Episode 331 | David Blobaum | Summit Prep | The EdisonOS Podcast

Welcome to the Edison OS Podcast Show, where we explore ideas, challenges and breakthroughs that shape Desprep and college readiness. From shifting test formats to the craft of building truly effective practice, we sit down with tutors, desprep owners and admissions experts to uncover stories and strategies that really help students succeed. Hi David, welcome back to the Edison OS Podcast Show. Thanks so much for taking time out yet again for this. That's my pleasure to be here. Thanks David. David, my first question to you is let's start at the beginning. What was the original purpose of AP exams when they launched and why does the AP in AP actually stand for advanced placement? Great question. Good to start from where it started. The advanced placement classes and exams, the classes themselves were supposed to be college courses that you could take in high school so that you could get college credit for them and start to get some college classes out of the way. The exam was there to make sure that actually it was the rigor of a college course, so that if you take that course and you get an A, well maybe your teacher was just being nice or a lenient grader and gave you an A, a college shouldn't necessarily just believe in A and award college credit for that. The college wants some type of verification that yes, actually the student has college level proficiency in that subject. Now they're graded only out of 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5, 3 indicates medium proficiency and so there are over 1,000 colleges that will award course credit, college credit for 3. Then once you go to a little bit more selective schools, they might only give course credit or college credit for 4. Highly selective schools, they'll typically only give college credit for 5 and some of them won't even do that. Especially let's say you want to be a chemistry major, then they're probably not going to give you college credit even for AP chemistry at those top schools because they want to make sure you have a very, very strong foundation in chemistry if you're going to be a chemistry major. But 1 and 2 really mean that student at really any school did not meet any of those standards for college level proficiency in that course. Got it. Got it, David. Thanks for that. David, you argue the real meaning of A, B is quietly shifted from advanced placement to something like authenticated proficiency, what changed and what role did grade in place and play in that shift? Good question. So, the scoring of AP exams is not precise enough to be used for college admissions. It's being used for college admissions because if you plan A is a bad plan. But it's better than plan B, we'll go with plan A. So this is an example of where plan A right now of the top colleges using AP exams, that's not how they're supposed to be used because you can imagine, let's say a student gets 80% on AP English language. That 80% might get them a 5 on that AP lane exam. So they miss one more question and they get a 79% on that exam, for instance, that might be a 4 on the AP lane exam. So just one question, now the student goes from a 5 to a 4 and it looks like a tremendous difference. On the flip side, another student might have gotten a 99% on that exam. They're still getting a 5 and they're looking the exact same as a student who got an 80%. So there's not precision within the score to be able to very accurately compare the academic proficiency in that subject between applicants. Now there used to be something called SAT subject tasks. SAT subject tasks, not the regular SAT, but SAT subject tasks, were basically AP exams that had a very precise scale, they were graded out of 800. So then you could take the SAT English language SAT subject tasks and you'd get a score out of 800. So then maybe you get a 700, you get one more question along, you get a 690. Well now even that might have been the difference between a 5 on an AP exam and a 4 on an AP exam, but now on the SAT subject tasks you can see basically those students were the same. You know, 700 versus 690 on the SAT subject task. Well, college board discontinued SAT subject tasks in January 2021. So all of a sudden now the SAT subject tests are gone from colleges being able to use them. Most of the top colleges wanted to see two SAT subject test results. George Charnel acquired three. So all that data is gone. So again, now that plan A of SAT subject tasks, they got to go to plan B, plan B is not very good, but it's still better than having no authentication at all. Knowing if a student got a 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 on an AP exam is better than just having to go based on A's. I mean, what came out of the University of California San Diego report was that a quarter of students who tested in the UC San Diego who had who were not proficient in either elementary or middle school math. Forget high school proficiency. They weren't proficient in elementary or middle school math. A quarter of them had perfect, unweighted 4.0 GPAs in high school math. So even a perfect 4.0 GPA these days is not a guarantee that the student really has any understanding of the material. And that's a very, that's one very specific shocking number, but the overall numbers tell the same story. So if you look at UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute's Freshman Survey, they've been looking at grade inflation over the last 60 years. So they started running this survey in 1966. In 1966, it was 22% of students had an A average. 22% of students going on to a 4 year B.A. granting university had an A average, so about 78% didn't. Fast forward to 2024, the last year we had the data for, 84% of students going on to a 4 year B.A. granting university had an A average. 