Yesterday, the Post ran a story by Jay “Challenge Index” Mathews profiling Bell Multicultural High School in Ward 1, which offers only Advanced Placement (AP) English courses to its 11th and 12th graders. I read the story with interest, not just because the students and teachers Mathews interviews are my former students and colleagues from the years I taught at Bell (2005-2007), but because I was also an “AP for all” teacher, and once struggled with some very mixed feelings about it.

One take, and the one that Mathews runs with, is that this is a great thing. Students, many of whom are immigrants with only a few years of English under their belts, feel empowered, and any educator worth their salt will tell you that students only achieve as high as the expectations set for them. Why not give kids the rigorous coursework they will need to have a real shot at college, instead of continuing the culture of mediocrity D.C. public schools are infamous for? In my classroom, this meant teaching students with 4th grade reading levels how to write an analytical essay about James Joyce, and watching as every single one of my 80+ students showed up in May to take the three-hour AP Literature Exam – the only day all year I ever had perfect attendance.

But there are other considerations. There are 11th and 12th grade students at Bell who say they’re grateful for being offered the opportunity for AP courses, but who also still struggle with putting punctuation at the end of their sentences. What is best for those students? Is there room for both rhetoric and grammar in a single class period? (And if you’ve never taught, don’t try to answer that.)

I am frustrated, but not surprised, that Mathews glosses over these very real issues. After all, he’s the father of the controversial “Challenge Index,” a method of ranking high schools used by Newsweek (owned by the same company as the Post), in which the number of AP courses taken by students at a school are divided by the number of graduating seniors. (Not the number of exams passed, mind you – the number taken.) A school like Bell, where close to half of the incoming 9th grade class drops out before the end of their freshman year, and the entire 11th and 12th grade is taking an AP test, tends to place pretty high on the ranking, even if that measure doesn’t even begin to take into account how well students are being taught. The “Challenge Index” has come under fire for its deficiencies over the last few years, most recently in the form of a boycott by 39 small school districts from five states who say the ranking is an inappropriate use of data and largely meaningless in practical terms.

Photo by dangerbird