Raising
the Cut-Off Score on the College Board Advanced Placement Examinations
in Composition and Literature: Justification for a First-Year
Writing Curriculum
Richard
H. Haswell
Texas
A&M University, Corpus Christi
rhaswell@falcon.tamucc.edu
24
August 2003
Sometimes
English departments want to raise the level that allows waiver,
placement, or credit for their first-year writng courses, raise
it from a score of 3 to a score of 4 or 5 on the College Board
Advanced Placement Literature and Composition Examination. But
they get resistance from their administration and from the local
high schools serving their institution, or they are asked to provide
justification for the move. This Webpage provides some data, bibliography,
and expert opinion that can help justify raising the cut-off.
The
main argument for raising the cut-off score has been that a score
of 3 does not possess good predictive validity in terms of
a school's first-year writing curriculum. Advanced Placement courses
in high-school and performance on the AP Exam may not train or
test for skills taught in the first-year course, or in the beginning
course of a first-year sequence. Those skills may be in researching,
use of sources, citation methods, complex argumentation, rhetorical
critique, or any number of other instructional expectations built
into the first-year composition curriculum. The students scoring
3 (which typically will be over half of the high-school students
who sit for the AP Exam) are put at risk if they do not enroll
in the initial writing course. There are other arguments, of course.
An especially forceful one questions the logic of testing for
writing skills with short-answer questions and a brief essay responding
to works of creative literature. Another points to the poor record
of minorites in enrolling in AP courses and in scoring on the
AP Exams.
It
is wise to keep in mind the distinction among waiver, placement,
and credit . Waiver merely removes a course or courses from a
student's curricular requirements. Placement allows a student
to begin at a certain point in a curricular sequence. Credit may
or may not involve waiver and placement, but it always awards
credit hours to the student. Combinations of the three are possible,
and a student may be given three hours credit toward graduation,
credit, however, not applied toward any particular course. Naturally
enough, of the three the student and often the institution prefer
advance credit. They are not much persuaded by the fact that the
College Board titles its examinations "Advanced Placement"
and not "Advanced Credit."
For
its part, the College Board does not specifically recommend how
admissions offices use success on their examinations, nor do they
recommend any particular cut-off point. They do define a score
of 3 as "qualified," whatever that means. And they make
this statement: "Almost two-thirds of the students achieved
grades of 3 or above on AP's 5-point scale--sufficiently high
to qualify for credit and/or enrollment in advanced courses at
many four-year colleges and universities, including some of the
most selective"http://www.collegeboard.com/press/senior99/html/990831b.html.
The operational words here (some would call them weasel words)
are "many" and "some." See the piece by William
Lichten for data that break this language down to specifics.
The
following has four parts:
A. Table of institutions with a cut-off above
a score of 3
B. Some opinions from experts in composition
C. Brief bibliography on AP validity
D. Memorndum justifying the move from a cut-off
of 3 to 4
A
Some
institutions offering placement or exemption for first-year composition
with an AP score of no less than 4 (information gathered August
2003)
| Institution |
AP
scores that earn waiver of requirement |
AP
scores that earn granting of credit |
Qualifications
(English 101 = first course in first-year sequence; English
102 = second course in first-year sequence) |
|
Arizona
State University |
|
4
or 5 |
does
not earn exemption for English 102 |
| Atlanta
Christian College |
|
4 or 5 |
does
not earn exemption for English 102 |
|
Berry
College |
|
4
or 5 |
|
|
Carleton
University |
|
5 |
student
can’t exempt out of upper-division writing-across-the-curriculum
requirement |
|
Catholic
University |
|
5 |
students
must still take an advanced writing cours |
