Re: [Phys-l] study of IP and AB

["John M Clement" <clement@hal-pc.org>]

However the latest study by Philip Sadler showed that AP had a very 
modest effect on college physics grades.  But did Fordham actually 
have any evidence for whether students actually understood the 
material???  The Fordham foundation has not paid any attention to PER 
as of the last time I looked, and they never disliked a curriculum 
which loaded more material in the name of rigorousness.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


> The Fordham foundation recently put out a report evaluating AP 
> and IB.  The evaluation goes into some detail.
>
> Entry point:
>  http://edexcellence.net/foundation/publication/publication.cfm?id=378
> Nutshell summary:
>  http://www.edexcellence.net/doc/APIB_Nutshell.pdf
> Full report (52 pages) [recommended]:
>  http://www.edexcellence.net/doc/APIB.pdf
>
> And there is a Washington Post article on the subject that I found
> amusing:
>  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/13/AR2007111300695.html?hpid=news-col-blog
>
> To boil down the report to few sentences, the foundation found
> the AP and IB situation to be "mostly encouraging".  This is in
> stark contrast to their opinion of state standards, "which have 
> consistently shown that expectations for American primary and 
> secondary students are typically weak and watered down."
>
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