I have some bad news. The AB Computer Science AB Course has been discontinued. According to the College Board website, this is there official notice,
- The AP Computer Science AB Exam will be discontinued following the May 2009 exam administration. May 2009 will be the last offering of the AP Computer Science AB Exam.
- Appropriate College Board committees will focus their efforts on improving and supporting the AP Computer Science A program, which will be enhanced during the next five years to better represent a full-year, entry-level college computer science sequence.
- Teacher professional development opportunities will be provided on the Web and in face-to-face events to support AP teachers as they enhance their AP Computer Science A courses in the coming years.
It saddens me that the APCS AB course has discontinued because I planned on taking it during my senior year. The College Board explains that dropping student and teacher participation in the APCS AB course has lead to this decision.
I found others discussing the future of the APCS A course. Some of the discussion raises the point that the A course isn’t a real college level course, it isn’t designed to be a full year course in college, instead possibly a semester course. I agree with that, I haven’t taken the APCS A class yet but from taking a practice exam, with no prior study nor class time, I can easily get a 3, a 4 if I’m lucky with the questions.
The AB course has more coverage of more topics, such as LinkedLists, Queues, Stacks and algorithms. Those things are not complicated but I’ve never used them in any development I’ve done, so I’d have to actually learn something for the AB course.
What are your feelings on this development? Do you think that the AB course was the right course to be dropped?
Nuts, does your school have a policy for taking AP courses that they don’t offer classes for? I’d at least try to get in the A exam next year before they discontinue that too. I very fondly remember passing the AB test back in 2001 because I signed up for it even though my high school did not offer any CS courses, but there was no policy in place for taking tests that there were no classes for, so they grudgingly let me take it and I got a 4. You could set precedent!
On the other hand, even WITH the AB credit, my university insisted that I take the entire first year of CS intro courses regardless; I just got double credit for them. So even still AB may not really have been worth it, best case means you have an extra slot for general eds your first semester/quarter in uni. YMMV.
Yeah, I’m a high school teacher and I’ve know about this for about a year. It’s really depressing. Many high school CS teachers are being forced to teach other non-CS subjects because principals only allow CS classes if it has the AP label. We had a two year strand of A, then AB, so basically I’m losing half my classes.
I’m posting anonymously on my blog since some of things I say from a high school teacher perspective may get me fired if they found out. I criticize my school board and administration often since most of them are basically Luddites.
We (teachers on the official APCS listserve) are all waiting for the new “acorn” book that tells what the new “A” test will cover, but the rumor is that the “A” test will remain basically the same. No data structures other than ArrayList and 2D arrays will be on the new “A” exam.
The other worrying idea is that many colleges don’t give credit for the easier “A” exam. Since the AB exam is dead, this may dissuade students from bothering with signing up for the “A” test.
I put a big rant on my (new) site, and I would appreciate a link exchange.
Thank you!