|
Cornell
University |
|
4
or 5 |
|
|
DePaul
University |
4
or 5 |
|
|
|
Eastern
Oregon State University |
4
or 5 |
4
or 5 |
credit
granted only with additional evidence, such as a portfolio
of high school writing |
|
Eastern
Washington State University |
|
4
or 5 |
|
|
Gonzaga
University |
|
4
or 5 |
4
granted elective credit, not English 101 |
|
Gustavus
Adolphus College |
|
4
or 5 |
|
| Indiana
University-Purdue University Indianapolis |
|
4 or 5 |
credit for 101 only on the English
Language and Composition Exam; 4 or 5 on the Literature and
Composition Exam earns different credit |
|
Lynchburg
University |
|
4
or 5 |
credit
for English 101 only; all students required to take English
102 |
Miami
University of Ohio |
|
4
or 5 |
4
earns English 101 credit; 5 English 101 and English 102 credit |
|
Montclair
University |
|
4
or 5 |
|
|
Montgomery
College, Germantown |
|
4
or 5 |
|
| Quinnipiac
University |
|
4
or 5 |
|
|
Seton
Hall University |
|
4
or 5 |
does not earn exemption from English 101 |
|
Stanford
University |
|
|
no
AP credit for composition courses |
|
State
University of New York, Buffalo |
4
or 5 |
|
|
|
University
of Maryland, Baltimore County |
|
4
or 5 |
|
| University
of Miami |
|
4 or 5 |
4 earns credit for English 101;
5 for English 101 and 102 |
|
Texas
A&M, Corpus Christi |
|
4
or 5 |
exempts
from English 101, not English 102 |
|
University
of Arkansas, Little Rock |
|
4
or 5 |
|
|
University
of Colorado |
|
4
or 5 |
|
|
University
of Missouri Columbia |
|
4
or 5 |
|
|
University
of San Francisco |
|
4
or 5 |
|
|
University
of Texas at Tyler |
|
4
or 5 |
|
|
University
of Washington |
|
|
no
AP credit for composition courses |
|
University
of Wyoming |
|
4
or 5 |
|
|
Univesity
of Illinois at Urbana |
|
4
or 5 |
|
|
Washington
State University |
|
4
or 5 |
earns
credit but not for English 101 or English 102 |
B
Some extended defense of an AP cut-off at
no less than 4, for waiving of first-year composition requirement
or for first-year composition credit (source: The Writing Program
Administrators listserve [WPA-L], August 2003)
(1) My daughter's AP American History class was
told by their teacher, who is also the chair of the History Dept
at the high school, that only a 4 or 5 on the AP test would be
accepted by any "quality" university.
Apparently, the 4 or 5, then, is the common assumption
for AP tests, and students are told this by teachers in every
AP class at the high school.
Deborah H. Holdstein, PhD
Faculty Associate for Graduate Studies and Research,
Office of the Provost
Professor of English and Rhetoric, CAS
Governors State University
(2) This takes me back a bit. I think ASU still
accepts only 4 or 5 for credit. When I was WPA, we got some pressure
to give some credit for 3's. I'm not sure about the current stats,
but then about 20% of the students who took the test scored 4
or 5 while over 60% scored 3, 4, or 5. That was a sign. You can
certainly see why ETS would like us to give credit for 3's. But
we actually read the AP essays that were awarded a score of 3,
ands then we understood why the big jump from 20 to 60% and we
decided that 3 level writing did not merit college credit. The
essays were pretty weak.
What I don't really know is how students who
earn 3's on the AP actually do in our composition courses. I suspect
that they do quite well. Students who take AP courses tend
to be high school achievers who are reasonably conscientious students.
They are more likely than many other students to be successful
in college. That does not mean, however, that they would not benefit
from our composition courses. It means only that they would do
well. I remember someone around here once proposed that we should
identify the profile of the students who got A's in ENG 101 and
exempt students with that profile from the course. I have never
heard that proposal made for CHEM 101. The logic is interesting.
Students who do well in a course do not need the course.
That would make college a quick trip for a 4.0 graduate.
The very idea that such logic would be applied
to first-year composition suggests that others do not view a comp
course as a learning experience but simply as a test of competency
already acquired.
David E. Schwalm
Vice Provost for Academic Affairs
Arizona State Univerity East
(3) David's point is crucial and bears repeating.
