngsters. As Robert Maynard
Hutchins remarked decades ago, “The best education for the best is the best education for all.” Both AP and IB
have been around for a long time (about fifty and forty years respectively); competitive universities around the
planet use their student assessment data to make admissions or placement decisions; and the excellence of U.S.
high schools is increasingly judged (e.g., by Newsweek) by the number of AP or IB courses they offer.

Yet not everyone has climbed onto this education bandwagon. Ironically, some of the very institutions that
gave AP its sheen—elite private and public high schools—are actually climbing off, even as more rural,
minority, and inner-city students gain access to this program.4 Critics such as some educators at Scarsdale
High School suggest that the mission of education is not “to steal a head start on college” by allowing stu-
dents to earn college credit and shorten their stay at institutions of higher learning; it is rather to cultivate
“habits of mind” such as “ambiguity, persistence in the face of setbacks, and the ability to work with oth-
ers on complex problems.”5 Scarsdale High School is now in a transition period, phasing out many AP cours-
es and replacing them with advanced courses of their own design. Some elite private schools, like the
Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., have also dropped all but a few AP courses, opting—like
Scarsdale High—to create their own intensive or “advanced topic” courses. These educators posit that AP
courses are too rigid, confining, and single-minded, that they are a means to the ends of college admissions
and credit rather than an opportunity for deep learning.

7
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
Introduction

At the same time, selective colleges and universities are showing some discomfort with the swelling popula-
tion of students taking advanced coursework; they’ve been raising the minimum AP exam score that students
must earn before the institutions will award them college credit. Some observers insist that the shift is
prompted by college finances—better to collect four full years of tuition than to permit students to place out
of multiple semesters without paying a cent for those credits. Others say it’s an effort to increase institution-
al prestige in the ever more competitive admissions environment. Still others contend that the shift in policy
reflects a real apprehension that the AP course content and exam-scoring rubrics have been watered down in
order to attract more (and more diverse) participants. More minority students are indeed taking AP classes,
though they are not passing the tests at rates comparable to white students.6 In response to concerns about
course-quality slippage, the College Board is now requiring that it approve teachers’ syllabi before a course can
rightfully be labeled “AP.” Some teachers familiar with the audit doubt its ability to ensure quality control.7

AP and IB—Pure Gold?

For all the attention given to AP and IB, few have focused on the most important questions of all: are these
programs teaching students the right stuff? Will a young person completing their courses and passing their
tests have learned the most important things they will need to know in order to succeed in college and beyond?

To be sure, strong opinions exist on this subject, especially from the fringes. Educational progressives fret
that AP courses are “a mile wide and an inch deep” and overly focused on “content”; some political con-
servatives grumble that the IB is an internationalist plot, designed to undermine American exceptionalism
and culture. In the education mainstream, however, most practitioners, business leaders, and policymakers
seem instinctively (or by habituation) to trust the AP and IB brands as marks of curricular excellence.

We wondered whether this trust is warranted, whether AP and IB should, in fact, be considered the gold standard
for secondary education. If the content and skills taught by these courses really do represent what most, maybe
even all, high school school graduates should ideally have mastered, then access to these programs should sure-
ly be widened. If not, why spend so much time, money, and energy to encourage their proliferation when states
are already expending significant amounts of each to refine and strengthen their own standards-based systems and
improve articulation between their K-12 systems and the requirements of colleges, universities, and employers?8

This study is designed to determine whether these courses indeed represent a gold standard, and to assist
policymakers as they gauge the worth of expanding AP and IB throughout the land.

★ Overview of the AP and IB Programs

The Advanced Placement Program was seeded over fifty years ago when faculty from elite U.S prep
schools joined professors from some of the nation’s most illustrious colleges to devise a way, according to
the College Board, “to work together as part of a continuous process, to see themselves as two halves of a
common enterprise.” The group published a report in 1952 recommending that secondary schools “recruit
imaginative teachers, that they encourage seniors to engage in independent study and college-level work,
and that achievement exams be used to allow students to enter college with advanced standing.”9 Pilot
exams began in 1956, and today the College Board offers tests in thirty-seven subjects. Although the pro-
gram was designed as a college placement incentive, taking AP courses has clearly become a significant fac-
tor in the college admissions process. Counselors often tell students that they must complete a certain num-
ber of AP courses to be deemed plausible candidates to enter America’s best colleges and universities.

Despite the stakes involved in AP courses, the College Board does not require teachers to be specially
trained in any way before they teach them. Nor does the board mandate how these courses are structured
and presented, as IB does to a greater extent.

Still, AP teachers aren’t left to fend entirely for themselves. The College Board makes available—in many
cases online—course outlines and teachers’ guides, along with sample exam questions and syllabi. Teachers
may also purchase curricular materials from the College Board and pay to participate in the many profes-
sional development activities it offers throughout the country.

8
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
Students take “on-demand” exams at the end of an AP course, each of which includes roughly sixty multi-

Introduction
ple choice (“selected” response) questions and several essay (“constructed” or “free” response) questions.
Students earn scores of one to five, five being the highest. Historically, scores of three or higher yielded cred-
it for matriculating students at U.S. colleges and universities, although an increasing number of colleges are
raising their minimum scores for credit. Harvard University, for example, now requires a student to receive
a five on an exam in order to receive college credit. Other universities are sure to follow suit. Nonetheless,
over three thousand colleges and universities today still grant credit for AP scores of three or above.

Nearly 60 percent of U.S. high schools participate in the AP program. High schools may offer as many AP
courses as they like, and students may take as few or as many of these courses as they want, though schools
often establish prerequisites for enrolling in them.

The cost of AP to individual schools varies greatly. The only set costs are for the exams themselves, which generate
a significant revenue stream for the College Board (two million exams annually at $84 each). Schools may opt to send
their teachers to professional development seminars sponsored by AP, at an average cost of $125 per workshop.

The International Baccalaureate’s Diploma Programme (DP) was founded in 1968 “to facilitate the inter-
national mobility of students preparing for university by providing schools with a curriculum and diploma
recognized by universities around the world.”10 Today, the Diploma Programme is a two-year curriculum
for high school juniors and seniors, offered in 126 countries and forty-four states in the U.S., plus the
District of Columbia. While the IBO has more recently introduced a Middle Years Programme (MYP) and a
Primary Years Programme (PYP), the DP is far more prevalent, with roughly twice as many DPs in North
America and the Caribbean as MYPs, and almost five times as many DPs as PYPs, the IBO’s newest pro-
gram offering. (Both the PYP and MYP are designed to prepare students for the DP.)

Universities can grant college credit for successful completion of the Diploma Programme (if students attain
designated scores on IB assessments) much in the same way that they grant credit for AP courses. Most com-
petitive universities in Europe offer recognition for the IB diploma, though currently just 828 U.S. colleges and
universities offer credit for IB coursework. Still, the IB program is growing, especially in North America, and
particularly in the United States. Since 1997, the number of diploma programs in North America has grown
from 227 to 624. In 2007, there were 27,960 diplomas awarded worldwide, with 10,146 of them awarded in
the United States (up 7 percent from 2006). As it grows in recognition, the IB program is also becoming both
a placement and an admissions vehicle.

Unlike the AP program, which permits schools to offer as many or as few courses as they choose, the IBO requires
that schools offer its complete program; they cannot pick and choose. Coursework is divided into six groups:
★
Group 1: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Language A1 (literature)
Group 2: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Second Language (foreign language)
Group 3: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Individuals and Societies (e.g., history, economics)
Group 4: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Experimental Sciences
Group 5: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mathematics and Computer Science
Group 6: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Arts

Students must take courses in each of the six groups. However, there are two exceptions. If a student is flu-
ent in two languages, he or she can take a second Group 1 subject instead of a Group 2 subject. The other
exception is that students may replace a Group 6 subject with another subject from Groups 2, 3, 4, or 5.

Nearly all subjects are offered in two flavors, Standard Level (SL) and Higher Level (HL). In general, SL
courses are 150 classroom hours in length, and HL courses are 240 hours. Students must study three of their
six subjects at the higher level, allowing them to explore areas of interest in greater depth and at a more
rigorous level. Comprehensive curriculum guides contain course aims, objectives, a syllabus “outline” and
“details,” and assessment “details” and “criteria.”

9
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
Introduction

Students are assessed “internally” at the classroom level (through essays, oral examinations, or other proj-
ects graded by teachers) and “externally” (through exams prepared, administered, and scored by IB exam-
iners) in all six content areas. For the courses we examined, the external assessments count for 70 to 80
percent of a student’s final course grade.

All IB assessments measure individual performance against stated objectives delineated in the curriculum
guides published by the IBO. Teachers grade the internal assessments using the criteria specified by curricu-
lum guides and by “markschemes” (which have instructions for grading and examples of graded exams).
To ensure that teachers mark exams correctly, each year they must submit samples of student work and
assigned grades to IB officials for “moderation.” IB examiners have the right to change the grade.

To receive an IB diploma, students must complete the required coursework and pass both internal and exter-
nal exams. They must also fulfill these core requirements:

★ A passing grade on a four thousand-word “extended essay,” comparable to a rigorous research

paper or thesis, on a topic of the student’s choosing.
★ Successful completion of the interdisciplinary Theory of Knowledge (TOK) course, designed to
provide “coherence” by exploring the nature of knowledge across all disciplines. This course
requires a twelve- to sixteen-hundred-word essay.
★ Successful completion of the Creativity, Action, Service (CAS) requirement. Participation in a
school’s CAS program requires students to be involved in artistic pursuits, sports, and community
service work.

Students are awarded “diploma points” for completing each of these requirements and must earn a set num-
ber of points to earn an IB diploma. Additional diploma points are awarded for performing well on the inter-
nal and external assessments described above.

Before schools are authorized by the IBO to offer the Diploma Programme, they must complete a rigorous
self-study and other accreditation-type measures. Moreover, formal teacher training is required of all IB
teachers. Once a school is authorized to offer the program, it is reevaluated every five years.

The annual fee for schools to offer the Diploma Programme is currently $8,850 per school, and the cost to
IB students is $627 for the diploma, which is based on a candidate registration fee of $123 and six subject
fees of $84 each.

10
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
Grading AP and IB

Introduction
What We Reviewed
The key reason for appraising the IB and AP programs was to gauge their use as curricular gold standards or
models for U.S. high schools, so we opted to examine the courses in both programs that most closely repre-
sent the four typical U.S. core-content areas for U.S. high school students: English, history, science, and math.

For the AP program, we looked at the following four courses:

★ English Literature and Composition
★ U.S. History
★ Biology
★ AB Calculus (There are two calculus courses offered: AB, which covers two-thirds of a year-long col-
lege calculus course, and BC, which covers a full year of college calculus. We reviewed the AB course.)

For the IB Diploma Programme, we looked at the following four courses:

★ Language A1 English—Standard Level11 (Because the program is international, no U.S. literature
course exists.)
★ World History—Standard Level12 (We also looked at, but did not issue a grade for, the “Americas”
option. This covers the U.S., Latin America, and Canada and is offered only to students studying
World History HL. Because the IB curriculum is “international,” no explicit U.S. history course
exists.)
★ Biology—Standard Level
★ Mathematics—Standard Level (This is the base course for students who don’t plan to major in a
math-intensive subject, such as physics, in college.)

These IB courses span four of the six groups of courses described in the previous section (“Language A1,”
“Individuals and Societies,” “Experimental Sciences,” and “Mathematics and Computer Sciences,” respec-
tively). Because we examined the courses that most closely resemble the four U.S. core-content areas, we
did not look at some other courses that IB requires, such as second languages and the arts.

The Reviewers
The reviewers for all four subjects are experts in their fields and veteran evaluators of state academic stan-
dards. Their prior work for the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation in examining state standards enabled us to
make rough comparisons between those standards and the academic expectations of AP and IB.

To review the AP and IB biology materials, we turned to the eminent biologist Paul Gross, former head of ★
the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole and former provost of the University of Virginia. He
authored Fordham’s The State of State Science Standards 2005.

Lucien Ellington, professor of history at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, was called upon to
review the IB World History course as well as that course’s “Americas” option. An expert in Japanese his-
tory and editor of Education About Asia, he also has considerable experience with K-12 curricula. He works
closely with the Core Knowledge Foundation and has evaluated a number of states’ world history standards.
He was involved in the Fordham review of state standards for world history in 2006.

American historian Sheldon Stern reviewed the AP U.S. history curriculum. Retired from his post as histori-
an at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, he was the founder and director of the American History Project
for High School Students. He has authored Averting “The Final Failure”: John F. Kennedy and the Secret Cuban
Missile Crisis Meetings, as well as the Fordham publication Effective State Standards for U.S. History: A 2003
Report Card. Dr. Stern has also been immersed in developing and evaluating K-12 standards in Massachusetts
and has received numerous awards for his work promoting U.S. history in secondary schools.

11
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
Introduction

The AP and IB math course reviews were written by Chester E. Finn, Jr., Martin A. Davis, Jr., and myself
with critical guidance from David Klein, professor of mathematics at California State University, Northridge,
who has deep experience in K-12 math issues. He previously led the Fordham Foundation study that pro-
duced The State of State Math Standards 2005.

Reviewers for the AP and IB English courses are both former high school English teachers. Carol Jago, who
reviewed the IB Language A course, has taught English in middle and high school in Santa Monica,
California, for thirty-two years. She also directs the California Reading and Literature Project at UCLA and
edits the California Association of Teachers of English quarterly journal, California English. Ms. Jago par-
ticipated in Fordham’s 2005 review of state English standards and is currently vice-president-elect of the
National Council of Teachers of English.

I reviewed the AP English Literature and Composition course and served as lead investigator for this proj-
ect. I have taught English in D.C. public schools, as well as in international schools in Italy and Japan.
Outside the classroom, I served as the founding director of the American Diploma Project, and, before that,
as the deputy executive director of the California Academic Standards Commission. I have helped develop
K-12 content standards, curricula, and assessments in over a dozen states, overseas, and for charter schools
in New York and Washington, D.C.

Grading the Curricula

We asked our reviewers to consider the following criteria as they determined the extent to which a course
reflects a legitimate gold standard for U.S. high school students:

1. Content (60 percent of grade)

The content of course outlines and associated exams was considered with an eye toward answer-
ing these questions:
a. Is the content properly chosen, and does it reflect a gold standard for what graduating high
school students should know and be able to do in this content area? Do the materials provid-
ed to teachers by the examining body (e.g., course outline/guidelines/curriculum) provide suf-
ficient guidance about the content knowledge and skills required to do well on the exam?
b. Does the exam align to the content of the course guidelines/curriculum set forth by the exam-
ining body? If not, are the content and performance expectations of the exam better or worse
than the course guidelines/curriculuma at setting a “gold standard” for exiting high school
seniors? Why or why not?

