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

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

Ok, the whole thing is based on the opinion of particular reviewers, 
who were probably picked to adhere to the ideological orientation of 
the Fordham foundation.  I did not at first glance see any mention of 
research based testing.  Are any of the reviewers education 
researchers in the field of interest?  What research credentials do 
they have with respect to learning and teaching in the fields they 
were reviewing?

Since they did not review physics, it is hard to me to assess the 
quality of the reviewers.

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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