An equivalency exam such as AP must use the OUTCOMES of
a course as criteria, not just some general ability measure. That's
why you can't use the same test for both placement and equivalency.
Even perfect understanding of algebra (good preparation
for calculus) doesn't mean you know calculus. If your program
can't distinguish good preparation for college comp from completion
of the goals of college comp, your course is a real problem.
Ed White
Senior Lecturer
University of Arizona
(4)
At DePaul, we accept a score of 4 or 5 on the AP English Language
and Composition examination to waive with credit the first of
two required FY writing courses.
A student who presents a score of 4 or 5 on the AP English
Literature and Composition examination gets credit for English
120, an elective Introduction to Literature course.
As the incoming chief reader for the English
Language and Composition exam (and therefore the target of a good
bit of animadversion from my colleagues in rhetoric and composition),
I unofficially support colleges' and universities' holding the
line at scores of 4 and 5, and not accepting a 3 for credit and/or
waiver, which is what the College Board wants.
Two more thoughts from someone who's been working
with the AP English Language and Composition Program since 1992:
First, ETS doesn't want colleges and universities
to accept scores of 3; the College Board, which "owns"
the AP Program, does. ETS
is the subcontractor here--it only oversees the development and
scoring of AP exams. The College Board, which is a very different
organization from ETS and becoming even more so, has for many
years been trying to advocate for a score of 3 as "qualified"
for advanced placement.
Second, as I've pointed out before, the name of the program
is Advanced Placement, not Advanced Exemption, and this distinction
has implications for both students and college/university writing
programs. Students
need to see instruction in writing as a continuing education,
and those earning scores of 4 and 5 need to go into more advanced,
more challenging rhetoric/writing courses. Colleges and universities, for their part,
need to offer an array of writing courses as entry points into
this continuing education for students with varying writing abilities. So long as first-year composition is a
one-size-fits-all monolith, diligent students are going to try
to avoid it.
David Jolliffe
DePaul University
(5)
The University of Washington has stopped accepting any AP score
for composition credit.
We are giving general humanities credit for scores of 4
or 5 on either or both exams, but nothing that includes writing.
It seems like a good compromise to us.
Students do typically get a meatier course in AP, but .
. . I'd still rather have a high school teacher not go through
contortions trying to fit American literature into AP Language
and Composition.
As for the recruiting issue, I suspect that most
state universities are in the same position as we are: far more
qualified students than we can possibly accept.
So until the gremlins and demons in our various state legislatures
agree to teach the baby boomlet, perhaps recruiting won't be as
big an issue.
Our admissions director also tells me that some
colleges are proposing "banking" AP type credit, allowing
students to wait until after their first year to see if they want
to use the credit. For calculus here, for example, it turns
out that students track differently depending on whether they
intend to go into the biological sciences or math-based sciences
and accordingly take the appropriate track.
AP Calculus courses don't typically address the different
disciplinary communities using college level math (um. . . sort
of like writing). One of the problems we've run into here in WA is legislators
who are unhappy with students who are graduating with more than
the minimum credit hours.
We had a bill this year, which thankfully died, to charge
5th year students the full state support plus tuition.
Those "extra" hours available from AP, CLEP,
dual credit and the like may come back and bite us.
Gail Stygal
Director of the Expository Writing Program
Associate Professor of English
University of Washington
(6) When I was at Michigan, we cooperated with
ACT folk to compare the correlation of ACT scores vs our placement
test scores as a predictor of success in FY Composition. Basically,
the ACT scores were useless as predictors, since the average was
above 25. The range of ACT scores was just too small for them
to predict performance in FY Comp
Bill Condon
Director of University Writing Programs
Professor of English
Washington State University
(7) Seton Hall University restricted the acceptable
AP cutoff scores to 4 and 5 a few years ago when we realized that
the score of 3 did not guarantee an acceptably high level of achievement. While Seton Hall has recently entered
the ranks of Tier II institutions, it doesn't pretend to be Princeton
or Williams. The
point is that even a somewhat less competitive school like ours
felt the need to raise the bar because those students with 3's
looked pretty much like the rest of the College English I students
Ed Jones
Assistant Professor of English
Seton Hall University
(8) We did a study here last year that looked
at the writing of students in their sophomore year who were enrolled
in a history of civ course. We found that students with AP score
of 3 who did not take FYC wrote significantly worse than students
with 3 who had taken FYC. We also found that students with AP
scores of 4 and 5 who didn't take FYC wrote significantly worse
than students with 4 and 5 who took FYC. We interpret this to
mean that taking FYC adds to a student's ability to write. We
hope to use this study to persuade our admin to raise our cut-off
score from 3 to 4. Right now we accept 3, but we shouldn't. A
score of 3 on the AP exam (either one) is nothing to boast about.
