As part of a sweeping overhaul of its entire AP program, the College Board announced earlier this month that it has completed revisions to its Advanced Placement (AP) Biology program that will take effect during the 2012?13 academic year.
While Department of Biology Chair Juliet Fuhrman approved of the College Board's proposed changes, administrators who determine the university's AP credit policy have yet to decide how it will affect whether Tufts students will continue to receive credit for passing the exam.
Questions on the new exam are designed to test understanding of larger concepts and critical thinking, as opposed to simple memorization of facts. The number of free?response questions will more than double, while multiple?choice questions will be cut almost in half. The College Board's AP Biology curriculum focuses on teaching fewer concepts in greater depth.
Fuhrman hopes that the updated course will better reflect the material taught in college?level biology classes.
"We will be thrilled to see if these changes align the course with our way of teaching biology," she said.
A 2002 study by the National Research Council, prompted changes to College Board's AP science programs, Jennifer Topiel, executive director of communications for the College Board, told the Daily.
The study criticized the AP science programs for the "daunting" scope of their curricula, which the study asserted was incompatible with student development of deeper understanding of subject areas.
Jack Ridge, the chair of Tufts' Educational Policy Committee (EPC), was skeptical of the College Board's changes. Even with the proposed course revisions, he said, AP students may still not learn to think at the critical level demanded in college.
"A lot of AP courses teach to the exam, and there's a lot of training of how to take the exams," he said. "They become more of a formula than actually learning how to think critically."
Ridge, who is also a professor of geology, chaired the EPC in 2009 when the committee voted to overhaul Tufts' AP credit policy. The current policy limits students in the School of Arts and Sciences to five pre?matriculation credits - which include credit from AP and SAT II exams, as well as international baccalaureate credits - and School of Engineering students to eight. Students are allowed to count only one credit toward any individual distribution area.
Concern about the legitimacy of AP exam results prompted the EPC at the time to reevaluate the school's treatment of AP credit, according to Ridge.
"A lot of the faculty was starting to doubt the validity of AP exams as indicators of whether students had done college?level work or were prepared to succeed in college," he said.
Ridge added that concern about the fairness of allowing students to earn credit for AP scores, when not all students had the opportunity to take AP courses, also prompted the committee's decision.
Many of Tufts' peer institutions have stopped accepting AP credit, Ridge said. He anticipates that Tufts is headed in the same direction.
"We're in a wait?and?see mode," he said. "I'm not particularly happy with [the current policy]."
Tufts' Department of Biology currently awards one credit for a score of 5 on the AP Biology exam. Students who receive a 5 may use the credit to replace either a Biology 13 or 14 credit.
A committee composed of AP teachers and college faculty designed the new AP Biology curriculum, according to Topiel. The National Science Foundation made the revisions possible with a $1.8 million grant to the College Board in 2006 to redesign its science programs, she said.
The Department of Biology consistently reviews the AP Biology program to determine whether or not to award incoming students credit for AP scores, Fuhrman said. The department will do so again given the changes.
"We will need to see the new test and other [data] from the College Board before we change our current advising on AP credit," she said. "Based on the material tested, we may reconsider how we advise students to use their AP credit."
The biology department will continue to consider its approach to AP credit on a case?by?case basis, Fuhrman said.
"Each student has a unique experience, depending on their high school and how the class is taught," she said. "There is such a wide range of resources available to teachers for laboratory sciences that it's still nearly impossible to standardize our practice."
Senior Edward Chao is opposed to Tufts' existing AP credit policy. In 2009, he co?sponsored a Tufts Community Union Senate resolution expressing concern with the EPC's proposed restriction on AP credit.
The resolution, which passed 15?5 with two abstentions, reflected the Senate's belief that there should be no cap on AP credits accepted towards matriculation and foundation requirements, according to Chao.
"What we really wanted was for individual departments to be making the decision [about whether to award credit for AP scores]," Chao said.
Ann Dannenberg, who teaches AP Biology at Newton North High School, was pleased that the revamped course will more closely align with her teaching style, which emphasizes big?picture understanding and the development of critical thinking skills, as opposed to rote memorization.
"[It's] much more about science and much less about being able to spit things back," she told the Daily. "In the confines of the current curriculum, I try to do that. This will give us a little more leeway."
Freshman John Slakey received a 5 on his AP Biology exam, but opted to take both Biology 13 and 14 anyway. Although his high school AP Biology teacher did not teach to the exam, he said, he does not consider his high school class to be comparable to his college ones.
"Biology 14 is more advanced than my high school AP Bio class, but my high school class provided a good background," he said.
A revised AP U.S. History program was originally scheduled to be unveiled at the same time but was delayed after reviewers identified problems with the draft version. The new U.S. History program is slated for publication next fall.
Revisions to other AP programs in world languages, history and science are also in the works and should be ready for implementation in time for exams in 2014 or 2015.
