Shortchanged

Annie Abrams pulls back the curtain on the AP program to show that it has betrayed its founding ideals of providing high school students a liberal arts education. Funny, thoughtful, and informed by Abrams's experience teaching AP courses, Shortchanged convinces us that the AP program does not deserve its platinum reputation.

Shortchanged is a fascinating exploration of the powerful cultural and institutional role that Advanced Placement plays in America. A scholar and a teacher, Abrams deftly recounts the little-known history of a ubiquitous institution that is actually a chronicle of the meritocratic ideal, the educational system, and the inequalities it purports to redress yet perpetuates.

Annie Abrams demonstrates not only that the current AP regime has drifted far from its original mission but that today it threatens the spirit of liberal education in a democracy. Far from encouraging independent thought and creative teaching, it has become a money-making machine that stifles students' and teachers' engagement with meaningful subject matter.

With justified alarm, Shortchanged traces the evolution of the AP program from the democratic aspirations of its founders to an increasingly mechanized application of standards that reward formulaic thinking and intellectual conformity. Abrams warns us that the automated and rubric-driven assessment of thinking undermines liberal education. Every educator should heed that warning.

Abrams's compelling account of the rise and expansion of the AP program offers a sharp reminder that privatization comes in many guises. She deftly punctures the AP's educational justice rhetoric, demanding a reckoning with a system in which a private company defines the goals and purposes of public education.

To advance meaningfully, sometimes you need to retrace your steps. Abrams walks us back to the origins of the Advanced Placement program, and tracks how it's strayed from its laudable starting point. As she chides us: we ought not to 'outsource the work of thinking and knowing.' Reading her bracing book helps us return to our educational path.