.2 Standards

The state board of education can make the requirements and change the requirements but you are still in the same situation in terms of college entrance requirements and you are still in the same situation in that the state board of education is sometimes reluctant to tell the local districts what they should or should not do with their curriculums. Sometimes state boards are not reluctant, sometimes they have what are called standards of learning and they come up with some specified requirements. Back to our example, let's say that the school board is convinced and the state board of education is convinced but now let's look at that hidden national curriculum that we have. The national curriculum that we now have comes first of all from something called standardized tests. You have something called Iowa tests, The Stanford 9 and various other. The students from Norfolk take the same tests that students from Iowa take. Some people think that the curriculum is similar enough that these tests has validity in both places. In other words there is a hidden national curriculum. There is a national curriculum that we are testing with these standardized tests. Or take for example the advanced placement tests. Advanced placement tests are tests that kids in high school are taking that could give them college credit. Some kids now go off to college with almost a full years work in advanced placement. What advanced placement means is that you have achieved at a level which is equivalent to the first year of college. Now let's look at this system. Who makes the advanced placement tests? Is this a government agency? No. This is a group of private people who weren't elected by anybody, they weren't even appointed by anybody. They are a self-perpetuating board called The College Entrance Examination Board. The CEEB. They are a bunch of mostly white males out in California, self-perpetuating the standards of the placement examinations. They are not evil people, but nobody gave them the right to determine the national curriculum. They just got that right by default. They are there and because they are there they're setting the curriculum. If your school gives the advanced placement test in history then what does it mean? It means that all of the curriculum has to lead up to that advanced placement test in history. So not only is that determining the advanced placement curriculum it is also guaranteeing that the curriculum leading up to that will be coordinated with that advanced placement curriculum whether it is history or math or science or anything else.

So you see the advanced placement tests have an enormous impact on the curriculum. The fact that nobody gave them the right to do this is irrelevant. It is just there and we have accepted that. If people really thought about it they'd probably rather have a group of people that nobody appointed to have responsibility for the curriculum rather than the government have that responsibility. Those in charge of creating the AP tests are not evil people, they don't have any conspiracy, by nature they have to be conservative. They have to be conservative because if they came up with advanced placement tests that were off the chart in any way everybody would complain. Therefore, the only way that they keep their power, is by doing things that are enough predictable that nobody is going to get upset. The way to do that is to make sure it never changes. The tests are just the same as they've always been.

	Why do advanced placement test have such a big impact on curriculum?	Answer Here
	Mrs. Luster teaches Advanced Placement Calculus AB in a prestigious high school. Most of her students will pass the Advanced Placement Exam with no problems and get credit for Calculus I in college. One student in particular, Kelly, wants to attend a small, private university in Charleston, South Carolina that does not accept the AP credit that she would earn from this class. Being a private university, they have the right to make their own rules that a state university would not be able to make because they are federally funded. Should Kelly be required to pay for and take an exam that she will not be awarded credit for even if she passes?	Answer Here