AP, Honors meetings merit respect

Every year as the school year draws to a close, freshmen, sophomores and juniors sign up for the classes they want to take the following year. Many choose to take AP and Honors classes for the extra degree of difficulty, a love of the subject or to build their college resumes.

And, as always, signing up for AP/Honors classes is closely accompanied by the meetings that serve to inform interested students what the workload is like and how the class is run. As such, students interested in advanced courses should give these meetings a great deal of attention.

For many students, however, the meetings wrongly are perceived to be insignificant; students attend the meetings because they are told to but rarely listen to what is actually said. As a result, they often miss important information that could help them decide whether they really want to take the class.

This creates several problems the following year, especially when a large number of students sign up for a class and end up dropping it.

“[Students] dropping classes makes a huge mess of the schedule,” math teacher Carol Evans said. “It’s hard on the counselors and administration, who already have enough to worry about without having to cut or add sections of a class.”

The school’s open enrollment policy allows any interested student to sign up for AP and pass any requirements. According to the MVLA Curriculum Handbook, these requirements would include passing an entrance exam, achieving certain grades or acquiring teacher recommendations.

Furthermore, once students are in an AP/Honors course, there is little keeping them from dropping the course or switching to a regular college preparatory course if they do not like it.

While the AP/Honors contract that all enrolling students are required to sign includes a commitment statement to staying in the course for the whole year, students are able to switch out or drop after two weeks. Because students are able to sign up for AP and Honors courses without many prerequisites and with relatively few consequences for dropping, they often do so without thinking about the impact it might have.

“Students should take AP and Honors classes only if they really want it,” Evans said. “They require much more time than regular classes, and they’re more challenging. They’re meant for people who love the subject.”

Knowing this, students should take AP/Honors meetings more seriously than they currently do. With budget cuts being made across the board, next year’s class sizes are in jeopardy of increasing, making it more difficult than ever to transfer into college prep classes from AP and Honors courses.

If students put the serious thought that they should into class choices, their schedules, as well as those of the administration, will be much more enjoyable and manageable.