80% didn't. So it went from an A average being the relative rare to an A average, not just being average, but completely common. And so, SHG subjects us one-of-a-way, so colleges were looking for more authentication. And at the same time, there's more grade inflation than any time in US history. And actually all out of third thing, which just came to mind is that on standardized measures of academic achievement, the US is at its lowest point ever. So I'm going based on NEP scores. That's dubbed the nation's report card. These are longitudinal studies given out to students in all 50 states. And when you look at 12th grade reading and math proficiency, lowest on ever, which they've been, for 12th grade, they've only been running it for 20 years for math and 30 years for reading. Still, lowest ever, and it's 35% of students in 12th grade are proficient in reading, 22% proficient in math. So combine those together and you get lowest ever proficiency in reading in math, highest ever grades in US history. So grades have really, they're not accurately representing a student's knowledge in these classes. And college admissions officers, they know this. I mean, John Ladding from Emory has said, this is a quote from him, we know that grades are inflated. Students are trying their best, but their grades are just not reflecting their academic proficiency. He said, that's why we're going to wait standardized assessment more heavily at Emory. And so in that context, AP exam scores are not a great tool for comparing applicants in admissions, but they're the best tool besides the regular SAT and ACT, and they're the only tool for the actual specific subjects. Got it David. So it's not only getting shifted from, it's probably not shifted from advanced placement to authenticated proficiency. Probably it's doubling up for both of the things where the authenticated proficiency is now the new sort of a benefit that's coming out of AP. But yeah, I think this answers a lot of questions about what is happened and what is the position of AP today as compared to you know sometime back. David the number of students taking AP exams roughly tripled in 20 years and the growth at the top is staggering. So focus through what's happening and is this a healthy trend or an arms race? I would say it's a healthy arms race. Is that possible to be a healthy arms race? I don't know. Healthy arms race. Everything is trade-offs. So there are downsides to that arms race, there are upsides to that arms race. In the sense that it's terrible that we are at our lowest ever academic proficiency in at least on record, right? That's absolutely abysmal. And so if we can use standardized measures to help improve accountability, that's a beautiful thing. Because grade inflation is far more harmful than most people understand or because they don't really think about it, right? Like how much do people think about grade inflation? But what's really happening is those students who when there was only 22% of students getting an A, the 22% of students who were getting an A had to work to get that A. They had to work to hit their potential. And so the highest achieving students achieved higher when there was higher to achieve. Those highest achieving students, they do not achieve higher once you give them an A. They'll only achieve up to the level of an A. And so if you make it really easy to get an A, they don't achieve higher than that. Those students in the middle, same thing. They were struggling to get a B or even to get a C at some times. We've taken that away from them by lowering the bar. Now you might think that it's then better for perhaps the lowest achieving students, maybe it does open doors for them. It does the exact opposite. And the reason it does the exact opposite is because the parents then don't know that their child is struggling because their child is bringing home very often A's even if they don't understand the content and at least B's. And so if they're bringing home A's and B's, typically the family says, "My kid is great. My kid is smart. They're achieving." What they don't know is that if the child is getting B's, that's more like they're getting D's or F's 60 years ago. And we know from Gallup polls that 90% of parents believe that their child is at or above grade level. And we at the same time know from standardized measures of academic achievement that 35% of kids 12th graders are proficient in reading and 22% proficient in math. So that means parents are getting lied to. And when parents aren't lied to and they get accurate information from those grades, they take action and they get their kids help and they demand that those kids are helped because nobody wants their kids, well the vast vast majority care enough that they don't want their kids falling below their grade level proficiency. So in that way, the arms race is good because if grades aren't going to do it, we need to go to plan B. And plan B in this case, I think is actually better than our plan A of just give everybody A's and nobody knows what that means anymore, right? I think we've lost sight of the fact that learning actually produces more success in life. We have turned it into a credentialing race and we've lost the fact that no, actually literacy and numeracy, these things literally the more you learn, the better you aren't reading, the better you aren't math, forget about the degree, the better, the more you know and learn, the more successful you tend to be in life. And so that's why this grade inflation is so harmful to students. So now there's the flip side to the arms race, which is it is getting out of hand at the high end, right? So I mean, I think it's good that so 37% of public high school students took graduating last year, took 1 AP exam in high school. That's a lot. And I think that's good because it means that at least in one class, their parents got a standardized measure of how much that kid actually knew in that class. At least for one class. At the high end, you have students really, really pushing themselves. And that's fine if the kid is just a genius and wants to push themselves that much, but that's not fine if we're putting just insane pressure on kids. And we want accountability. We don't want to crush them under so much pressure. And so when we look at, I mean, so if you rewind the clock to 1994, so about 32 years ago, there were only 535 kids in the entire country that took 10 or more AP exams in high school. 