St. Louis CofCC Blog

When I first spied the Slashdot headline, I thought the reason was racial, in that the “power that be” are doing everything they can to discourage white American students from getting too comfortable with CS/IT as a career track, in order to create the faux necessity for expanding H-1-B allotments.  Turns out race is the motivation, but in a more practical manner.

Education Week (h/t Slashdot):

College Board Intends to Drop AP Programs in Four Subjects

Officials overseeing the Advanced Placement program have announced that they intend to drop AP classes and exams in four subject areas, in a pullback expected to affect about 12,500 students and 2,500 teachers worldwide.

Following the end of the 2008-09 academic year, there will be no AP courses or exams in Italian, Latin literature, French literature, and computer science AB, said officials at the College Board, the New York City-based nonprofit organization that owns the AP brand.

The College Board has in past years withdrawn one undersubscribed AP course at a time, but has never taken so many courses off its table of offerings in the half-century since the program started as a way for students to take college-level courses and potentially earn college credit while still in high school.

Trevor Packer, the College Board vice president who oversees the AP program, said the decision was made at a trustee meeting on March 27, and that AP teachers in the affected subjects were notified by e-mail April 3. “Of course, it’s sad for them,” he said of the teachers.

Resource Allocation

Mr. Packer said the decision was made principally because of demographic considerations.

Only a tiny fraction of the members of underrepresented minority groups who take AP exams take the tests in one of those four affected subject areas, he said.

The College Board has made it a priority to reach such students, including those who are African-American and Hispanic.

Therefore, if a given AP exam is too white for the College Board, then the test has to go.  Pretty soon, we’ll read a story that the College Board has added AP exams in Diversity Studies and Ebonics.  The College Board is going the way of college itself.