★ 2. Rigor (30 percent of grade)

A course could have good content (criterion 1, above), and that content could be described in a
clear, organized way (criterion 3, below), yet the course overall might still not have an appropriate
level of intellectual challenge for exiting high school seniors (as reflected in the exam as well as in
course outlines). Overall, how rigorous is the course?

3. Clarity (10 percent of grade)

Are the materials understandable, well organized, and teacher-friendly?

12
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
Summary of Findings

Introduction
Applying the above criteria, reviewers developed summary grades for each of the courses. Awarded grades
ranged from “C” to “A.” English and biology courses in both programs earned the highest grades, while
math and history courses received less praise.

(The detailed reviews, by course, follow this overview.)

Table 1: Grades for Advanced Placement Courses

Advanced Placement Grades Overall Strengths and Weaknesses
Course by Criterion Grade

AP English Literature Content (60%) B+ B+ STRENGTHS: Rigorous and

and Composition Rigor (30%) A comprehensive exam; “Formalist”
Clarity (10%) B- approach to writing

WEAKNESSES: Curricular
expectations tentative, must be
discovered by teachers; the
teacher’s guide, once the user
actually finds it, is difficult
to navigate.

AP Calculus AB Content (60%) C C+ STRENGTHS: Course description

Rigor* (30%) C clearly written; exam well-crafted
*includes mathematical reasoning and aligned to curriculum
Clarity (10%) B
WEAKNESSES: Missing or abridged
topics of importance; overreliance
on technology, resulting in a
de-emphasis on analytical skills

AP U.S. History Content (60%) B- B- STRENGTHS: Demanding, well-

Rigor (30%) B- constructed, content-rich exam ★
Clarity (10%) B-
WEAKNESSES: Unifying themes are
tendentious, emphasizing pluribus
instead of unum; topics mention
very few actual historical events;
sample syllabi disconnected from
course description

AP Biology Content (60%) A- A- STRENGTHS: Course description is

Rigor (30%) B specific and straightforward;
Clarity (10%) A demanding exam assesses
conceptual understanding, but
is also content-rich

WEAKNESSES: Exam content more

shallow than an introductory
biology class for majors at
research universities

13
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
Introduction

Table 2: Grades for International Baccalaureate Courses

International Grades Overall Strengths and Weaknesses
Baccalaureate Course by Criterion Grade

Language A English SL Content (60%) B B+ STRENGTHS: Rigorous and

Rigor (30%) A comprehensive exam;
Clarity (10%) A detailed and rigorous expectations
for literary analysis skills

WEAKNESSES: U.S. students in IB

programs might miss exposure to
core U.S. literature

Math SL Content (60%) B- B- STRENGTHS: Curriculum guide clearly

Rigor* (30%) C written; rigorous, comprehensive
*includes mathematical reasoning assessments
Clarity (10%) B
WEAKNESSES: Reliance on
technology, resulting in a
de-emphasis on analytical skills;
some important pre-university
content missing

World History SL Content (60%) C B- STRENGTHS: Demanding, well-

Rigor (30%) A constructed, content-rich exams;
Clarity (10%) B strong content within the narrowly
defined course parameters

WEAKNESSES: U.S. students in IB

programs could miss exposure to
almost all core U.S. History content;
even as a world history course, its
★ 20th-century focus is too narrow;
lacks emphasis on important
chronological knowledge

Biology SL Content (60%) A+ A STRENGTHS: Depth and coverage of

Rigor (30%) A+ content in curriculum guide;
Clarity (10%) C comprehensive assessment system

WEAKNESSES: “Systematization” of
the program could confuse or
overwhelm teachers or stifle
curricular inventiveness

14
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
English

Introduction
Both the AP English Literature and Composition and the IB Language A1 English SL courses earned high
marks (B+) from our reviewers. These courses require students to be well grounded in literary genres and
forms, to understand the identifying characteristics of important works, and to appreciate the stylistic tech-
niques that enliven those works. Both reviewers praise the exams associated with these courses, but express
caution about the density and verbosity of the AP Teacher’s Guide and the IB Curriculum Guide. Concerns
are especially acute for the AP guide.

Neither AP English Literature and Composition nor IB Language A1 SL requires all students to read specif-
ic works of literature, meaning that teachers of both courses must select works that will sufficiently prepare
their students for the exam. The AP provides a list of “representative” authors (not “required” or even “rec-
ommended”). The IB list is more prescriptive, requiring that most books for the course come from one of
two lengthy reading lists. Teachers must select titles in certain genres and eras, ensuring that students
receive broad exposure, but teachers are given wide latitude in selecting books.

If U.S. high school students took either of these courses as their only upper-level literature course, we could
not be confident that they would explore and analyze a comprehensive body of foundational U.S. literature.
The AP list leaves too much choice to the teacher, while the IB list is, by design, international in scope and
thus could limit the number of American authors that students read. The risk is probably greater in the case
of the IB course because its students must enroll in the IB program in eleventh grade, leaving little room for
electives during the final two years of high school. By contrast, a student could take AP English Literature
and Composition in twelfth grade following a course in U.S. literature taken in eleventh grade, as many state
and local curricula prescribe.

History
Neither the AP U.S. History course nor the IB World History SL course receives a distinguished grade (both
earn a B-), although our reviewers have good things to say about aspects of both, especially the exams. In
AP U.S. History, the curriculum is divided into twelve themes that have little to do with one another. Hence,
students run the risk of taking a class that bounces from diversity issues to economic issues to religion to
war to slavery, with little rhyme or reason. The once-common civic core of historical knowledge, writes
reviewer Sheldon Stern, has been replaced by themes and “unifying” concepts that “barely touch on, or miss
altogether, the most historic, far-reaching, and unifying political development in early America: the evolution
of democratic bonds and cohesion from which a nation was ultimately forged with a shared and increasing-
ly inclusive commitment to political freedom, democratic values, civic participation, and individual rights.”

Yet all is not lost. The themes are meant to serve only as organizers for teachers. The College Board also provides ★
an outline of important historical facts and details that is meant to be used in conjunction with the themes.

Unfortunately, a recent decision by the College Board to redesign the U.S. history course could change this
setup. The College Board seems to be moving toward placing more emphasis on the very “themes” (or “big
ideas” in the redesign lingo) that Stern decries—potentially at the expense of required exploration of impor-
tant historical facts and events. Such a development might tip over the brink a course that already hovers
on the edge. (For more on the AP redesign, see page 17.)

The IB does not offer a U.S. history course, but for students studying world history at the higher level,
instructors can teach an Americas option, which covers U.S., Latin American, and Canadian history. Lucien
Ellington took a look at the Americas option for us to see if it could potentially serve as a model U.S. his-
tory course for American high school students. He argues that this option contains some good information,
but because it includes much more than U.S. history, the course inevitably slights important topics, events,
and people that all U.S. high school students should know.

The IB World History SL course, according to Ellington, would be first rate were it not confined to recent
times. (A new standard for World History goes into effect in September 2008. All comments refer to the 2001
guide.) Its in-depth analysis of twentieth-century history, and its requirement that students learn to do his-

15
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
Introduction

tory as well as simply read it, make the IB World History course an excellent introduction to how to study
history. Unfortunately, as structured, it all but ignores events prior to the nineteenth century. So it’s con-
ceivable that IB students could graduate with little or no grounding in Mesopotamia and Egypt, Greece and
Rome, early Islamic history, the European Middle Ages and Renaissance, the classical age of China, and
other crucial periods and cultures that set the stage for modern history.

Science
Paul Gross examined the AP Biology and the IB Biology SL courses and awarded both high marks. He
reports that the AP Biology course compares favorably with the average two-semester, introductory college
biology course. The course outline contains the necessary level of detail about essential biological content,
despite its use of some potentially troubling “themes,” “topics,” and “concepts.” Fortunately, like the AP
U.S. History “themes,” the biology themes function primarily as organizational tools, mitigating their poten-
tially tendentious effect.

As for the IB course, Gross praises the rigor and comprehensiveness both of the curriculum and of the IB’s
formative and summative assessments, especially the markschemes, which describe for teachers how and
why exams are scored as they are. His only concern is that the course is so detailed that “its documents
might threaten to confuse, or even to overwhelm, some of the teachers…charged with mounting” it.

But as with the AP U.S. History course, trouble may befall the very good AP Biology course. The College
Board has begun the process of redesigning its biology curriculum, largely in response to the National
Research Council’s 2002 review of “advanced math and science courses.” The proposed redesign may mean
that the “themes” that currently play a minor role in the curriculum will ultimately achieve greater empha-
sis and have a deleterious effect on the course.

Among the NRC’s recommendations for changes was that the sponsoring organizations “evaluate their
assessments to make sure they measure the conceptual understanding and complex reasoning that should
be the primary goal of advanced study.”13 Interestingly enough, Gross remarks, both the AP and IB already
do a fair job of this, while still maintaining an important and necessary emphasis on factual knowledge.
(For more on the redesign, see page 17.)

Math
Both the AP Calculus AB and the IB Mathematics SL courses suffer from content gaps.

In the case of the IB course, the curriculum has a decent focus on problem-solving skills, but lacks many
★ important topics, including an introduction to complex numbers, the reciprocal (and inverse) trigonomet-
ric functions, and mathematical proofs. Also, the course covers a broad number of topics, but spends too
much time on statistics. This skewed emphasis is fine, so long as the students in the course aren’t plan-
ning to take classes that involve math in college.

The IB exam’s free-response items are excellent, requiring reasoning and problem-solving skills “well
beyond the normal high school fare.” But calculators play too large a role on exams (and in the course).
As we note: “Too many of the problems are calculator based, and there is insufficient assessment of pen-
cil-and-paper algebraic skills upon which much of a university curriculum depends.”

Likewise AP Calculus AB. It, too, has noteworthy strengths. For example, it covers the Mean Value Theorem
and its geometric consequences. But the course also displays significant gaps. Among them: its failure to
treat the definition and computation of limits, and its weak treatment of the Inverse Function Theorem. And
as in the IB course, there’s too much emphasis on calculators. The AP Calculus AB exam is well crafted and
closely aligned to the curriculum, though we must be mindful that the curriculum itself contains gaps.

All told, university calculus courses do a better job than either the IB or AP in introducing students to this
material.

16
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
Conclusions

Introduction
Both the Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses that we reviewed are laudable in
varying degrees as curriculum-based programs. In general, academic expectations for these courses are
decently expressed, the end-of-course exams are well aligned to the curriculum, and the grading standards
are clearly described and accessible to teachers and students. The AP and IB curricula and exams are cer-
tainly much better than nearly all of the state standards and exams we have reviewed in years past.

A great advantage for students taking AP and IB exams is the promise of tangible benefits for those who do
well on them. Those who succeed have an advantage when they apply to or matriculate at postsecondary
institutions. By contrast, doing well on most state-developed high school exams has no notable effect on stu-
dents’ college admission or placement (unless, of course, they fail to pass and are denied their diplomas).

Finally, the IB does a very good job of keeping a tight rein on its programs and teachers. Before schools can
offer the Diploma Programme, they must be trained by the IBO. Moreover, IB seeks to ensure consistency
of course quality around the globe via a system of standard formative and summative assessments that are
administered both internally (by classroom teachers) and externally (by IB examiners). IBO maintains con-
sistency in instructional quality through its oversight of instructors. If the IBO can do all this worldwide,
one may fairly wonder why states can’t do the same.

But the AP and IB systems are not perfect. Our reviewers express specific concerns about the breadth and/or
rigor of some of these courses, and about the accessibility or clarity of expectations in others. Consider AP.
Our biggest gripe is that, very often, reading the information contained in the course outline is not the best
path to understanding what’s expected of teachers and students. Rather, teachers must review old exams to
grasp what their pupils will be tested on.

IB courses have the opposite problem. Teacher guides for courses are richly detailed, sometimes to a fault.
Both in English and biology, the lengthy, verbose documents meant to serve as a roadmap for teachers could
easily discourage or confound good instructors trying to sort out what matters and what doesn’t.

Another concern relates to the IBO’s policy that individual IB courses cannot be offered in schools that don’t
adopt the entire diploma programme. This restriction prevents more U.S. students from taking advantage of
IB courses. Contrast this to the AP program, which makes its courses available to any school with teachers
game to undertake them. We just wish the AP program had more quality control mechanisms to ensure that
classes are consistently taught to a high level. Surely somewhere between IBO’s rigid oversight and AP’s
laissez faire approach is a happy medium that ensures course quality without unnecessarily limiting the
numbers of students who can take advantage of it. ★
Our greatest concern is that the College Board might unintentionally undermine its very good courses by
redesigning them to favor “big ideas” over actual content. Currently in the second year of a five-year, four-
phase process for redesigning its science and history courses, the College Board says this process will
become the model by which all AP course redesigns are carried out in the future. Hence, the potential dam-
age could go well beyond the science and history courses currently under consideration.

Phase One (in 2006) included a review of “selected, relevant national and state standards,” though the only
standards listed in the “List of References for Science Redesign” are the National Science Education
Standards, which favor a thematic approach to defining standards rather than detailing specific content.14

At present, a panel of “experts external to the College Board”15 is conducting a “domain analysis,” using a vari-
ation of the “understanding by design” process developed by progressive educationists Grant Wiggins and Jay
McTighe. The description of the process (scheduled to conclude in 2010) asserts that the College Board “want-
ed to eschew the tendency to create lists of content and topics,” yet there are signs of a bigger problem ahead
as they prepare voluminous and complex conceptual frameworks that could confuse rather than clarify.

17
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
Introduction

Under this rubric, panelists will “come to agreement on approximately six to eight big ideas for each course.”
Under each of these big ideas, they will then identify “the enduring understandings” of each and “provide
the supporting understandings that reveal the multiple contexts in which the enduring understandings can
be manifest.”16 “Knowledge, skills and abilities” (a.k.a. content) are afterwards to be defined. One hopes.

Looks like overkill to us, an enormous process to recreate something that’s already better than good. So
often, such projects yield results that sacrifice (or at least neglect) that which made the earlier version com-
mendable. (One recalls the King James Bible, Gone With The Wind, and other masterpieces whose updates,
rewrites, and overhauls lost the magic.) Indeed, the draft graphic display we reviewed of the “enduring
understandings” and “supporting understandings” associated with just one of the “big ideas” for
Environmental Science was so dense that we had to magnify the document 500 percent just to read it. And
what we then read was less than inspiring. Even at the “supporting understandings” level, the statements
are broad and open to interpretation, such as “Indoor air quality may pose a serious human health risk.”

That version did not include the actual detailed course content that students will be expected to master.
Still, even if this content turns out OK, teachers and students may never make their way to much of it if
they must first whack through the weeds of fifty to sixty conceptual statements in order to reach the essen-
tial knowledge and skills.

Thus, the College Board may unintentionally end up exacerbating the very aspects of the courses that our
science and history reviewers found most troubling.

