• It's huge and it exists.
• There's no real cost to the school othan the single exam fee which students might pay or in some cases, districts or government funds pay.
• It's national so for the most part, the AP Calculus curriculum anywhere in the country will, at the least common denominator level, be the same though some schools might have more rigorous programs.
• Similarly, it means a wealth or resources are available for most AP classes.

• A single test on a single day is not a good assessment.
• APCS Principles and possibly other classes are not college level (not necessarily a bad thing but we're talking college classes here).
• Curriculum and many course decisions made by an outside organization - the College Board. They are neither a K12 school nor a college.
• Test credit seems to be awarded less and less although blanket elective credit seems relatively freely given.
• Instruction quality can be uneven across schools since the assessment is a single test on a single day.

It's worth noting that the College Board has been branching out to more non college level courses recently for whatever that's worth but since, as I just mentioned above, we're talking specifically about college courses and college credit, that's neither here nor there.

• Assessments can include anything and everything and the student should receive a grade based on the entirety of their performance and not on a single high stakes exam.
• Transcript credit is harder for a college to ignore than an AP score.

• Class quality is uneven. Some dual credit courses are rigorous college courses but, as was noted in a news expose a few years ago, there are dual credit schools where the course work was clearly not at a college level (link).
• In my opinion, HS teachers are typically better instructors than college instructors and in many partnerships, they aren't allowed to teach the dual credit courses.

• If the class is taught on the college campus, it can expose high school students to the college experience and taking a college level class while in high school.

Now, I've never been a fan of the College Board. I feel they have too much influence over American education and I don't agree with a number of their decisions in creating at least their computer science offerings. I've always believed that a HS teacher who knows their stuff could design a better experience for their students without the college board.

I've also always felt that the transcript credit from dual credit programs is safer and stronger. I still believe that but it's not necessarily a great thing.

Also, while I haven't changed my opinion on the College Board I will say that more and more teachers are being poorly prepared overall and just want a canned curriculum (something I find abhorrent). Back when I started a "curriculum" was a short line item list of topics. Maybe it had matching text book page numbers on the side. That was it - you were expected to be able to build out from there. Not so much anymore. I'm sad about this because the students suffer when it's one size fits none but I can't do anything about it anymore. Even when I could do something it was only in my teeny tiny corner of the world.

On the plus side for the College Board, or at least APCS-A is that when I taught at Hunter, I placed every student who had taken APCS-A into CSCI13500 - basically the equivalent or a stronger APCS-A with more OOP stuff but in C++ and in one semester, not a year. They all did splendidly regardless of AP score. My feelings was that one year of active programming made the difference. On the other hand, I didn't give any placement for students who took APCS-Principles and that was the right decision as some of them came in with some knowledge, but many would have been better off by taking nothing at all.

So, in my experience, APCS-A, in spite of my College Board misgivings consistently did right by the students but APCS-Principles, not so much.

What about dual credit. Well, while it all sounded superior to AP on paper, in practice, that wasn't the case. Over my first couple of years at Hunter. I met, both in my classes and just on campus, a number of students from PTECH, the school mentioned in the article I linked in the con dual credit list. In my estimation, at least in the classes that can be objectively evaluated (CS and Math) the kids learned little to nothing in their "college" courses.

It got worse. I then started getting kids who had taken a dual credit CS class so I had to place them in a more advanced section. Most of the classes were self contained - that is, only HS kids taking the classes either on the college campus or the high school campus. The level of preparation was uneven at best but strongly weighed as poorly prepared. Some of this could be institutional differences but after looking into things, no, it's just that the high school kids weren't getting the real college treatment.

This was disappointing.

So, now here comes NYSED to save the day. Requiring partnership agreements and presumably putting some state requirements on them are probably good.

The data reporting and college course standards are where I'm concerned, particularly since they can't track kids after they complete the dual credit courses.

If they're tracking pass/fail and they probably will then that will encourage the dual credit programs to pass everyone and I really don't see how they can enforce the class standards.

On the other hand, if they come down too heavy, creative programs will likely be stifled.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

In the meantime, we've got the two options of AP and Dual Credit. Are there any others? What does your school do and which do you think is better?

Will they?

I don't know.

pros and cons of each

my experience with AP students at Hunter

my experience with dual credit at Hunter