Moving Beyond AP

Process for Evaluating AP Program: Essential Questions

The College Board’s Advanced Placement (AP) curriculum has long been a centerpiece of our Upper School academic program. Over the last few decades, many independent schools have decided to move away from the AP curriculum. At several different points over the last 30-plus years, Penn Charter has also questioned its commitment to AP. Most recently, David Brightbill (Academic Dean) and Travis Larrabee (Director of Strategic Initiatives) assembled a committee, with wide representation from academic departments and the College Counseling office, to once again examine how the AP program supports Penn Charter’s mission.

This committee was charged with making a recommendation to the head of school and to the Education Committee of the Penn Charter Trustees about the Upper School curriculum and whether the AP courses should have a role in it. More about the committee's process.

Two major essential questions guided the committee’s work:

• Does the AP curriculum continue to serve as an essential element in our Upper School academic program?

• Does the AP curriculum support the school’s vision, mission, and goals, specifically as they relate to preparing our students for success in college, in post-secondary experiences and in living lives that make a difference? 

We Can Do Better: Designing New Advanced Courses

After months of research and careful deliberation, the AP Committee has determined that the AP program no longer serves as the ideal curriculum for our most advanced classes and learners. Furthermore, reliance on this College Board curriculum ultimately deprives us of our independence, pedagogical creativity and programmatic flexibility. The AP program prioritizes breadth over depth and content memorization over skill development, which greatly hinders the ability of both faculty and students to think critically and creatively to develop an academic program that better aligns with Penn Charter's vision, mission and goals. Simply put, the AP program limits opportunities for deep learning.  More explanation of ways in which the AP program fails to align with our Strategic Vision.

Despite Penn Charter's decades-long commitment to AP, the committee believes we can do better. Penn Charter remains fully committed to offering rigorous courses for its students and would engage in a curriculum redesign process to develop replacement courses for classes with a current AP designation. We would not need to start from scratch to do this work, but rather build on past successes. We can preserve the best elements of the AP program and combine them with our own teachers' knowledge, passion and expertise. Moreover, in recent years faculty have developed unique and meaningful experiences for students to pursue areas of interest and gain fundamental knowledge and skills. More about what replacement advanced courses could look like at Penn Charter.

To give ourselves proper time to research, collaborate and create our new, home-grown advanced course offerings, our move beyond AP will not be fully implemented until the fall of 2025. Penn Charter’s current eighth grade, the Class of 2025, will be the last students to access official AP courses at Penn Charter.

Rigor and College Admissions

Will this decision to move beyond AP adversely affect the college admissions process and the student college experience for PC students?

The short and clear answer to this question is “No.” Unlike in the past, AP courses on high school transcripts are of diminished significance to college admissions officers. While many colleges and universities will offer credit or class preference for superior performance on an AP exam, an AP course on a student’s transcript is just an indicator of advanced level course work. Again, we will be replacing AP courses with our own advanced courses, and our students’ transcripts will indicate the advanced rigor. In our own conversations with college and university admissions officers, we have been assured that the absence of the AP designation will have no adverse impact on our students.

Read more about advanced courses and college admissions.

As we shared at the outset of this letter, we are constantly assessing our academic program to ensure that it meets the current and future needs of our students and provides the best possible educational experience for them. This is in preparation for not just the next four years, but for the next four decades of their lives. We join dozens of other premiere high school programs around the country (including several in the Philadelphia market) in the belief that the AP program is no longer the best option to support and promote authentic rigor, inquiry and critical thinking. We are excited about this next step for Penn Charter, where we can take full advantage of the knowledge, experiences and talents of our incredible faculty and students.