These concerns aside, today’s AP and IB courses and exams demonstrate that independent entities can and
do make programs and assessments that are rigorous, fair, and intellectually richer than almost any state
standard and exam for high school that we’ve seen. It’s difficult to understand why more states don’t emu-
late these programs rather than paying twice: once to develop their own standards and assessments that
don’t function effectively, and again to fund these independent programs because they do a better job.

Recommendations
In addition to asking that they consider the content-specific recommendations offered by our reviewers in
the following pages, we recommend that policymakers, the College Board, and the International
Baccalaureate Organisation also consider these suggestions:

Recommendations for Policymakers

★ ★ Either make state high school exit requirements and assessments more like the AP and the IB—and
make performance on the assessments count in the postsecondary world—or allow AP and IB cred-
its to serve as proof that students have met rigorous high school exit expectations.

States should stop wasting money creating and administering high school exit exams that test eighth- and ninth-
grade content knowledge and skills. Despite their shortcomings, these independently created curricula and
assessment systems are far more rigorous and comprehensive than the high school assessments most states
administer. They can serve as a guide for policymakers about how to make state assessments better. Although
they may be expensive, the cost might be offset by the money states would save by not simultaneously creat-
ing and requiring tests that do not provide meaningful assessments of student achievement.

★ As AP and IB grow in the U.S., it is incumbent on federal, state, and local policymakers to insist
that, where they support these programs, they also take special care to ensure that students do not
miss out on essential American history and literature content.

By making high school graduation requirements for English and history more specific and more rigorous,
districts will have to find ways to make sure that students also meet those requirements in conjunction with
any external demands imposed by programs like AP and IB.

18
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
Recommendations for the College Board

Introduction
★ Clarify and organize the content knowledge and skills for each course consistently across subjects,
and clearly indicate what content and which skills really matter. Streamline the bloated thematic
overlays and unessential prose, which tend to confound—rather than clarify—expectations.

As noted above, in most cases the AP course outlines and teachers’ guides don’t provide course instructors
with as clear a picture of what’s to be taught as do the exams themselves. It seems to us that teachers should
not have to infer from the exams what the priorities are for students’ acquisition of knowledge and skills.
In some cases, such as U.S. History, the course outline is arguably misleading. In many cases, such as
English literature, too much prose in too many documents makes it difficult to distill priorities.

We appreciate the fact that the College Board wants to allow teachers flexibility in instruction, but it could
be more transparent regarding instructional priorities without dictating how teachers should convey the nec-
essary information.

★ When redesigning AP history and science courses, don’t dilute the content by heeding progressive
educationists and postmodern academics more interested in having students discuss “big ideas” than
imparting to them broad disciplinary knowledge. Providing broad disciplinary knowledge is in fact
the intent of the introductory college classes that AP courses are meant to replicate and is arguably
the necessary foundation for productive discussions of “big ideas” in upper-level college courses.

“Step C,” as noted in the redesign process description, does allow the College Board’s secondary and post-
secondary experts a chance to identify specific content for new courses by asking: “What content knowl-
edge is appropriate for each conceptual unit or unit of analysis defined by the method(s) of course organi-
zation?” The next part of the question, however, is troubling: “What content knowledge is not necessary
for each conceptual unit or unit of analysis?” Our fear is that actual content knowledge will be de-empha-
sized as “big ideas” eclipse facts in a potentially extreme tendency to favor depth over breadth. The College
Board should take great care to make sure that doesn’t happen.

★ Monitor AP teachers’ grading policies, as the IB does, as part of the audit process.

The College Board’s AP course audit (underway now) requires only that teachers submit their syllabi to the
College Board for approval. No mechanisms are in place to ensure that these syllabi are actually taught, or
that the people submitting them will teach the course from one year to the next. In short, the audit will not
supply convincing evidence by itself that the teacher knows the material or is up to the challenge of teach-
ing it. The audit does not require any other quality check once the syllabus is approved. Without such a ★
check, the AP exams are apt to continue to serve as the College Board’s only mechanism for quality con-
trol. Adopting a common syllabus for each course would be another way to ensure more consistency in
course quality, without prescribing teaching methods.

If the College Board really wants to ensure consistency in the quality of instruction, it may need to consid-
er adopting policies, such as those used by the IB, to require internal assessment and/or monitoring of con-
sistency among teachers’ grading policies. IB teachers must submit samples of student work, along with
their assigned grades, to the IBO for external moderation. Grades may be changed if the IBO thinks the work
was judged erroneously against the IB criteria.

Recommendations for the International Baccalaureate Organisation

★ The IBO should streamline its curriculum guides to make them less verbose and more user-friendly.

Given the complex nature of the formative and summative assessments required for each IB course, it won’t
be easy to streamline these guides, but an attempt to collapse some of their component parts would be help-
ful for teachers. Most of the guides contain aims, objectives, topic outlines, and assessment criteria, distinc-
tions among which are not always obvious. While we know that IB requires its teachers to be trained, it
might also consider explaining in a slightly more prescriptive way how the component parts of each cur-

19
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
Introduction

riculum guide could be organized into a syllabus. For example, the Language A guide could specify which
works are good vehicles for instruction in the specific methods of literary analysis, currently disembodied
in the “Aims” and “Objectives” sections of the guides. More prescription would leave less room for inter-
pretation and confusion on the part of the teacher, without obstructing creativity in instructional methods.
★ To the extent that the International Baccalaureate Organization wants to increase its presence in the United
States, it should consider allowing some of its courses to be taught apart from the Diploma Programme.
Schools offering the Diploma Programme do allow students to take IB courses without striving for the whole
diploma, but IBO might also consider allowing students whose campuses don’t offer the programme to par-
ticipate in some kind of exchange with other schools within a district, whereby more students could take some
of the IB courses. Alternatively, charter high schools, many of which are small and don’t have the resources
for such programs, might pool resources in order to offer an IB program to a consortium of charters in the
same geographic area. State and philanthropic money could be earmarked to support such programs.
★★★

This report began by asking whether AP and IB are legitimately viewed as gold standards for secondary edu-
cation—whether, that is, they teach U.S. high school students what they should know and be able to do
upon graduation. Our overall analysis of these two programs—their courses, assessments, and quality con-
trol—leads to the conclusion that neither is pure gold, but both are far from fool’s gold. Each could legiti-
mately be sold and bought as gold alloyed with lesser metals.
Clearly, AP and IB set higher goals for students than those established by the states, and their assessments
set a standard of excellence that states should aspire to for more, if not all, of their students.
So as state and federal policymakers continue looking for ways to offer all K-12 students a top-flight educa-
tion, tempered enthusiasm for AP and IB, both as programs in their own right and as models for others, is
warranted. Neither is twenty-four-karat gold. But even alloyed as they are with lesser metals, at the high
school level they gleam brighter than any state-mandated standards or other curricular guidelines current-
ly available for widespread use in the United States.
1
Arkansas now requires that all school districts in the state offer AP courses. In Georgia, the legislature this year approved a bill requiring
that twenty-four college credits be awarded upon matriculation to students who complete the IB diploma program, but the governor vetoed
it. Legislators say they will take it up again. The National Governors Association has awarded $500,000 to six states to encourage expan-
sion of their AP programs.
2
For details, see http://nationalmathandscience.org/content/view/41/100/. Focused on expanding “STEM” programs (those geared towards
science, technology, mathematics, and engineering) in U.S. schools, NMSI also proposes to award bonuses of $250 to students who pass
AP science, math, and English exams.
3
For details, see “College Board EXCELerator Schools Fact Sheet” at http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/about/news_info/
excelerator.pdf.
★ 4
For schools dropping the AP program, see Jay Mathews, “Eager for Flexibility, a Handful of Schools Drop AP,” The Washington Post, May
31, 2005. For the rise in rural, inner-city, and minority students signing up for AP, see, http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads
/about/news_info/ap/2007/2007_ap-report-nation.pdf (p. 6).
5
Joe Berger, “Demoting Advanced Placement,” The New York Times, October 4, 2006.
6
Daniel de Vise, “Study: Black Students Lag in Success on AP Tests,” The Boston Globe, June 29, 2007, at http://www.boston.com/news/
education/k_12/articles/2007/06/29/study_black_students_lag_in_success_on_ap_tests/. See also a study by the College Board at
http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/about/news_info/ap/2007/2007_ap-report-nation.pdf (p. 84).
7
Jay Mathews, “Auditors Rejecting AP Course Syllabuses,” The Washington Post, September 2, 2007.
8
See Achieve, Inc., Closing the Expectations Gap 2007, available at http://www.achieve.org/files/50-state-07-Final.pdf.
9
See http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/program/history/8019.html.
10
See http://www.ibo.org/history/.
11
Of all students taking Language A1, 97.5 percent took the HL. We chose to review the SL course because the HL course is designated for stu-
dents who plan to major in English in college, versus the SL course, which appears to more closely resemble what all students might need
for any postsecondary path.
12
Of all students taking World History, 94 percent took the HL. We chose the review the SL course because the HL course is designated for stu-
dents who plan to major in history or related humanities program in college, versus the SL course, which appears to more closely resemble
what all students might need for any postsecondary path.
13
National Academy of Sciences, Learning and Understanding: Improving Advanced Study of Mathematics and Science in U.S. High Schools
(Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2002), p. 14.
14
The College Board, A Description of the AP Curriculum and Assessment Redesign Process v3.0 (2007), appendix B, p. 22.
15
Ibid, p. 5. The composition of experts is as follows: five to six secondary educators; five to six postsecondary educators or practitioners selected
“based on demonstrated commitment to expert teaching.” Nominations were sought from “a variety of professional organizations.”
16
Ibid., p. 9.

20
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
★
Reviews of Courses and Exams
Advanced Placement Biology

Advanced Placement Biology

By Paul Gross

I. Documents Reviewed

★ AP Biology Course Description, May 2006, May 2007 (http://www.collegeboard.com/stu-

dent/testing/ap/sub_bio.html?biology)

★ Teacher’s Guide, AP Biology, College Entrance Examination Board, 2000

★ AP Biology Released Exam, College Entrance Examination Board, 2002

★ Four sample AP Biology syllabi

★ Free-Response Questions, Form B Questions, Scoring Guidelines for 2004

II. Introduction
The mundane is prominent in the AP Biology Course Description, which contains the College Board’s offi-
cial introduction to this program. The course purpose and goal are explicitly stated: AP Biology is designed
as the equivalent of, and sometimes a substitute for, a two-semester introductory college biology course for
majors. Having stated this intention, however, the Course Description devolves into the commonplace. It
offers themes, topics, and concepts as an organizing principle—the same boilerplate headings that many
state academic standards employ, complete with their characteristic insistence upon inquiry-based learning.

It’s not a useless approach to the multidimensional matrix of knowledge that is modern biology. But it hard-
ly encourages one to believe that the AP course will deliver on its straightforward promise of providing “the
equivalent of, and sometimes a substitute for, a two-semester introductory college biology course for majors.”

Fortunately, the organizing principle doesn’t prevent the Course Description from spelling out the core con-
cepts, facts, and details that a student of biology needs to master. In the hands of a competent and savvy
teacher, this aspirational document could be the basis for a top-flight overview of the discipline.
★
The content and assessment emphases were developed using extensive—and continuing—surveys of col-
lege faculty who are active in teaching introductory biology, and reflect current prejudices about the biolog-
ical subdisciplines. That choice of content results in the following standard design and weighting for the
course and the assessments:

★ Molecules and Cells, 25 percent

★ Heredity and Evolution, 25 percent
★ Organisms and Populations, 50 percent

This is a fair enough representation of modern introductory college biology, although the first two categories
do, or ought to, overlap. There is no longer much distinction between the subject matter of Molecules and Cells
and that of Heredity and Evolution. The frontiers of genetics and evolutionary biology are, to a large extent,
now located in molecular genetics, molecular systematics and phylogeny, and in “evo-devo”—evolutionary
developmental biology.1 In all those, considerations of cellular and molecular processes are indispensable.

22
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
III. Content

Reviews of Courses and Exams

A. Course Description
There are eight major themes in this course:

I. Science as Process
II. Evolution
III. Energy Transfer
IV. Continuity and Change
V. Relationship Between Structure and Function
VI. Regulation
VII. Interdependence in Nature
VIII. Science, Technology, and Society

Themes I and VIII open the door to a good deal of insubstantial philosophy of science and sociology/politics/cur-
rent events that could be inserted by weak or politically motivated teachers, but they add little to the hard core of
knowledge about living things that needs to be learned. The purpose of a good introductory college course is at most
only secondarily to promote sociocultural wisdom or good citizenship. The purpose, rather, is to inculcate some
hard-core knowledge—and foster in students the ability and desire to acquire more knowledge independently.

Fortunately, despite AP’s inclusion of Themes I and VIII in the course description, those two lead to little
that affects the assessments. Themes II through VII are adequately comprehensive, and they govern both
the course and the exam. They are thoughtfully chosen, provide a very good elementary survey of biology,
and appear to align with the AP exams. Most modern college courses highlight these matters, if not as
explicit themes, then at least as substantive content to be acquired.

Course organization, in short, including its description, intelligibility, and specificity (for which the
Teacher’s Guide is especially valuable), is straightforward, as are the statements of purpose.

B. Assessments
The exam is divided into two parts: multiple choice (MC) questions, which are worth 60 percent of the
score, and free-response (essay) questions, which make up the remaining 40 percent.

The Teacher’s Guide states that the MC questions “now reward conceptual understanding, application, and
integration more than fact recall.” Perhaps they do; but fortunately, those rewards are piled atop an
unchanged requirement for recalling a large array of facts. The publicly available released exam of 2002 is
packed with MC questions designed to test “conceptual understanding.” But in order to answer them, the ★
student must first—in every case—recall plenty of facts.

Consider the following sample question: “Which of the following is true about the production of polar bod-
ies in humans? (A) It increases genetic variability. (B) It provides the maximum amount of cytoplasm and
resources to the ovum. (C) It occurs in male and female vertebrates during meiosis I. (D) It is completed
prior to fertilization. (E) It results in nondisjunction.”

Yes, this question tests conceptual understanding of gametogenesis, but before the test-taker can even begin to
conceptualize, he or she must know the following facts (an initial list): the definition of a polar body, the cyto-
genetics of polar body formation, whether or not there is some universal relation between the “cytoplasm and
resources” of polar bodies and those of the ova from which they come (there is), whether or not male vertebrates
have any cells that undergo meiosis (they do, but they don’t form polar bodies), whether polar bodies can form
after fertilization (in some species they do), and what nondisjunction might possibly have to do with the ques-
tion (nothing!). In short, a distinction in this question between conceptual and factual content is vacuous.

Likewise, the free-response questions require students to conceptualize, as they should, but this in no way
reduces the student’s burden of knowing the terms of reference and the facts to which they refer. Biological
facts are everywhere embedded in the language of these tests—to their credit.