535. Wow. Okay. So 30 years later, class of 2024, and part of this is more schools have signed on to using AP classes and exams. That's a big part of it. The population hasn't really grown. It's almost stagnant. The high school population has increased a little bit, but almost stagnant. But the number one from 1994 to 2004, to 1994 to 2024, it went from 535. We're taking 10 or more AP exams in high school to 83,747. So even, I mean, that's 156 times as many kids were taking 10 or more AP exams. You don't stick out anymore from taking 10 or more AP exams. That has potential, potentially harmful effects for those kids who probably are a natural fit for taking that many AP courses and AP exams. It's not good when you're just turning life into that arms race of AP classes. So both sides are not great. So on average, I think when you don't have accountability through grades, I welcome the accountability at least in some manner, even if that's through test scores. You got it, David. You said 37% left still class of 2024 took at least 1 AP exam. And then we kind of discussed that, okay, at least parents get to know for one class, what's the actual thing. But on those students, actually, the ones who are probably performing well, I think on they, the ones who are expected to take AP also. So I don't know how is that going to further. I mean, you don't have the data I'm just saying just by intuition. It feels like that. So. Right. The other 63% of kids, they don't even have the one AP exam. Right? Yeah. You know, they're state testing. And so theoretically, there are other standardized measures of the students' academic achievement. The problem is that no parents trust that because that exam doesn't count for anything, typically. It doesn't go into the students' grades in GPA. So when their child scores in the 20th percentile or the 40th percentile, they're like, yeah, well, Bobby didn't try because he doesn't get a grade from it. Now that might be true, but it's probably not true. Bobby probably did try and Bobby's probably in the 20th percentile. Just hate to say it. I mean, maybe he wasn't trying. But so often students will come to our office, take a mock test and the parent will say, yeah, but they weren't even trying on that. But then if they don't do prep, they're going to take the real test and they get the exact same score as it is on a mock test. I mean, generally kids are trying because they know that they'll get a score. And so generally they are actually trying. So I would love to, I would love for parents to start trusting the standardized measures of academic achievement more than the grade because we know for a fact that at most high schools, most grades do not reflect what a student knows. The next one, David, is the college board keeps adding new AP subjects with business and personal finance and cybersecurity coming in 2027. What is the expansion of subjects tell us about of bed, this is all heading. - So I wish that the college board would have banned in the moniker of advanced placement and just go to authenticated proficiency, right? 'Cause that's what we've been talking about. I mean, like how are colleges primarily using these? Or at least the top colleges. They're using them for authenticated proficiency because they don't trust the grades. I wish college board would just respond to the way that the exams are being used, at least by some segments in the market, of let's not even, this is not even about college credit anymore. This is about, do you know basic algebra? And so I wish that there was an AP algebra class. Now, I don't know if the college board will expand the AP exams to more core classes, but I would hope that they would. Right now, they clearly see the appetite for people wanting to use them at least for college credit and get as many college credit courses done in high schools they can. Because then they can take, they can graduate early. So if you go into college with a lot of college credit, you can potentially graduate early, which saves money, and then you also start earning money presumably faster because you're in the workforce faster. Or you can take the same number of courses, not graduate early and take higher level courses. Sometimes then even take graduate courses in undergrad, get some of your grad courses out of the way, or just get a really, really good education. Or you can just take it easy. And take your courses at one time, and then at least, maybe you get higher grades in college, or you just, you know, you're less stressed out from it. So there's no downside at all to having more college credit. So college board is seeing the appetite for more AP classes, more AP exams, so they're building out more. I hope they don't just build out, but build down and down to the core classes, but I would say either way, expect more of the same, which is more AP classes, more AP exams. - Go ahead David. Let's talk about the part that surprises parents most. AP scores have gone up over the past years, but you've said that's not because students got smarter. What is recalibration and what's really going on? - Yeah, so, well, there was a, there had been a slide in AP exams course. Like if you look at AP English language and composition scores, they were just going down and down and down and down and down. Until about only eight, you know, I think it was around something like 35% of students taking AP lane, we're getting a four or five in around like the year 2000, I wanna say. You fast forward to 2021, the exam hadn't changed, or maybe it had gotten harder but you were only about eight percent of students were getting a four or five. So either the test was getting harder, which I actually don't think that's the case, or students were simply less proficient in English language, which we know definitively is the case from other standardized tests. The long and short of that though is that scores were going down. So what was happening is students, a lot of students have the choice to take AP English language and composition or take a rule enrollment English course that just counts automatically for college credit. And so AP courses are in pretty significant competition with dual enrollment courses, but dual enrollment courses you don't get a standardized exam at the end. They're subject to the same grade inflation. So students were saying, why am I gonna take AP English language and get a two or three, I'll just take the dual enrollment English course, get an A and get course credit for it. So college board will, I should clarify just in case someone's listening and I don't want to get through it, but this is my speculation. So I am wildly speculating. I would speculate that they recalibrated, slash I would say