Yearbooks

In middle school and high school, yearbooks were an important part of end of the year rituals. Everyone looked forward to the day when they would be handed out and a lot of students got  credit for putting together the yearbooks. Now that we are in college, the importance of yearbooks has not changed all that much. What may have changed is the format they are in.

A few years before I came to my school, they switched from a print yearbook to DVD. I don't know any statistics on how many people purchased them, but I do know that by the time I got here in 2007 hardly anyone purchesed a copy of the DVD. Even people who did buy them did not  seem to to appreciate them; I found a few copies in the DVD bin once at  Salvation Army. For my sophmore year, the school decided to go back to print yearbooks, a decision people were pretty happy about.

Let's face it: Twenty years from now our kids are not going to slip in DVDs so that they can make fun of our hair. Heck, we probably won't even own DVD players by that point. But print yearbooks are never going to be obsolete.

AP Classes

Because of lower revenues, high schools in Fort Wayne are being told that they must increase the number of students passing AP Exams (Advanced Placement). The state wants a minimum of 25% passing, and only one area school is meeting this goal. Not only do they want more students passing, they want more students taking the classes, which is certainly a good thing. Although if students are not ready for an AP class, they shouldn't be taking the class, which could hinder things. An issue like this represents why "No Child Left Behind" hurts students, even at higher levels when schools no longer have to follow the restrictions. Schools are more concerned with reaching benchmarks and not looking bad that they forget the real purpose is to help the students.

One argument is that success in AP courses is a good indicator of how a student will do in college. There is only one problem; it sounds like rather than helping the students do better in the class, they are just making it easier to pass, which certainly won't help their success in college. See the article here: http://www.news-sentinel.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100719/NEWS/7190326

I am a huge supporter of AP classes and took two high school. Unfortunately, neither one helped me all that much because I wasn't clear on what classes they replaced, so I ended up taking most of those anyways. To top it off, the college version was a lot more useful. However, if the classes are done right, they can be a huge help to students, but not if we're letting them take the easy way out. I know students who took AP instead of Honors because AP is easier.

Did anyone here take AP classes or is planning to take them? Were they useful? Leave your response in the comment section.

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