23
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
Advanced Placement Biology

If there is a gripe to be had with the assessments, it may be that occasional ambiguities in the MC ques-
tions are likely to throw the most clever students off base. For example, question 28 of the 2002 exam asks:
“As the initial cleavage divisions proceed in a frog embryo, which of the following results?” The choices
offered are: “(A) The embryo increases in size. (B) The cytoplasmic content of the individual cells increas-
es. (C) The yolk mass increases in size. (D) Individual cells become smaller. (E) Individual cells become
haploid.” The indicated correct answer is D.

Now, it is certainly true that individual cells become smaller. But the clever student who has studied and
absorbed frog embryology will have some doubts. To wit: Answers A, C, and E are quickly discounted. This
leaves B and D. D first. Although D is true, the student reasons, there’s a huge range of cell sizes in the
early embryo. Some are big and fat and full of yolk. Some are small and have no yolk at all. So on to B. It
certainly is true that, as cleavage proceeds, most of the new cells are forming at the animal pole, and that’s
where most of the clear cytoplasm is. As those little cells are cut up into smaller and smaller cells, the few
yolk granules left are squeezed out. So yes, for these cells (anyway), the cytoplasmic content—the yolk-free
stuff—is going up very, very fast, compared with the whole uncleaved egg. And the average yolk content
per cell goes down. OK, the student thinks, the answer is a choice between B and D. B is subtle. That’s what
they must be getting at here. I’ll mark B.

Perhaps it is fair to penalize the over-analytical, suspicious, too-clever student for such a choice. D really
is, of all the available choices, the best one, but there is an interesting grain of truth for the too-knowledge-
able test-taker in B that would not occur to a less imaginative and less well-prepared student. This is the
familiar dilemma of MC question design, especially for questions requiring thought rather than “mere”
recall of fact and demanding selection of the best answer among close alternatives. The AP MC questions
are not immune to this trouble, but they resolve it as well as do most college MC tests.

The AP tests available for review seem reasonably well aligned with the College Board’s curriculum and
with each of several, quite different working syllabi examined. This is so despite divergent views of the
teachers who wrote those syllabi about whether AP Biology should be taught top-down (ecosystems, pop-
ulations, and organisms first, chemistry last) or bottom-up (chemistry, biochemistry, and cells first, organ-
isms and ecosystems last). The free-response questions are intelligently framed and fairly demanding.

IV. Conclusions
The rigor of the AP examination questions and of the underlying course content seems to me slightly less
than one might encounter in questions from the final exam in an introductory course for biology majors in
a research university. As such, AP Biology offers a slightly shallower coverage of the material than what
students in that university course would receive. But as a match for the rigor of the average college biolo-
★ gy course, AP Biology unquestionably succeeds.

Weighing content (curriculum design, descriptive materials for the subject matter, comprehensiveness of the
latter, and the examinations aligned with it) at 60 percent, rigor (appropriateness of the intellectual level of
the program) at 30 percent, and clarity (organization and presentation of the program) at 10 percent, I have
assigned AP Biology the following grades:

Grades
Content (60%): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .A-
Rigor (30%): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .B
Clarity (10%): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .A

Overall Grade: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .A-

1
The latter is concerned mainly, if not exclusively, with regulatory genes and gene expression as those influence embryogenesis and
consequent changes in animal body plan, especially as those changes have affected the history of life. This shift, which reflects
exponential growth of the above-named research fields (and of course of evolutionary biology in general), has already found its way
into the introductory courses of some of the strongest departments, although not quite yet into textbooks. Neither heredity nor evo-
lution is today conceptually distinct from molecules and cells except as the latter are treated in a purely descriptive way.

24
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
 Reviews of Courses and Exams
Advanced Placement Calculus AB
By Chester E. Finn, Jr.* • Martin A. Davis, Jr. • Sheila Byrd

I. Documents Reviewed
★ Calculus: Calculus AB Calculus BC Course Description, 2005
(www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/sub_calab.html)

★ Teacher’s Guide: AP Calculus, College Entrance Examination Board, 1997

★ 2003 AP Calculus AB and AP Calculus BC, Released Exams, College Entrance Examination Board,
1999 and 2005

★ AP Calculus AB Free-Response Questions, AP Calculus AB Free-Response Questions, Form B, AP Calculus

AB Scoring Guidelines, AP Calculus AB Scoring Guidelines, Form B for the years 2004, 2005, 2006

★ Four sample syllabi used by Calculus AB classroom teachers provided by the College Board

II. Introduction
The College Board has established two AP Calculus courses, Calculus AB and Calculus BC, and recommends
that both be taught as college-level courses. Calculus AB is designed to correspond to two-thirds of a year-
long college calculus course or course sequence, and Calculus BC is designed to substitute for a full year of
college calculus.

Because the task of these reviews is to determine the extent to which AP and IB courses represent a “gold
standard” for all American high school students, the focus here is on Calculus AB, and only Calculus AB
receives a grade. Some discussion of Calculus BC appears, however, in order to place the AB course, includ-
ing its strengths and weaknesses, in a broader context.

Each college and university sets its own AP credit and placement policies, but many institutions offer at least
a semester of credit for high grades on the AB exam, and a year of credit for high scores on the BC exam.
★
III. Content
A. Course Description
The AP Calculus curriculum has noteworthy strengths. One is the course’s emphasis on the definite inte-
gral as a limit of Riemann sums to counter the tendency of students to think of integrals only as antideriv-
atives. The explicit inclusion of the Mean Value Theorem along with geometric consequences (in both AB
and BC) is also commendable, given the theorem’s theoretical importance in calculus. Also of value for stu-
dents who will apply calculus to scientific and engineering problems is the focus on using the correct ter-
minology and units to answer word problems. The value is twofold: it helps students to understand the
meanings of word problems, and it helps them communicate their solutions to others.

This is all well and good, but a closer examination reveals that the AP Calculus program suffers from some
academic deficiencies and one very large philosophical problem. These follow.

* The authors benefited greatly from an expert review of the AP Calculus program by David Klein, professor of mathematics at California
State University, Northridge, who served as consultant to this project, as well as from the insights of several other leading mathematicians.

25
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
Advanced Placement Calculus AB

De-emphasis of Analytic Methods

The Teacher’s Guide recommends that “students be comfortable using machines to solve problems, experi-
ment, interpret results, and verify conclusions.” Therefore, it’s recommended that students use technology
“at all times,” except when taking certain “no-calculator” assessments.

This stems from the College Board’s belief that the study of calculus should “emphasize a multirepresenta-
tional approach … with concepts, results, and problems being expressed geometrically, numerically, analyt-
ically, and verbally.”

Working with functions geometrically, numerically, analytically, and verbally, and understanding the inter-
connections among these ways of working, is the first listed goal of AP Calculus and is referred to as “the
rule of four.” The Teacher’s Guide describes this rule as a “rallying cry for the calculus reform movement,”
in contrast to “the earlier paradigm of doing almost everything analytically.”

Of the categories of the “rule of four,” analytic methods receive the least emphasis in the Teacher’s Guide. The diffi-
culty with this approach is apparent when one examines how the curriculum treats the topic “computation of deriv-
atives,” for example, which calls for the ability to compute derivatives of standard functions, along with knowledge
of the chain rule and the rules for finding derivatives of sums, differences, products, and quotients of functions.

The Guide places computation of derivatives at the end of the list of topics, and explains why, thusly:
Perhaps the most significant thing about this topic [computation of derivatives] is that it is listed last, “con-
sistent with the philosophy that the emphasis of the course is not on manipulation.”

Logarithmic differentiation is another victim of this approach; it is no longer on the list of AP Calculus top-
ics, in spite of being a standard part of mainstream university calculus courses. Practice with logarithmic
differentiation helps to develop technical fluency in computations involving logarithms and exponentials,
and it should be included in the curriculum.

Definition and Computation of Limits

The mathematical definition of limit is not part of the AP Calculus framework. The reason, according to the
Teacher’s Guide, is that it’s too hard:

Epsilons and deltas are gone from BC, and should not be missed by anyone embracing the
goals of the course. (Their most apparent effect on student understanding in the first cal-
culus course in the past, even in college, has been for some students to understand that
★ they had better drop the course. After that, what will the second week be like?)

Difficulty is not a good reason to avoid the subject matter. Not all first-year college and university calculus
courses include the definition of limit, and those that do vary in their depth of treatment. However, there
are sound reasons for including it. Students who continue their studies as math majors benefit from an early
exposure (revisited in depth in later courses) to a precise definition of this fundamental concept. Inclusion
of precise definitions is the first step in recognizing that calculus can be developed rigorously with proofs.

Of the four representative course syllabi provided by the College Board and examined here, only one went
beyond the AP Calculus framework by including the definition of limit as an optional topic.

Inverse Function Theorem

The Inverse Function Theorem, once a recommended part of the AP Calculus outline, now appears in a
weaker form: “The derivative of an inverse function,” notes the Teacher’s Guide, “has always been in the
course description, but note here that the course description specifies the ‘use of implicit differentiation’ to
discover the derivative, as opposed to the bottom-line rule found in the Inverse Function Theorem. This is
consistent with the philosophy that the course should focus on broad concepts and methods rather than on
the memorization of formulas or theorems.”

26
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
Using implicit differentiation to find the derivative of an inverse function is a valuable exercise, but the

Reviews of Courses and Exams

Inverse Function Theorem goes beyond this calculation by guaranteeing the differentiability of the inverse
function. Science courses make regular use of its conclusion, rendering it useful for students to know.
Furthermore, the Inverse Function Theorem for functions of one real variable has important generalizations
to higher dimensions in later courses, and deserves a place in the curriculum for that reason alone.1

Applications of Integrals and Antiderivatives

Some standard applications of Riemann sums and integrals, such as calculating work done by a force
applied through a displacement, or calculating volumes using cylindrical shells, are not part of the recom-
mended AP Calculus AB curriculum. Instead the goal is to teach modeling more generally so that students
can apply their understanding of Riemann sums to a broad range of problems. The Teacher’s Guide explains
that “there might well be a problem on the AP Examination that starts by defining work as force times dis-
placement, then proceeds to a point where . . . students could be expected to write the integral for them-
selves.” However, in looking through released test questions and sample questions from the Course
Description, we found no such examples, and there is a sameness to the problem types. Typical problems
involve a necessarily artificial variable rate (for example, rates of traffic, sand, fuel, or water flow) that the
examinee is expected to integrate with respect to time in order to find a net accumulation.

The BC curriculum takes the opposite approach by requiring specific knowledge of the logistic differential
equation, and using that particular equation in modeling problems on the Calculus BC exam. This is not a
standard topic in many college and university first-year calculus courses, but it appears with regularity on
the Calculus BC exams that we examined.

The AP Calculus curriculum would achieve a better fit with college programs by reversing these choices.
That is, it should not specify particular differential equations to be analyzed at the BC level, and it should
require more standard and important applications of the integral at the AB level.

Techniques of Integration
The integration techniques taught in AP Calculus AB are now limited to two: antiderivatives of basic func-
tions and antiderivatives through simple substitution (including change of limits of integration). Integration
by parts is a BC topic, and there exposure to partial fractions is limited to the case of nonrepeating linear
factors, just enough to handle the logistic differential equation. The Teacher’s Guide explains that “the impe-
tus for this change stems ultimately from technology, but that is only because calculators are more dramat-
ic than integral tables in replacing the need for this skill.”

B. Assessments ★
The duration of each AB and BC calculus examination is three hours and fifteen minutes. Section I of each exam
consists of multiple-choice questions, and Section II consists of free-response questions. Each section is weight-
ed equally for grading. Each is also further divided into a Part A and a Part B.

Part A of Section I has twenty-eight multiple choice questions to be completed in fifty-five minutes, and
does not allow students to use calculators. Part B of Section I requires a graphing calculator and consists of
seventeen questions to be completed in fifty minutes.

Each part of Section II lasts forty-five minutes, and each consists of three free-response problems.
Calculators are allowed only for Part A. During the time allotted for Part B, students may continue to work
on Part A questions, but without a calculator.

Not all of the questions in the parts of the test that allow calculators necessarily require their use, but some
do. The AP Calculus exams require the use of graphing calculators that can at minimum graph functions
within an arbitrary viewing window, numerically calculate derivatives and definite integrals, and find roots
of functions. The exams also allow calculators with Computer Algebra Systems (CAS) that can symbolically
calculate limits, derivatives, and integrals. For the sake of equity, however, the exam questions are purpose-

27
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
Advanced Placement Calculus AB

fully crafted to avoid giving advantage to examinees with these more powerful machines. For example, stu-
dents are asked only to find definite integrals with numerical answers, and not indefinite integrals, in those
parts of the AB and BC exams that allow calculators. In this way calculators with CAS provide no direct
advantage. Here and elsewhere, technology determines mathematical content, a negative feature.

IV. Conclusions
The Calculus AB curriculum is clearly written with little ambiguity. The exams are well crafted and closely
aligned to the curriculum. They appear to be effective in measuring the prescribed content. However, that
content leaves much to be desired.

The program’s over-use of calculators leads to some troubling distortions in its content emphasis. Two of
the four parts of each AP Calculus examination require the use of graphing calculators. It is not then sur-
prising that the mathematical content and the development of mathematical reasoning within the curricu-
lum are strongly influenced by that technology. One negative consequence is a de-emphasis of analytical
skills and important parts of mathematical reasoning.

The AP Calculus curriculum emphasizes “real world” applications through the use of technology, but not
enough attention is given to the structural organization by which parts of calculus are connected to each
other. The AP Calculus curriculum partially fulfills the obligation to teach these connections, e.g., by using
the Mean Value Theorem to develop relationships between the graphs of a function and its first and second
derivatives, and by using the definite integral as a limit of Riemann sums, as already noted. But definitions
and proofs are largely swept aside.

There are obvious restrictions to what can be accomplished along these lines in AP’s introductory calculus course,
but some opportunities avail themselves. For example, a proof that differentiability at a point implies continuity at
that point is accessible at this level, along with basic limit proofs and derivation of the derivative formulas for trigono-
metric and other functions. Even the Mean Value Theorem could be more fully exploited within the curriculum by
asking for its use in proving the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, and the Mean Value Theorem for Integrals. Of
course, AP Calculus teachers are free to include all this material in their own syllabi. But they are also free not to.
Whether they do or not, their students will not see questions about such topics on the AP Calculus exams.

In spite of its shortcomings, the Calculus AB program has some positive features, as identified in this report.
Nevertheless, university calculus courses generally provide a better foundation for students who will con-
tinue their studies in the mathematical sciences than that offered by AP Calculus.

