As Ridge High sophomores and juniors schedule their classes for the 2010-2011 school year, many students contemplate taking one, two, or many AP classes. AP classes offer more challenging coursework and higher weight on high school transcripts, but prospective AP students often fear tough teachers, tremendous workloads, and the stressful AP exams in May.

Fortunately or unfortunately, though, no Ridge student need worry about being ill-prepared for the AP exam.

Our AP classes strive, often from the very first day of school, to teach students how to perform well on their exams. And they have succeeded—Ridge has some of the highest AP scores of any high school in the country. This gives our school a good reputation among colleges and places us high on lists of high schools selected by AP scores, like the US News and World Report High School rankings. (Ridge has consistently been ranked at about the 100th top public school in the nation.) And, of course, this makes Ridge students feel good about their AP fours and fives.

But in preparing students so well for the May AP exams, Ridge's top classes must sacrifice a little of what makes a good class great. AP teachers "teach to the test," covering only topics touched upon in the AP curriculum and skimming over those often more interesting or important areas not necessary for the exam. 

For example, Mr. Zande, my AP US History teacher, often bemoans that his class cannot focus on the battle strategies and tactics of any American wars, although he and many of his students are interested in them: the AP curriculum does not allow our class to stray from the most superficial knowledge of the causes and outcomes of wars.

In addition, AP classes prepare students very well for the methods of evaluation used on the AP exam, and very little for practical, college-level skills. The AP US History exam contains three short essays, to be written in a two hour period.

One of those essays, called a DBQ, or "Document-Based Question," requires students to follow a very strict format in order to receive full credit. So, my AP US History class began learning how to structure DBQ essays from the very first month of school. We have investigated topics like colonial religion, the Mexican-American war, and culture of the 1920s through the lens of DBQ essays. We have completed practice DBQ essay outlines in class. By now, we think, eat, and sleep DBQ essays. And, so, when we encounter the DBQ on the AP exam in May, Ridge's US History students will most likely feel completely comfortable and ace the essay.

But, at the cost of all that time spent preparing for the DBQ essay, my AP US class never writes full-length papers on a topic in history. In fact, we rarely do our own research at all: we simply spit back information from the US History textbook and the documents provided on a DBQ.

In the same way, AP English Language and Literature classes only have time to write one five-page-maximum research paper per year. AP Latin classes must learn how to translate specific lines from Latin poetry, and don't have time to learn any other poems or authors. AP Calculus students must flip past whole chapters of the Calculus textbook that are not covered in either Calculus exam, disconsolate. (Well, maybe not.)

But while I'm sure that most Ridge AP students don't bemoan their limited curricula, sticking to the strict standards set by the AP exam does hurt students. By not learning how to conduct our own research, by not allowing us to focus on topics that we are interested in rather than those prescribed by the AP curriculum, and by teaching us that the most important part of a class is scoring well on the final exam, Ridge's AP classes insufficiently prepare students for college and the real world.

Maybe, if the school district didn't focus so much on high test scores and instead tried to actually teach students how to teach themselves, students would be genuinely interested in all of their classes for the entire year—and they would probably learn a lot more too.