Kristine Hansen
Assoc. Dean of Undergraduate Education--University Writing
Brigham Young University
(9) During the years that I was at Ohio State,
we managed to change the AP rule so that students who would have
placed out of first year writing instead were highly recommended
into a special first year seminar: students were generally
very happy to take that course and, of course, profited from it
a great deal. I am all in favor of AP courses, but they
are NOT the equivalent of a college-level writing course IMHO.
Two years ago, on the advice of the University
Writing Review Committee, the Stanford Faculty Senate voted to
drop AP for placement into writing; as of this year, all
incoming students will take one writing class in their first year,
a second writing writing course by the end of the second year,
and then a writing in the majors class (and usually a capstone
course of some kind).
Andrea Lunsford
Professor of English
Stanford University
(10) I believe that the University of Wyoming
accepts only scores of 4 or 5. We made this change several years
ago, and I haven't heard that we've gone back to a score of 3.
As a former scorer of AP exams, I strongly think
that it should be a 4 or 5, not a 3. Of course, I also think that
all college students should take a college writing course soon
in ther college career, no matter what their AP scores from high
school.
Jane Nelson, Director
University of Wyoming Writing Center
(11) I recently upped our AP cut-off score to 4 or 5 for FY
exemption at U Colorado-Boulder. In reviewing the AP curriculum
and exam, I found that students in Colorado who scored well were
likely to be proficient in a typical, literature-based English
course but not a writing course that emphasizes critical inquiry
and research across disciplines and methodologies, as our FY course
does.
Patricia Sullivan
Director, Program for
Writing and Rhetoric
University of Colorado
at Boulder
(12) Drew University
cuts at 4 on the AP English Literature and Language exams. Students
with a 4 or a 5 on either exam exempt composition and earn four
credits toward graduation (one course worth). In the spirit of
David's reminder that this is a placement exam not an exemption
exam, this fall my department will propose that exemption be granted
only to students earning a 4 or 5 on the English language exam.
Students with a 4 or 5 on the literature exam will simply be placed
in a more advanced class. We may negotiate that to an exemption
for a 5 on either exam, although I don't see why a literature
exam should exempt students when the composition course it replaces
is not a literature course. Students coming out of most AP programs
lack skills in research and source use and general critical and
analytical thinking, and are therefore not as prepared for college-level
writing as students who have taken a college composition course.
And a 3 is certainly not an indication of college-level proficiency.
Sandra Jamieson
Director of Composition
Drew University
(13)
In practice, almost all of the students expecting AP or transfer
credit take our placement exam, since the AP scores and transcript
do not arrive until July. The results over the years remain fairly
consistent. Assuming these students do receive the credit, the
profile remains: about 5% would have placed out of our first-year
comp course, about 80% would have been placed in our regular EN
101, and about 15% would have been placed in our 101 Intensive
(developmental sections). This last group is given liberal arts
elective credit, but still required to take our EN 101.
Mary
Segall
Quinnipiac University
(Connecticut)
C
A Brief Bibliography
An extensive, keyworded bibliography can
be found on CompPile http://comppile.tamucc.edu/search.php.
Type in “advanced placement” (without the quotation
marks) into the Keyword field; this will locate 120 items, as
of August, 2003.