★ Grades
Content (60%): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .C
Rigor (Mathematical Reasoning) (30%): . . . . . .C
Clarity (10%): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .B

Overall Grade: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .C+

1
To its credit, the Calculus AB exam does call upon students to find derivatives of inverse functions without first prompting the use
of implicit differentiation. The following is a released exam question from the 2003 Calculus AB test, Section I, Part A: Let f be the
function defined by f(x) = x3 + x. If g(x) = f –1(x) and g(2) = 1, what is the value of g(2)? The question is followed by five
choices for the correct answer. Many university calculus instructors would feel gratified if their own students were able to answer
such a question correctly, as would many high school Calculus AB teachers. For the 2003 Calculus AB exam, only 18 percent of the
test-takers correctly answered this question – a rate slightly worse than expected for random guessing. Moreover, it was answered
correctly by fewer than half of the students who received the highest possible grade of 5 for the exam as a whole. Certainly it is
desirable and even necessary for an exam of this type to include difficult questions, but results for this topic might be improved if
the Inverse Function Theorem were an explicit part of the syllabus.

28
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
 Reviews of Courses and Exams
Advanced Placement English Literature & Composition
By Sheila Byrd

I. Documents Reviewed
★ AP English Literature and Composition Course Description, May 2007, May 2008 (www.college-
board.com/student/testing/ap/sub_englit.html?englit)

★ Teacher’s Guide, AP Literature and Composition, 1999; a new Teacher’s Guide is available at
www.apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/members/repository/ap07_englit_teachersguide.pdf.
Registration at AP Central website is required, but free.

★ AP English Literature and Composition Released Exam, College Entrance Examination Board, 1999
and 2004

★ Sample AP English Literature and Composition syllabi (contained in Teacher’s Guide). Other sample
syllabi are available at www.apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/members/courses/syllabi/index.html.
Registration at AP Central website is required, but free.

★ Free-Response Questions, Form B Questions, Scoring Guidelines, 2004–2006

II. Introduction
Like all AP courses, AP English Literature and Composition is designed to represent the content in introduc-
tory English courses at the college or university level. According to the Teacher’s Guide, AP English
Literature and Composition “engages students in the careful reading and critical analysis of imaginative lit-
erature. Through the close reading of selected texts, students deepen their understanding of the ways writ-
ers use language to provide both meaning and pleasure for their readers.” Specific attention is paid to a
work’s “structure, style and themes, as well as such smaller scale elements as the use of figurative language,
imagery, symbolism and tone.”

Three cheers for the goals! But is this course a “gold standard”? Is it, in other words, one that teaches exit-
ing U.S. high school students the essential skills of literary analysis and analytical writing they need for col- ★
lege and later life? Will it give them a deep appreciation for the enduring works of world literature? To find
out, we chose to review this “culminating” English literature course, which was taken by over 260,000 stu-
dents in 2006 and is the second most commonly administered AP exam after AP U.S History.1

III. Content
A. Course Description
The AP English Literature and Composition Course Description contains a broadly worded discussion of the
course goals, followed by a list of “representative authors” indicating “the range and quality of reading
expected in the course.”

Teachers new to the AP program might reasonably wonder what specific content and skills are to be
addressed in this course. To find out, they’ll have to muddle through the many wordy (but potentially help-
ful) curricular resources provided by the College Board. If they take the time to weed through these mate-
rials, they will likely be able to design a rich and rigorous course, one that will prepare students well for
the AP exam.

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Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
Advanced Placement English Literature & Composition

The Teacher’s Guide includes some important clues about the educational philosophy that informs the AP
Literature and Composition course, such as a discussion of AP’s arguably “formalist” approach to the writ-
ing it values:

“Although significant modifications have been made to the AP course and its exam over the years, both (and
the exam in particular) continue to reflect the theory and resultant pedagogical strategies associated with a
robust regard for textual authority—perhaps even the privileging of text over reader, as the emphasis is
described by those who no longer embrace it.”

This is an entirely sound, indeed courageous, stance in postmodern academia. The skills of literary analy-
sis emphasized in both the curricular materials and the exam itself, the Teacher’s Guide explains, prioritize
students’ ability “to understand, explain and evaluate a literary work. Such goals do not mean that students
should never write a poem or present a personal opinion about a non-literary topic, but they do mean that
the focus of the writing should be the text.”

Terrific. But the obvious next question in determining the course’s real rigor is: which texts, if any, does the
AP value or prioritize?

Reading List
According to the Course Description, the course concentrates “on works of recognized literary merit.” It then
refers to the list of “representative” (not “required” or even “recommended”) authors and suggests that “it
is wisest to read the best books first.” This representative list does include a fine sampling of distinguished
authors, including a good representation of great American writers, whose importance is enduring. Students
are to read works from “several genres and periods—from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first centu-
ry.” More importantly, they are expected to get to know a few works well. But apart from listing “represen-
tative” authors, the College Board offers no guidance about which are the “best books,” nor about which
ones a student should get to know well. To get this information, a teacher would have to spend consider-
able time reviewing old exams.

Organized by the genres of poetry, drama, fiction (short story and novel), and expository prose, the list is
comprehensive, containing such estimable choices as Chaucer, Donne, Dickinson, Eliot, Frost, Heaney,
Hughes, Yeats, Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Sophocles, Cather, Faulkner, Hardy, Hawthorne, Hurston, James,
Twain, Boswell, Carlyle, and Mencken.

Notable among the missing are such important poets as Dante, Ovid, and Virgil.
★ A number of contemporary, though less talented, writers such as Toni Morrison and Bobbi Ann Mason also
make the list, no doubt to fulfill the course’s stated aim of introducing students to a variety of literary works
from various centuries. That these writers are listed with the “best books” is questionable, however. The
College Board should honor the best in contemporary literature, but writers such as Marilynne Robinson
and Cormac McCarthy (whose novel The Crossing is sampled on one of the exams) would be better guide-
posts for quality.

A smart and experienced AP teacher would be sure, based on past exams, to expose his or her students to
a sampling of good writers in various eras and genres. Less experienced teachers, not savvy enough to
review past exams carefully, may well lead their students astray by referring only to the material in the
Course Description and Teacher’s Guide.

30
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
B. Assessments

Reviews of Courses and Exams

Impressive in its scope, rigor, and the breadth of literature sampled, the AP English Literature and
Composition exam is not just a useful indicator for teachers of the knowledge and skills that are important
to AP examiners; it reflects the College Board’s expectation that students will receive rigorous training in lit-
erary analysis. The three-hour exam consists of fifty-five to sixty multiple choice (MC) questions (45 per-
cent of the exam grade) for which students have sixty minutes. This section is followed by three essay ques-
tions, each allotted forty minutes (55 percent of the grade). The first two essay questions provide excerpts
from literary works, and students are asked to respond to a text-related prompt. The third essay, the free-
response question, asks students to consider a quotation or other observation about literature and to dis-
cuss that observation with specific reference to a work that they have studied.

The MC questions exhibit in places the same problems that many selected-response questions present for test-
takers, particularly students who are highly intelligent, since more than one response could be considered cor-
rect. Still, the AP English Literature and Composition MC items do not display an excessive or disturbing pat-
tern of ambiguous or misleading answer choices—a praiseworthy accomplishment for a literature exam.

A typical MC item follows (related to a poem by Elizabeth Bishop):

Between lines 24 and 25 and between lines 32 and 33, there is a shift from
1. understatement to hyperbole
2. realism to fantasy
3. optimism to pessimism
4. present events to recalled events
5. formal diction to informal diction

What makes this question sound is that it requires the examinee to not only read the text closely, but also
have at his or her fingertips the requisite understanding of literary terms to answer the question. This level
of rigor shows up consistently throughout the examples the College Board provides.

The essay questions are no less well designed. The first two questions probe students’ understanding of lit-
erary techniques by asking them to analyze supplied literary excerpts, as in the following example:

(Two poems presented)

The poems below are concerned with darkness and light. Read each poem careful-
ly. Then, in a well-written essay, compare and contrast the poems, analyzing the
significance of dark or night in each. In your essay, consider elements such as point
of view, imagery and structure.
★

The texts associated with these essay questions are impressive, for the most part, based upon the exams
reviewed. Excerpts came from, among others, Seamus Heaney, Cormac McCarthy, Henry David Thoreau,
George Eliot, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and William James.

The third question (the free response) tests how well students have mastered their own reading by asking
them to cite books they’ve studied in response to a particular problem. A sample question follows:

The eighteenth-century British novelist Laurence Sterne wrote, “Nobody but he

who has felt it, can conceive what a plaguing thing it is to have a man’s mind torn
asunder by two projects of equal strength, both obstinately pulling in a contrary
direction at the same time.”

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Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
Advanced Placement English Literature & Composition

From a novel or play, choose a character (not necessarily the protagonist) whose
mind is pulled in conflicting directions by two compelling desires, ambitions, obli-
gations or influences. Then, in a well-organized essay, identify each of the two con-
flicting forces and explain how this conflict within one character illuminates the
meaning of the work as a whole. You may use one of the novels or plays listed
below or another novel or play of similar literary quality.

Twenty-seven novels and plays are then listed, 80 percent of which could fairly be termed “classics.”

That the exams depend so heavily upon classical texts makes the College Board’s decision not to be more pre-
scriptive in its reading list all the more confounding. The College Board does say in the Curriculum Guide that
teachers should focus on the “best books.” Why not go a step further and spell out what those books are?

That the essays are timed has come under fire in some quarters, so the Teachers Guide defends the practice
by reminding us that “the timed writing so many AP teachers require of their students is not exam practice;
on the contrary, it is life practice,” and by asserting that while the layered, leisurely, and communal
approach of traditional “process writing” is obviously useful and appropriate for a variety of situations, it
is not appropriate for all. In education, in journalism, indeed in any situation where time is short and the
writer’s ideas need to be given cogent expression, impromptu writing is the only possibility.

Employers and college instructors continue to be appalled by the woeful writing skills among many of their
incoming employees and students. Writing a coherent literary analysis requires reason, discipline, and a cul-
tivated appreciation of effective language (linked to a significant amount of close reading). It is to the
College Board’s credit that they require such writing.

IV. Conclusions
The College Board could certainly make its expectations regarding AP English Literature and Composition
easier to discern, but it plainly seeks to preserve the creativity of teachers by not prescribing a single course
design. With that said, important content and skills are in fact implied or described in the Course Description
(both in the narrative section and in sample exam questions). Careful consideration of the Course Description
along with the Teacher’s Guide and the released exams should allow teachers to develop strong curricula.

On balance, this AP course reflects a fine standard for exiting high school students in the content area of
English literature. Students who score well on this exam will have achieved far more than is typically
required of exiting U.S. high school students, based on current state English standards.
★
Grades
Content (60%): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .B+
Rigor (30%): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .A
Clarity (10%): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .B-

Overall Grade: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .B+

1
College Board Program Summary Report 2006, available at http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/repository/ap06_prog_
summary_rpt.pdf.

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Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
 Reviews of Courses and Exams
Advanced Placement U.S. History
By Sheldon Stern

I. Documents Reviewed
★ U.S. History Course Description, College Entrance Examination Board, 2005
(www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/sub_ushist.html)
★ Teacher’s Guide: AP U.S History, College Entrance Examination Board and Educational Testing
Service, 1997
.
★ 2003 AP U.S. History, Released Exams, College Entrance Examination Board, 2005

★ AP U.S. History Free-Response Questions, Form B, and Scoring Guidelines for the years 2004, 2005, 2006

II. Introduction
The late Paul Gagnon, a longtime advocate of evenhanded, substantive history education for all students,
believed that the study of American history was about more than increasing students’ factual knowledge
and improving their analytical skills. “Democracy’s survival,” he once wrote, “depends upon our opening
to each new generation the political vision of liberty and equality that unites us as Americans.” 1

The College Board’s goals for students completing AP U.S. History are somewhat less ambitious, though
still admirable. According to the Course Description, AP U.S. History “is designed to provide students with
the analytical skills and factual knowledge necessary to deal critically with the problems and materials in
U.S. History” and to prepare students for intermediate and advanced history classes at the university level.

To accomplish this, the course expects students to learn the skills of historical analysis (including how to
assess historical materials and how to “weigh the evidence and interpretations presented in historical schol-
arship”) and to reach conclusions based on informed judgment that they then defend in persuasive essays.

Teachers are free to structure their courses either in a traditional survey style (arranged chronologically) or themat-
ically (arranged topically). The College Board favors the thematic approach, however, and arranges its materials
in this fashion. Still, it recognizes the importance of chronology, and (as the Course Description explains) expects ★
those who teach the course thematically to provide students with access to materials that give them “an overview
of U.S. history and enable them to establish the context and significance of specialized interpretive problems.”

III. Content
A. Course Description
The AP U.S. History Course Description organizes material around a set of “themes” or “unifying concepts.”
(As noted above, however, teachers are free to teach the course chronologically.) The twelve themes are list-
ed alphabetically: American diversity, American identity, culture, demographic changes, economic transfor-
mations, environment, globalization, politics and citizenship, reform, religion, slavery and its legacies in
North America, and war and diplomacy.

These themes are commonly found in today’s college courses in U.S. history, but ironically, their only “uni-
fying concept” would seem to be the celebration of diversity. For example, consider how the Course
Description explains what the “culture” theme should cover: “Diverse individual and collective expressions
through literature, art, philosophy, music, theater, and film throughout U.S. history. Culture and the dimen-
sions of cultural conflict within American society.” Or consider this description for the theme “reform”:
“Diverse movements focusing on a broad range of issues, including anti-slavery, education, labor, temper-
ance, women’s rights, civil rights, gay rights, war, public health, and government.”

33
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
Advanced Placement U.S. History

Many from one—”the diversity of the American people”; “recognizing regional differences”; “the roles of
race, class, ethnicity, and gender”—rather than e pluribus unum—one from many—drives the AP U.S.
History curriculum. Almost completely missing is the story of the origins of American liberty and equality,
the common civic core that became our nation’s defining characteristic. A U.S. history course that fails to
highlight this common civic core will barely touch on, or miss altogether, the most historic, far-reaching,
and unifying political development in early America: the evolution of democratic bonds and cohesion from
which a nation was ultimately forged with a shared and increasingly inclusive commitment to political free-
dom, democratic values, civic participation, and individual rights.

