Shortchanged

"Shortchanged is a brilliant book."—The Washington Post Author and high school English teacher Annie Abrams reveals how the College Board's emphasis on standardized testing has led the AP program astray.

Every year, millions of students take Advanced Placement (AP) exams hoping to score enough points to earn college credit and save on their tuition bill. But are they getting a real college education? The College Board says that AP classes and exams make the AP program more accessible and represent a step forward for educational justice. But the program's commitment to standardized testing no longer reflects its original promise of delivering meaningful college-level curriculum to high school students.

In Shortchanged, education scholar Annie Abrams uncovers the political and pedagogical traditions that led to the program's development in the 1950s. In revealing the founders' intentions of aligning liberal arts education across high schools and colleges in ways they believed would protect democracy, Abrams questions the collateral damage caused by moving away from this vision. The AP program is the College Board's greatest source of revenue, yet its financial success belies the founding principles it has abandoned.

Instead of arguing for a wholesale restoration of the program, Shortchanged considers the nation's contemporary needs. Abrams advocates for broader access to the liberal arts through robust public funding of secondary and higher education and a dismantling of the standardized testing regime. Shortchanged illuminates a better way to offer a quality liberal arts education to high school students while preparing them for college.

Abrams usefully shakes us out of our complacency about a program that seems good enough only because we expect so little of it.
—Wall Street Journal
[Abrams] says the [AP] program hurts students and the values of the liberal arts....The most damning portions of the book are on the present state of AP.
—Inside Higher Ed
Shortchanged is a brilliant book not just because of its content, but because of the way that Abrams grapples with the potential of a humanities....This book is everything we say that the humanities can do. And it's everything that, according to Abrams, the Advanced Placement regime is likely to destroy.
—Washington Post
Annie Abrams's new book, Shortchanged, puts the story of Advanced Placement courses in perspective.It's an important read for anyone contemplating the time honored courses, either from a teacher or student perspective. And it is a reminder that while the name 'College Board' sounds like some sort of quasi-governmental entity overseeing higher education, they are simply a private company with products to market.
—Peter Greene, Forbes
Abrams's 2023 book, Shortchanged: How Advanced Placement Cheats Students, builds from the premise that any discussion of standardized testing–and about the endangered status of American liberal arts college education—also must attempt to understand how the businesses who created these exams have shaped secondary schooling.Abrams ably shows the philosophical traditions and geopolitical conditions that shaped the earliest versions of these tests.
—Contingent Magazine
The writing is sharp, unrestrained, and sometimes funny....A critical scholar, Abrams consistently foregrounds issues of race and inequalityShortchanged is a valuable read for anyone connected to AP, from students and families to policymakers.We shouldn't especially care what the individual founders might think of AP today, although they'd be horrified, to be sure. Abrams, however, insists that we ourselves should be horrified. Shortchanged provides that opportunity.
—History of Education Quarterly
A clarion call for maintaining the humanities and liberal arts in our schools and encouraging the teaching of humanities in diverse and unique ways.
—The History Teacher

Annie Abrams teaches high school English. She holds a doctorate in American literary history from New York University.

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