A common civic core is no threat to diversity. On the contrary. As Gagnon observed, a common civic core
is indispensable for the success of a free and diverse society:

The past repeatedly proves that no sort of diversity is safe, or has a chance at equality,
except among people with common democratic ideas.… Citizens of whatever class, race,
age, gender, religion, or cultural taste need a common body of knowledge that gives them
the power to talk to each other as equals.2

The diversity emphasis aside, another important question about the AP course is: How well do course mate-
rials inform teachers about the knowledge they’re expected to impart to their students? The College Board pro-
vides some guidance by specifiying a list of topics, arranged chronologically for the most part, that teachers
are supposed to use in conjunction with the course themes. But the list is so vague as to be substantively use-
less as a guide to teachers—especially those teachers with insufficient background in U.S. history.3

The outline for the entire period from pre-1492 to 1789, for example, includes only four extremely generic
subject headings (“Pre-Columbian Societies,” “Transatlantic Encounters and Colonial Beginnings, 1492-
1690,” “Colonial North America, 1690-1754,” and “The American Revolutionary Era, 1754-1789”). These
four subject headings, in turn, subsume twenty-one historical subtopics. This might be fine if the subtopics
referenced historically specific events. For the most part, they do not. They’re vague and overly broad,
including such subtopics as “American Indian cultures of North America at the time of European contact,”
“Resistance to Colonial authority: Bacon’s Rebellion, the Glorious Revolution, and the Pueblo Revolt,”4 “The
War for Independence,” and “Population Growth and Immigration.”

By contrast, I have written a course outline for teacher preparation that has seventeen topic headings and
dozens of historically specific subtopics to cover the period from pre-1492 to 1789. 5 Among them are “African
civilization and the Atlantic slave trade,” “European relations with Native Americans,” “Early settlement in
New England,” “Colonial labor and the emergence of slavery,” “Africans in America,” “Origins of American
★ political radicalism,” “Women and the family in British North America,” “The imperial crisis,” “Codifying lib-
erty: the state constitutions,” and “Writing and ratifying the 1787 federal Constitution.” Teachers need this type
of substantive and specific historical guidance instead of vague, open-ended generalities.

The College Board’s reluctance to prescribe content, much like the weakest standards evaluated in my 2003
Fordham Foundation study of U.S. history standards in 48 states and the District of Columbia,6 all but
ensures that poorly prepared and less well-read teachers will fall back on personal politics and ideology
when they cover material they don’t know very well—especially in the currently out-of-favor areas of polit-
ical and military history.

But there is good news. Roughly three-fourths of the Teacher’s Guide is composed of eight sample course
syllabi. These course outlines, created by teachers in public and private institutions and in secondary
schools and colleges, are consistently comprehensive and demanding. Some are survey courses, such as the
syllabus by Judy Cates, a teacher from Vista, California, which covers U.S. history in two semesters from
the colonial period to the late twentieth century. Some are far more specialized, such as the one-semester
course by Stanford University’s Jack Rakove, which covers the colonial era through the founding of the fed-
eral republic.

34
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
It remains the case, however, that there is little or no discernible connection or alignment between the depth and

Reviews of Courses and Exams

substance of these syllabi and the recommended themes and topics in the AP U.S. History Course Description. It
seems reasonable to conclude that some innovative AP teachers are devising syllabi that are more thorough, and
therefore more useful, than the College Board course description demands, but students in AP classes should not
have to count on getting an inventive teacher. The course description itself ought to provide more detailed and
substantive guidance in order to ensure consistency across classes throughout the country.

B. Assessments
The AP U.S. History exam begins with eighty multiple choice questions to be completed in fifty-five min-
utes. The questions are comprehensive and appropriately demanding. In a few cases, however, the choices
can be confusing, especially for more knowledgeable students. According to the Course Description, for
example, the “correct” answer to a question about the reason for Richard Nixon’s successful political come-
back in 1968 is “dissension within the Democratic Party over Vietnam.” But another choice, “Nixon’s prom-
ise of immediate withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam,” is not really wrong. Nixon claimed to have
a “secret plan” to end the war which many voters believed meant quickly bringing home U.S. troops.7

In addition to multiple choice questions, the AP U.S. History exam includes free-response essay questions
that are demanding and content rich, more so than the Course Description indicates. These questions come
in two parts. The first part requires students to answer questions using supplied source documents. For
example, a 2004 document-based question asks, “In what ways did the French and Indian War (1754-63)
alter the political, economic, and ideological relations between Britain and its American colonies?” Students
are provided with pre-1754 and post-1763 maps of North America and six documents sampling American,
British, and Native American perspectives on the war as context for answering the question. A 2006 docu-
ment-based question asks, “Analyze developments from 1941 to 1949 that increased suspicion and tension
between the United States and the Soviet Union.” Students are provided with samples of polling material,
a political cartoon, and excerpts from six documentary sources.

In the second part of the free-response section, students are asked to choose two out of four standard (non-
document-based) questions, requiring thirty-five minutes each of planning and writing time and counting
for the remaining 55 percent of the free-response grade. These questions, too, are thoughtful, well construct-
ed, and manageable within the allotted time frame. For example:

★ Analyze the impact of the American Revolution on both slavery and the status of women in the
period from 1775 to 1800.

★ To what extent was the United States Constitution a radical departure from the Articles of ★
Confederation?

★ In what ways did developments in transportation bring about economic and social change in the
United States in the period 1820 to 1860?

The College Board scoring guidelines provide specific and detailed parameters for what should be included
in these essays in order to achieve the highest score.

35
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
Advanced Placement U.S. History

IV. Conclusions
It is clear that the AP U.S. History examination is a rigorous and fair assessment of important U.S. history
topics. Unfortunately, one cannot discern the same level of rigor in the curricular materials provided to the
teachers. The substantive sophistication of the free-response exam questions, much like the optional syllabi
in the Teacher’s Guide, are clearly not derived from the content-challenged course outline or the often ten-
dentious themes in the AP U.S. History Course Description. If teachers rely on these latter materials alone,
their students cannot be assured of proper exposure to and exploration of the essential U.S. history content
they’ll need to succeed. Therefore, the average grade for the College Board U.S. history course, balancing
the shortcomings of the course outline and the “unifying themes” against the rigor and clarity of the exams
and some syllabi is:

Grades
Historical Content (60%): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .B-
Rigor (30%): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .B-
Clarity (10%) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .B-

Overall Grade: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .B-

1
Paul Gagnon, Educating Democracy: State Standards to Ensure a Civic Core (Washington, DC: Albert Shanker Institute, 2003), p. 7.
2
Ibid., p. 5.
3
See Diane Ravitch, “Who Prepares our History Teachers? Who Should Prepare our History Teachers?” The History Teacher 31, no. 4
(August 1998): 495-503. Ravitch found that more than half of U.S. high school history teachers did not major or even minor in his-
tory.
4
Why, readers might wonder, did the College Board choose the Pueblo Revolt, instead of King Phillip’s War, to represent Native
American resistance to colonial authority?
5
Sheldon M. Stern, Effective State Standards for U.S. History: A 2003 Report Card, Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, 2003, at
http://www.edexcellence.net/institute/publication/publication.cfm?id=320.
6
Ibid.
7
AP U.S. History Course Description, p. 27

36
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
 Reviews of Courses and Exams
International Baccalaureate: Biology SL
By Paul Gross

I. Documents Reviewed
★ IBO Diploma Program Introduction, International Baccalaureate Organization, Geneva

★ IB Biology Curriculum Guide, International Baccalaureate Organization, Geneva

★ IB External Examinations: Paper 1, Paper 2, Paper 3; markschemes for all examination papers, for
each of three years, 2004 – 2006

Note: The IB does not make its materials available online.

II. Introduction
Most IB courses come in two flavors: standard level (SL) and higher level (HL). The distinction rests on the
requisite number of teaching hours—240 for HL and 150 for SL. Suffice it to say that the relevant and ade-
quate program level for a course that might serve for advanced placement—of a student from an American
high school entering an American college or university—is SL, though it should be noted that the IB does
not intend for its coursework to be tantamount to a first-year college course, as the AP does. Among the
academic areas, group 4 is “experimental sciences,” and the IB Biology course of interest here is one of the
group 4 alternatives.

Program design for IB Biology, as for the IB Diploma Programme as a whole, is elaborately specified. As we
shall see, this is both blessing and curse—but mainly blessing. The Curriculum Guide, which is itself an out-
line, runs to 120 pages. The proceedings of an IB Biology course are as particular and densely detailed as
might be expected from the style and design of the full program. The experimental science courses have no
fewer than ten official aims, none of which will surprise a reader familiar with U.S. state science standards.
Beyond the ten very general aims, group 4 courses have five objectives, each with several subheads.

Associated with the objectives is a set of fourteen action verbs, each of which specifies “the depth of treat-
ment required for a given assessment statement. These verbs will be used in examination questions and so ★
it is important that students are familiar with [their] definitions.” The full set of action verbs (including
annotate, calculate, compare, define, distinguish, draw, list, outline, etc.) and their definitions are the con-
nective tissue between the syllabus and the program’s meticulously planned assessment system. In IB sci-
ence education, not much is left to chance or to the individual teacher.

III. Content
A. Course Description
The syllabus for IB Biology, seen broadly, is very much like the curriculum guide adopted by the College Board
for AP Biology. Teaching and independent study opportunities are fashioned around five major topics:

★ Cells
★ The Chemistry of Life
★ Genetics
★ Ecology and Evolution
★ Human Health and Physiology

37
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
International Baccalaureate: Biology SL

Beyond these, eight additional topics are available for study at a higher level (meaning in greater depth) by
all IB students. These provide intensity that complements the breadth of the required core biology topics.
The additions are: nucleic acids and proteins (effectively: molecular biology); cell respiration and photosyn-
thesis (effectively: bioenergetics); genetics; human reproduction; defense against infectious disease (effec-
tively: descriptive immunology); nerves, muscles, and movement (effectively: neurophysiology); excretion;
and plant science (effectively: general plant physiology). If this set were truly up to date, it would include
evolutionary genetics or molecular evolution, but so far it does not, at least not explicitly.

For each topic, core or additional, the program provides an exhaustive syllabus, in which every entry begins
with one of the action verbs. The result is that a teacher or an entire IB school knows, in remarkable detail,
the official expectations for teaching and learning introductory biology. This assures uniformity (1) of proce-
dure and judgment, however distant the learners may be from the curriculum planners, and (2) of the “exter-
nal” assessments. It brings the local teacher(s) under the exacting observation of IB planners and experts. It
also ensures that the demands on students in the program will remain uniform from one year to the next.

The first topic, “Cells,” will serve us here as a sample of syllabus detail. Under Cells, there are three sub-
heads: Cell Theory (1.1.), Prokaryotic Cells (1.2), and Eukaryotic Cells (1.3). Seven teaching hours are spec-
ified for all these. Each of the three subtopics then specifies a number of subdivisions. Cell Theory (1.1),
for example, has twelve subdivisions (1.1.1 through 1.1.12), each structured as a sentence beginning with
an action verb, which is followed by a brief but carefully written explanatory statement on what that action
requires and the appropriate (point-creditable) results. So it continues through all five core topics. No
requirement mandates that these topics be taught in the order or with the specific emphases of the curricu-
lum guide, but it is clearly expected that everything will be covered at some time during the IB Biology expe-
rience. Everything touched upon in the syllabus is, moreover, liable to appear on an exam at the end. So far
as clarity of purpose and program organization are concerned, IB Biology must be rated “excellent.”

The only downside to this very high level of specification is that for the best-prepared and most enthusias-
tic teachers of biology, and for schools with access to unusual life-science resources (e.g., a nearby arbore-
tum, or the research laboratories of an international drug company, or a research institute), the expectations
put something of a damper on curricular innovation.

B. Assessments
Participant success in an IB SL Biology course is measured by a linear combination of grades for two inde-
pendent evaluations of accomplishment: the external assessment, a written test comprising multiple choice
(MC) and short answers and worth 76 percent of the total, and an internal assessment directed mainly
toward an interdisciplinary project carried out by the student, plus a number of shorter practical exercises
★ (laboratory work). With rules of procedure, guidance, and oversight from IBO, this internal assessment is
performed by the local teacher. It accounts for 24 percent of the final grade.

The external IB Biology assessment consists of three written “papers” (examinations). Paper 1 (forty-five
minutes) is a rather elementary MC test of general knowledge of the core material. Many of the questions
require either solving a problem implicit in the language of biology or simply knowing the definition and
contexts for proper use of a word. For example (from the May 2006 exam, Paper 1):

25. Plasmodium vivax is one of the protozoans that causes malaria. Malaria kills over 2 mil-
lion people each year. What is this protozoan?

A. A pathogen; B. An antigen; C. A fibrinogen; D. A mutagen.

Note that the issue of the relative importance of conceptual versus factual knowledge arises here. The test-
taker cannot be sure of the answer unless he or she knows the definition of all four possible word-answers.
It is a very good question; but one cannot separate its conceptual content from the factual underpinning. To
their credit, the IB planners seem to be unapologetic about the need for factual understanding. Paper I con-
tains some questions that refer to data and interpretation of their graphical forms.

38
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
In Paper 2 (seventy-five minutes), the test-taker is asked to analyze data and make judgments concerning

Reviews of Courses and Exams

the general state of a current subdiscipline of biology. Necessary data are provided on the test paper, often
in extended and graphical form. This is a more sophisticated assessment than the MC questions of Paper 1.
In section A, the test-taker responds with short answers to an inquiry that continues as a number of point-
ed questions about the meaning and utility of the data set being examined. In section B, the student is given
a choice of free-response questions to answer, each with subquestions. These cover a wide enough range
to ensure that most students will have encountered one or more of the issues in each question. Examples
of subquestions for free response: “Outline the ethical issues of cloning humans.” “Explain how the rate of
photosynthesis can be measured.” “Explain the role of hormones in the regulation of the menstrual cycle.”
(Faced with these questions out of their context, a professional scientist might plan a short, well-illustrated
book as response.)

Paper 3 (one hour) tests knowledge of two of the options (advanced topics) studied during the course. The
required short answers include calculations (for which an electronic calculator is required). Questions are
mostly data based and adequately searching. Successful short answers must be precise and sufficient.

Such tests as these, to be taken by students in many, and widely varying, school environments, can suc-
ceed only if the grading is intelligent, meticulous, and controlled for uniformity. For IB Biology (as for AP),
this requirement is met via detailed “markschemes,” one for each of the three papers that comprise a full
external assessment. These markschemes give not only the correct answers, but brief justifications for them
when there is possible argument. Explicit instructions explain what will not be acceptable as a credit-wor-
thy answer when there is the possibility of doubt. What results is a specified and well-characterized intel-
lectual level of the expectations, and those expectations are concerned with the current content of biology,
not with peripheral matters. The markschemes are well enough written and organized so that an external
examiner of adequate background in biology (say, at least a recent college biology major) should find it easy
to do the grading job in conformity with all others doing likewise, in any test year.

IV. Conclusions
I feel some sympathy for the lone teacher in an American high school undertaking to convert these regula-
tions and details into a locally functional biology course, since they are much more detailed and rigorous than
those described in U.S. state standards documents, which tend to be vague and nonrigorous. The IB course
might serve as a gold standard for U.S. high school biology courses, if policymakers would agree to implement
such a rigorous course of study, including its high-stakes system of formative and summative assessments.

I have assigned a lower grade for “clarity,” not because the official and recommended supporting texts are at
all unclear—they are not!—but because the extreme systematization of the program and its documents might
★
threaten to confuse, even to overwhelm, some of the teachers charged with mounting such a course, and in
some cases to stifle curricular inventiveness or the exploitation of unique local resources. On the other hand,
to the extent that the actual classroom science content of an IB biology course can be imagined solely on the
basis of these documents, I have to award this program significant credit for coverage and rigor of the content.

Weighing content (curriculum design, descriptive materials for the subject matter, comprehensiveness of the
latter, and the examinations aligned with it) at 60 percent, rigor (appropriateness of the intellectual level of
the program) at 30 percent, and clarity (organization and presentation of the program) at 10 percent, I have
assigned IB Biology the following grades:

Grades
Content (60%): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .A+
Rigor (30%): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .A+
Clarity (10%): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .C

Overall Grade: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .A

39
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
International Baccalaureate: Mathematics SL

International Baccalaureate: Mathematics SL

By Chester E. Finn, Jr.* • Martin A. Davis, Jr. • Sheila Byrd

I. Documents Reviewed**
★ Mathematics SL (includes curriculum guide, internal and external assessment descriptions and cri-
teria), International Baccalaureate Organization, Geneva, 2004

★ Mathematics HL (includes curriculum guide, internal and external assessment descriptions and cri-
teria), International Baccalaureate Organization, Geneva, 2004

★ Diploma Programme Mathematics SL Information Booklet, International Baccalaureate

Organization, Geneva, 2004

★ Two complete Mathematics SL past exams, Papers 1 and 2, and markschemes, May 2006

★ One complete Mathematics HL exam, Papers 1, 2, and 3, and markschemes, May 2006

★ Three Mathematics SL Type I (investigation) Portfolio project assignments, one student solution
with teacher markings, 2006

★ Three Mathematics SL Type II (modeling) Portfolio project assignments, two student solutions with
teacher markings, 2005, undated

★ Vade Mecum 2007, Section G, International Baccalaureate Organization, 2006

Note: The IB does not make its materials available online.

II. Introduction
Students in the IB Diploma Programme choose to enroll either in the Standard Level (SL) or Higher Level (HL)
★ mathematics course. Mathematics SL, requiring 150 teaching hours, is designed for sixteen- to nineteen-year-
old students who, according to IB literature, “expect to need a sound mathematical background as they pre-
pare for future studies in subjects such as chemistry, economics, psychology and business administration.”

The more demanding Mathematics HL, requiring 240 hours, prepares students “expecting to include math-
ematics as a major component of their university studies, either as a subject in its own right or within cours-
es such as physics, engineering and technology.”

The focus of this review is on Mathematics SL, although we discuss Mathematics HL for comparison pur-
poses (and because there is some overlapping course material.)

* The authors benefited greatly from an expert review of the IB Math SL program by David Klein, professor of mathematics at California
State University, Northridge, who served as consultant to this project, as well as from the insights of several other leading mathematicians.

**These are the documents the IBO supplied to us for review. Since then, a new edition of the Math guides has been introduced. Where
appropriate, we provide footnotes that point out differences in the documents we reviewed and the new documents. Our overall conclu-
sions were not affected.

40
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
III. Content

Reviews of Courses and Exams

A. Course Description
The SL program offers exposure to a wide range of topics at both the high school level and at the beginning
university level. The curriculum covers seven topics in the allotted 150 hours of class time:

Topic 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Algebra
Topic 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Functions and equations
Topic 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Circular functions and trigonometry
Topic 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Matrices
Topic 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Vectors
Topic 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Statistics and probability
Topic 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Calculus

Mathematics HL students study all these topics, but in greater depth and with a broader range of subtopics.
HL students must also study all the subtopics in one of the following options:

Topic 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Statistics and probability

Topic 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Sets, relations and groups
Topic 10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Series and differential equations
Topic 11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Discrete mathematics

There are some advantages to this broad-stroke approach to math. Students are exposed to a large number
of topics, and the SL syllabus ensures that important material is covered, such as the Binomial Theorem,
arithmetic and geometric series, law of sines, properties of dot products of vectors, binomial and normal
distributions, and expectations of discrete random variables.

Still, there’s a considerable amount of material left unaddressed. For example, missing topics include an intro-
duction to complex numbers, the reciprocal trigonometric functions (secant, cosecant, cotangent), and all of
the inverse trigonometric functions. Identities for trigonometric functions evaluated at the sum of two angles
are also absent, though double angle formulas are included. Because at the university level students’ knowl-
edge of these missing topics is normally assumed, these gaps in the SL curriculum constitute a serious deficit.

Also missing from the syllabi (and from the list of “Presumed Knowledge” that students entering the SL and
HL courses are already expected to have) is a systematic development of synthetic geometry with proofs. In
fact, the SL syllabus pays little attention to mathematical proofs in general. And the International
Baccalaureate Organization says nothing about working with proofs in its list of aims and objectives for ★
either Mathematics SL or HL.

The treatment of calculus in the SL course is also thin. The definition of limit is not included, and the def-
inition of derivative is used only to establish the derivatives of polynomial functions; other functions’ deriv-
atives are “justified by graphical considerations using a GDC [graphic display calculator].” In particular, the
derivative formulas for the three trigonometric functions studied in the course are used but evidently not
derived. Missing, too, is any mention of the Mean Value Theorem or Riemann sums, though students use
the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus. Riemann sums are needed to explain the meaning of definite inte-
grals, and the Mean Value Theorem is the single most important theoretical tool for justifying standard prob-
lem-solving procedures in calculus. Implicit differentiation, a powerful analytical tool, is also absent.

Beyond these content issues is the problem of technology. Both of the IB math courses depend overmuch
on calculators. The curriculum guide states, “Students are expected to have access to a graphic display cal-
culator (GDC) at all times during the course.” This is a disputable and, say many mathematicians, flawed
approach. Dependence upon calculators reduces the odds that students will develop fluency in hand calcu-
lations, which is essential for following—or producing—some mathematical proofs, and for deriving scien-
tific formulas in the mathematical sciences.

41
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
 B. Assessments
International Baccalaureate: Mathematics SL

A student enrolled in Mathematics SL is evaluated on the basis of a) an external examination created by the
IBO and b) an internal portfolio consisting of two projects assigned and evaluated by the classroom teacher
but moderated by the IBO.

The SL external exam constitutes 80 percent of the student’s evaluation for the course and is made up of
two parts, Paper 1 and Paper 2, weighted equally (the HL course includes a Paper 3). Paper 1 consists of
fifteen short-answer questions, and Paper 2 is comprised of five extended-response questions.1 Students are
given ninety minutes for each paper, which may include questions about any part of the course syllabus.
Students are required to have access to a graphing calculator.2

Students are not, however, required to remember formulas. Each examinee is provided with a clean copy of
the Mathematics SL Information Booklet (or its HL counterpart). In it, students find four pages of formulas
that they might need during the exams for Papers 1 and 2. Access to such a list of formulas for the exter-
nal exams is a weakness if one believes, as we do, that students should be expected to understand these
formulas and commit them to memory.

External Exams: Papers 1 and 2

Of the seven topics on the SL syllabus, “Statistics and probability” is perhaps most heavily emphasized on
the external exams reviewed. Of the forty total questions from both SL tests (including Papers 1 and 2), nine
were probability or statistics problems. There is little by way of standard high school algebra on the SL
exams, except for linear algebra, which is well represented. Exam problems ask students to calculate dot
products, norms, the vector from a given point to another point, equations of lines in terms of vectors, and
closely related topics. The exams also include problems involving matrices and systems of two or three lin-
ear equations. However, students’ demonstration of mastery of these subjects is compromised by their
access to calculators during the exams.

Other problems do require some analytical skills, such as one that calls for the angular measure and radius
of a sector of a circle, given a numerical length of arc subtending the angle, and given the numerical area
of the sector. Problems in Paper 2 exams are broken into guided steps that also require a demonstration of
some algebraic skills. (For the HL course, the difficulty of the questions on the Paper 3 exam for Topics 8
through 11, listed above, is pitched at a university level, and goes well beyond the normal high school fare.)

Overall, the external examinations for the SL course appear to represent the syllabus well (even though they tend
to overemphasize statistics and probability), but many of the problems are calculator based, and there is relative-
★ ly little assessment of the pencil-and-paper algebraic skills upon which much of a university curriculum depends.

Portfolio
A portfolio is required for both the SL and HL courses, and in each it constitutes 20 percent of a student’s
grade and ten hours of class time. Portfolio projects cover two types of tasks: mathematical investigation
and mathematical modeling.

An example of a mathematical investigation project for the SL course is an investigation of powers of a two-by-
two symmetric matrix. Students are given a list of tasks to complete, including numerical calculations for specif-
ic examples, finding a general formula for the nth power, and explaining why their general formula is correct.

The examples of mathematical modeling projects that we and our advisors examined require students to
use the regression features of their calculators to find best-fit functions (polynomial or sinusoidal) for data
that are provided, and then to use graphs to answer questions about the context for the data.

A detailed rubric is provided to teachers for evaluating the two projects. The rubrics for the SL and HL
courses are the same, with a maximum of twenty-nine points available for each project, with six criteria for
each of the two projects. The criteria for the mathematical investigation are:

42
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
Criterion A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Use of notation and terminology

Reviews of Courses and Exams

Criterion B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Communication
Criterion C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Mathematical process—searching for patterns
Criterion D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Results—generalization
Criterion E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Use of technology
Criterion F . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Quality of work

The criteria for the mathematical modeling project are the same except that for Criterion C, the phrase
“searching for patterns” is replaced by “developing a model.” And Criterion D replaces “generalization” with
“interpretation.” Criterion E, which involves use of technology, is graded on a three-point scale as follows:

0 . . . . The student uses a calculator or computer for only routine calculations.

1 . . . . The student attempts to use a calculator or computer in a manner that could enhance the
development of the task.
2 . . . . The student makes limited use of a calculator or computer in a manner that enhances the
development of the task.
3 . . . . The student makes full and resourceful use of a calculator or computer in a manner that
significantly enhances the development of the task.

Full credit is evidently not available for projects of an algebraic or analytic nature that do not include the
use of computing machines. Thus one might assume a student would not receive full credit for an SL math-
ematical investigation problem unless it included calculator investigations.

IV. Conclusions
The SL program is clearly laid out, and the syllabus and assessments are well aligned. Two strengths of the
course are its breadth of coverage and focus on problem-solving skills. For those students not planning to
take a math course in college, the curriculum is well chosen. It provides a glimpse into several parts of math-
ematics along with some practical skills, especially in the area of statistics.

On the other hand, if a student intends to take more math courses at the university level, it is not clear
where that student should be placed. What university mathematics courses have as their prerequisites a
small amount of calculus, but no exposure to complex numbers, almost no geometry, a spotty background
in trigonometry, a smattering of linear algebra, and a good bit of statistics? Perhaps the answer is “more sta-
tistics courses.” The reliance on calculators and failure to require memorization of formulas puts students
wanting to pursue math in college at a further disadvantage.

In fairness to the IBO program, highly motivated students and those most apt to take math in college fol-
★
low the more rigorous HL syllabus. While notably more complete and mathematically advanced, some gaps
exist even at this level. Still, students with the ability to complete such a demanding curriculum are likely
able to fill in missing topics on their own.

Grades
Content (60%): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .B-
Rigor (Mathematical Reasoning) (30%): . . . . . .C
Clarity (10%): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .B

Overall Grade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .B-

1
Under the new guidelines, Paper 1 contains both short response and extended response questions. Likewise Paper 2.
2
Under the new guidelines, students must have access to a Graphic Design Calculator only for Paper 2. Calculators are no longer per-
mitted for Paper 1.

43
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
International Baccalaureate: Language A SL

International Baccalaureate: Language A SL

By Carol Jago

I. Documents Reviewed

★ IB Language A1 Curriculum Guide, International Baccalaureate Organization, Geneva

★ Language A1 Standard Level exams and markschemes, 2004–2006

★ Prescribed Book List (PBL): A list of authors and works in the students’ A1 language

★ Prescribed World Literature List (PWL): A list of authors and works originally written in a language
different from the Language A1 and studied in translation

Note: The IB does not make its materials available online.

II. Introduction
In the best of all possible worlds, American high school students would both survey the vast collection of
our nation’s literature and read in depth, mastering the skills of literary analysis while developing an appre-
ciation for the use of language. No one course can do both, and IB Literature is no exception. But for teach-
ing students to appreciate literature and understand its complexities, few programs are better.

Students in the IB diploma program are required to take two language courses: Language A1 (first-language
literature) and Language B1 (second-language literature and culture). Students who are fluent in more than
one language may take more than one Language A course (i.e., Language A2).

The Curriculum Guide describes Language A1 as “a pre-university course in literature,” aimed at students
“who intend to pursue literature, or related studies, at university, as well as at students whose formal study
of literature will not continue beyond this level.” The former would normally follow the 240-teaching-hour
Higher Level (HL) course of study, and the latter the 150-hour Standard Level (SL). Because this study is
★ appraising the extent to which AP and IB courses represent a “gold standard” for all American high school
students, this review is limited to Language A1 SL.

III. Course Content

A. Course Description
The Language A1 course does not aim to cover the history of U.S. literature, nor even the great works of world
literature. Instead it aims—by demanding that students read extensively according to clearly established guide-
lines—to engage students “in independent literary criticism in a manner which reveals a personal response to
literature.” For the IBO, “personal response to literature” entails critical analysis and supporting evidence.

The IBO has taken care to design the course so that students will read both widely and deeply. The course
requires Language A1 SL students to read eleven books distributed over four parts (World literature—three books,
Detailed Study—two books, Groups of Works—three books, and School’s Free Choice—three books). The books
for the first three parts are selected from two lists: the Prescribed Book List (PBL), which consists of works orig-
inally written in the Language A1 language, and the Prescribed World Literature List (PWL), common to all
Language A1 courses, which consists of a wide variety of works categorized by language and genre. For the
fourth category, School’s Free Choice, teachers are permitted to select three works not on the PBL or PWL.

44
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
The book lists generally offer an excellent representation of countries, genres, and both classic and recog-

Reviews of Courses and Exams

nized contemporary authors. For example, the PBL for North America (Canada and the U.S.) includes
Margaret Atwood, Robertson Davies, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ernest
Hemingway, Henry James, Edgar Allan Poe, John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, and Richard
Wright. The PBL for Europe (United Kingdom and Ireland) includes William Blake, Elizabeth Browning,
Robert Browning, Lord Byron, Geoffrey Chaucer, John Donne, Seamus Heaney, Gerard Manley Hopkins,
John Keats, John Milton, Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Siegfried Sassoon, William Shakespeare, William
Wordsworth, and William Butler Yeats.

Representation of Asian authors is weak, consisting only of N. C. Chaudhuri and Vikram Seth. Instructors
have the option of including such writers among the free choice works, but such authors as Yukio Mishima,
Haruki Murakami, Anita Desai, Rohinton Mistry, and Ha Jin would be good additions.

The Language A1 SL course requires that students read not only a variety of authors, but also, says the
Curriculum Guide, “a range of literary works of different periods, genres, styles and contexts.” To accom-
plish this, the IBO requires that students read one work from each of three periods: pre-1800, 1800-1900,
and post 1900. This is meant to ensure that students gain a historical perspective on literature, as well as
the skills needed to read and interpret works written in a style (including diction) different from contempo-
rary fiction, drama, and poetry. The drama guidelines require students to read a Shakespeare play along
with related works of a different genre, and the poetry guidelines require students to read longer poems by
poets such as Chaucer or Milton in conjunction with shorter poems by other writers.

The greatest downside to the Language A1 program for U.S. high school students is that unless they com-
plete another course in American literature (Language A1 is taken in eleventh grade), they will be short-
changed in their experience of their own nation’s literature. While teachers may use the “School’s Free
Choice” unit of study to focus on American authors, they may also choose to overlook the subject. Even if
they choose great American authors, however, this one unit cannot replace a complete survey course in
American literature.

B. Assessments
IB Language A1 requires systematic formative and summative assessments, all of which are closely aligned
to course aims, objectives, and the syllabus. A student’s final grade for the course is determined by perform-
ance on two written assessments: an “on-demand” exam (externally set and assessed by the IBO), and one
essay of a thousand to fifteen-hundred words written during the course and externally assessed. Oral activ-
ities (internally assessed by the teacher and externally moderated by the IBO) are also required. The
Language A1 exam includes no multiple choice items. ★
The first portion of the on-demand exam is 1.5 hours long and requires students to write a commentary on
one of two previously unseen texts—one poem and one piece of prose. Students must demonstrate a clear
understanding of each work’s theme, content, style, structure, and language. Guiding questions such as
these are offered:

★ What is the impact of the poet’s use of metaphor and personification?

★ How does the poet use contrast to help convey meaning?

The Curriculum Guide explains that these questions are meant to aid students’ thinking. Students are not,
however, required to address them in their commentary (i.e., they may choose other aspects of the work to
explore). But to earn a high achievement level, the commentaries must be well developed, insightful, and
coherently structured. Scorers assess student commentaries based upon five criteria:

45
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
 A. Understanding of the text
International Baccalaureate: Language A SL

B. Interpretation of the text

C. Appreciation of literary features
D. Presentation (includes organization and integration of supporting examples)
E. Formal use of language

The second portion of the on-demand test, also ninety minutes, asks students to select one essay question
from among several about drama, poetry, or prose and to answer with reference to literary works that they
have studied. A sample question is:

Drama
1. Either
(a) Comparing the opening scenes of at least two plays, discuss what audience expectations are aroused
and how.
Or
(b) “Drama explains individuals, not relationships.” Paying close attention to how individuals and rela-
tionships are presented in two or three plays you have studied, say how far you find this statement to
be true.

Scorers assess these written papers based upon five criteria:

A. Knowledge and understanding of works studied

B. Response to the question
C. Appreciation of literary features
D. Presentation (includes organization and integration of supporting examples)
E. Formal use of language

The final written requirement for completing the course is a comparative study (based on at least two of
the three world literature works that students have read), focusing on a literary trait that links them. This
essay is written during the course and submitted to IB Language A1 examiners for assessment. It demands
analytical thinking and close reading. Students must bring to their answers a deep knowledge of particular
works of literature as well as an understanding of how literature works.

Students who do not write often and well will not be able to succeed on the IB assessments. In order to
perform well students will have to have had many opportunities to write about literature analytically—
★ drafting, revising, and refining their work—with guidance from a teacher.

Oral communication is also valued within the Language A1 course. Oral performances are assessed by
teachers in a process that follows a detailed grading outline supplied by the IBO. This process is as rigor-
ous as that which is applied to the written commentaries. Students are judged on the correctness of their
oral performance as well as the quality of their ideas.

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Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
IV. Conclusions

Reviews of Courses and Exams

The IB Language A1 course approaches a “gold standard” for what an exiting American high school stu-
dent should know and be able to do in the area of literary analysis, but not for what that student should
know about U.S. literature.

While the curriculum and assessments prescribed by the IBO achieve their stated goal of helping students
develop a “global perspective,” a U.S. high school student could complete this course of study without read-
ing the core of great American literature—a troubling lacuna. This omission might be addressed by requir-
ing that students enrolling in the IB Language A1 course also study the canon of American literature, either
in the tenth grade or in another required eleventh- or twelfth-grade course.

Still, the course constitutes a specific, comprehensive, and demanding study of world literature. After com-
pletion of this course and an accompanying course in American literature, students are likely to be well pre-
pared for the demands of the university, the workplace, and citizenship insofar as literature can achieve this.

Grades
Content (60%): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .B
Rigor (30%): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .A
Clarity (10%): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .A

Overall Grade: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .B+

47
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
I n t e r n a t i o n a l B a c c a l a u r e a t e : Wo r l d H i s t o r y S L

International Baccalaureate: World History SL

By Lucien Ellington

I. Documents Reviewed

★ IB History Guide (includes curriculum guide, internal and external assessment descriptions and cri-
teria), International Baccalaureate Organization, Geneva, 2001

Note: We reviewed the 2001 document, but a new document is slated to be used beginning in 2008.

★ Higher Level and Standard Level exams and markschemes, 2004–2006

Note: The IB does not make its materials available online.

II. Introduction
When it comes to understanding history, Aristotle had the right idea. “If you would understand anything,”
he wrote, “observe its beginning and its development.”

The IB World History course adheres to half this idea. It spends a lot of time looking at the nineteenth- and
twentieth-century development of our world. Unfortunately, it completely ignores what came before, includ-
ing the historical roots of these centuries. It’s not a critical flaw in the program—the course matter is clear-
ly delineated and very sound. But it is a problem for those who might want to view the IB World History
course as a gold standard for U.S. schools and students.

The IB world history course, like other IB courses, includes standard- and higher-level “tracks.” Standard
Level (SL) students must engage in the study of history for 150 hours and are required to examine in depth
one prescribed subject from twentieth-century history. Higher Level (HL) students spend more time in the
classroom (240 hours), but follow the same regimen as SL students with one exception: HL students must
also spend time studying one of five additional “regional options” (Africa, Americas, East and Southeast Asia
and Oceania, Europe including Russia/USSR, and South Asia and the Middle East, including North Africa).

★ Because the task of these reviews is to determine the extent to which AP and IB courses represent a “gold
standard” for American high school students, this review focuses primarily on the history SL course.
However, I also reviewed—but did not grade—the Americas option that HL students may take, seeking to
determine if it could stand on its own as a good course in American history for all high school students.1

III. Content
A. Course Descriptions
In IB World History, all students engage in an in-depth study of some of the most important history of the
past century. They are required to choose one of three prescribed topics:

★ The USSR under Stalin, 1924-1941

★ The emergence of and development of the People’s Republic of China, 1946-1964
★ The Cold War, 1960-1979

Additionally, SL students are asked to study two or three twentieth-century world history themes from
among six options (one of which should be related to the selected prescribed topic):

48
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
 Causes, practices and effects of war

Reviews of Courses and Exams

★
★ Nationalist and independence movements, decolonization and challenges facing new states
★ The rise and rule of single-party states
★ Peace and cooperation: International organizations and multiparty states
★ The Cold War
★ The state and its relationship with religion and minorities

I normally take a dim view of efforts to teach world history thematically. However, these themes are, for the
most part, representative of some of the most significant trends of the past century. Moreover, they are well
aligned to the prescribed topics and will serve to broaden students’ knowledge of history outside their pre-
scribed topic. For example, students who are studying “the emergence and development of the Peoples’
Republic of China, 1946-1964” might also study “the rise and rule of single-party states.” In so doing, they
might be asked to compare and contrast single-party rule in pre-World War II Italy and Germany, and in the
Soviet Union, with that under Chairman Mao Zedong. This exercise expands students’ understanding of not
only single-party states worldwide, but the single-party state in China, as well.

But IB World History doesn’t stop there. Another impressive feature of the curriculum is that all students
are expected to do history in ways that transcend learning facts or even comprehending historical events
from one perspective. Students work with a number of primary and secondary materials from a variety of
sources that reflect the viewpoint of different economic classes and genders, as well as national and ethnic
perspectives and biases.

So far, so good. Yet despite my admiration for the in-depth historical work required of SL students, for the
specificity and variety of assessment procedures, and for the substantive topics that students must address,
the IB history content is far from the being a gold-standard world history course for U.S. high school students.

That’s because the course, with its nearly exclusive emphasis on twentieth-century developments, includes
the study of only a tiny fraction of the story of human civilization. Students at the Standard Level aren’t
afforded the opportunity to study in depth the history of even one region, such as Europe, Asia, or Africa
(though HL students are).

If students—no matter how bright—have not taken a good “soup to nuts” world history survey course in
high school before spending time in the IB’s intensive twentieth-century curriculum, they won’t have the
breadth of knowledge necessary to understand major long-range developments in world history.

To cite just one example, belief systems rooted in antiquity and premodern times (religions and widely
shared cultural assumptions) constitute a large part of the foundation for understanding twentieth-century
★
colonialism, modern nation-states, and the intercultural interactions—economic, political, military, and
social—of the past hundred years. If students haven’t seriously engaged in the study of the Greco-Roman
and Judaic-Christian heritage of the West, or the Confucian/Buddhist heritage of the East, they cannot pos-
sess the basic knowledge required for understanding these topics. This means that the IB course, in and of
itself, is seriously incomplete.

B. Assessments
Both SL and HL students must complete a series of external (graded outside of class by IBO officials) and
internal (graded by the teacher) assessments.

The external component at the Standard Level is a timed exam that consists of two test papers (three for
HL students). Paper 1 lists four short-answer questions for each of the three prescribed twentieth-century
topics. Drawing on supplied historical documents, students must answer all four questions in one topic
area. Students writing on “the USSR under Stalin, 1924–1941,” for example, would first read source mate-
rials (such as a short excerpt from a Stalin speech on industrialization, or a short extract from Gail
Warshofsky Lapidus’s book, Women in Soviet Society: Equality, Development, and Social Change). Then they
would answer four questions that are similar in scope to this one:

49
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
 With reference to their origin and purpose, assess the value and limitations of Source A and Source
I n t e r n a t i o n a l B a c c a l a u r e a t e : Wo r l d H i s t o r y S L

★
B for historians studying industrialization under Stalin.

Paper 2 gives students a choice of several extended response essays drawn from the six themes and asks
them to answer two. These questions require students to display a command both of historical content and
the complexities of twentieth-century topics. Thus, students writing on the topic “Causes, practices, and
effects of war” address such challenges as these:

★ Compare and contrast the results of the First World War and the Second World War.

★ To what extent did technological developments ensure victory in twentieth century wars?

Higher-level students also must complete a Paper 3 and demonstrate in-depth knowledge of the region they
studied by addressing economic, political, historical, and interregional issues.

The internal assessment, often referred to as an “historical investigation,” is a untimed essay of fifteen-hun-
dred to two-thousand words. The International Baccalaureate Organization recommends that twenty hours of
class time be dedicated to this project. This “investigation” is based on individual student interest in “specif-
ic historical enquiry tied to classroom activities.” Teachers provide feedback on topic selection and require stu-
dents to submit drafts of their essays for comment and feedback. All papers must include an investigation
plan, an evidence summary, a “sources evaluation,” an analysis, and a conclusion. Emphasis in grading is
placed upon the student’s in-depth use of a few sources rather than superficial treatment of many sources.

All forms of assessments that I reviewed align well with the content and skills that students are expected
to master, as described in the course guide/syllabus.

IV. Conclusions
The guide that I examined has first-rate content, and the assessment materials align nicely with the mate-
rials and skills for which they are designed. Students enrolled in the IB World History course not only learn
some important twentieth-century history, but they also learn to think as historians. They must become
comfortable with primary and secondary source materials, and learn to balance and weigh a wide variety
of interpretations and opinions about the same event and then draw their own conclusions.

These skills will serve students well not only in later historical studies at the university level, but also in life.

★ If only the course did not limit itself to the twentieth-century. In so doing, the IBO is not only potentially
denying students the opportunity to learn about the important cultures and civilizations that gave rise to
our modern world; it’s hampering their ability to appreciate the complexity of twentieth-century (and, now,
twenty-first-century) problems. One cannot fully appreciate Stalin, for example, without first understanding
the history of authoritarianism and totalitarianism in Russia.

The course would also be improved if both SL and HL students were required to study one world region
chronologically. Currently, only HL students do so.

Balancing these strengths and weaknesses, IB World History earns a B- as the gold standard world history
course for the typical American high school student.

Grades
Content (60%): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .C
Rigor (30%): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .A
Clarity (10%): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .B

Overall Grade: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .B-

1
Please see page 51 for a brief discussion of the “Americas” option for higher-level IB history students.

50
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
 Reviews of Courses and Exams
Is the IB “Americas” option suitable as an
U.S. history course?
Higher Level (HL) students are expected to select one of the five regional options (Africa,
Americas, East and Southeast Asia and Oceania, Europe including Russia/USSR, South Asia, and
the Middle East, including North Africa). Content for the Americas option includes the United
States, Latin America (including the Caribbean), and Canada. Could it stand alone as a U.S. his-
tory course?

This option does a respectable job of covering several important U.S. history topics—such as the
Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, and the Civil War, as well as some seminal leaders,
such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln. But because the course
focuses on all of the Americas, it cannot cover all the U.S. material that an American student
should learn. Among the people and topics important for the revolutionary and early political
period, for example, and yet not included in the IB syllabus: Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin,
the Boston Tea Party, Lexington and Concord, and the tensions between Jefferson’s and
Hamilton’s visions of the country in the Washington administration.

Beyond this slighting of some important material, however, lies a bigger problem. It is not jingo-
istic to believe in American exceptionalism, or in the responsibility of U.S. schools to teach stu-
dents not only about U.S. flaws, but also about what has made our nation a world success story.
A good U.S. history course explains why large numbers of immigrants consistently want to come
here, and what the basic values are that most Americans share. Certainly many policymakers
and much of the public expect as much. But the broad scope of the Americas option all but
ensures that any such discussion would be muted.

For students who have previously had a good survey course in U.S. history, the IB Americas
option is an attractive course. Students can apply what they already know against the backdrop
of the Americas at large, and further sharpen their understanding of our nation’s history. But if
students lack this background, the Americas option offers, at best, a cursory survey of the high-
lights of our past.

In short, this option is neither detailed nor rich enough to serve as the sole course in U.S. histo-
ry for American high school students.
★

51
Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate: Do They Deserve Gold Star Status?
Introduction

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