inflated scores to better compete with how easy it was to get college credit in dual enrollment courses. And I would say it's still probably easier to get college credit from dual enrollment courses even after the recalibration. Now, college board might point to AP Physics C that they made it harder to get a four or five on. But the majority of exams that they changed, they made it significantly easier to get a four or five on those. Go on. Go ahead, baby. Thanks for that. But here's the paradox. If AP scores are getting easier to earn, why do they do that? The more obvious. They matter more simply because they're the best option. I mean, even if you have, again, if your plan A is bad, but your plan A is better than an even worse plan B, you still go with plan A. And so it would be great if AP exams had a lot more precision if potentially if they hadn't lost their rigor. But that three, four or five still means massively more than an A in a class. Because what is an A in AP US history mean? You couldn't easily, easily have two students who both have A's in AP US history at two different schools. One gets a five, another gets a two. The college admissions officer is pretty much always going to be right. If they assume that the student who got a five probably knows more US history. And so even though they're not precise and they're more inflated on average than they were before, they're still far better and more, a common yardstick to compare between applicants. - Got it, it makes sense. - Celtic and Stanford now require students to report AP scores and even test blind schools like UC Berkeley and UC LA still factor them in. What should families take away from how top colleges are actually talking about AP scores right now? - Great question. So if a student goes to a high school that offers AP exams or IB exams and they have aspirations for a top school, let's say a top, first we'll start with a top 20 school. They need to take those AP classes and AP exams. 18 out of the 20 top schools according to Forbes ranking of schools, I use Forbes ranking, not US news and world report rankings 'cause I think it's far more accurate. It's more on outcomes. It doesn't have just like filler content in the rankings. So 90% of the top 20 schools use recommend or require AP exam scores and admissions. You then go to the top 50 and of the top 50, it's 68% of them use recommend or require but it's only Celtic and Stanford require. Below the top 50, there's not that many that news or recommend AP exam scores and admissions. But so certainly if you're going for a top 50 school you should be targeting it to take as many AP classes that you can take and get an A in them. If taking too many AP classes is gonna stress you thing and you're gonna get start getting B's don't take them. Take as many in can and still good days. - You got it David. A practical one families' resolution bit. If my kid takes an AP class, should they always sit for the exams and what happens if the score is in great is that it a case for not reporting? - Good question. So I mean if you know you're gonna get a one or two on the exam, you don't really need to take it. A one or two is not gonna help you at all. There's literally no use case where, I mean actually still take it because get that one or two so that your parent knows that actually like, you know, like we need some accountability here, right? So yeah, I guess I would say in any event take the exam but no, don't report that. It's optional to report. Well, except for Caltech and Stanford, but you know, if you're potentially getting two's, you're probably not applying to those. - Yes. - For every other school, it's, optional if you're going to send your scores. And so for those schools that will give you college credit even for a three, I wouldn't necessarily submit the three when I'm applying. You could though, it's not going to hurt at that level of school. So you could report it when you're applying, but certainly report it before you enroll so you can get your college credit from that three because there are still a lot of schools. They're not the top schools, but there's still a lot of schools that will give you college credit for a three. Now for those schools that are really using AP exam scores, sometimes for college credit, but really the top schools using it for college admissions don't submit a three. A three will look bad to a top 50 school. I will only submit four and fives to a top 50 school. Just don't put those threes in your application. A four to a top 50 school is not really going to help and it's certainly not going to help if you're applying to a top 20 school. Still, I would report it because at least they see you got a four. They don't assume you got a three. So I'd rather them see that you got a four and not assume it might be a three. But a four will not really hurt you or help you. Fives will help you. The more fives you can get on AP exams, it's going to help you in admission to the top 50 and top 20 schools. One, okay. I thought four counts for something. Well, it does. I guess, right? I mean, like that's good. Like I'm just like zeroing in on the top 50 school, but you use it for admission. Four is not really going to help you. You go below that and well, they're not really using AP exams for admission below the top 50. But yeah, a four would help you in your admission below the top 50, but that's just not really what they're looking at. They're looking at below the top 50, they're looking more at your SAT, ACT scores and your grades. Yeah. Well, beyond admissions, AP credit can save families real money and time. Why do you think this benefit gets underrated and how does it actually play out once a student enrolled in college? So it gets underrated to save money and time in the future because we always discount the future in our current plans, right? I mean, why didn't I exercise today? I didn't prioritize the future, right? In the present, that didn't seem like a lot of fun in the future. Very, very, very important, right? So we all have to struggle against this tendency of not setting our future selves up for success. And it's the same thing. I mean, you tell a high school kid like, hey, you're going to save time and money and or you'll be able to take harder classes or take fewer classes. They're like, well, that's, you know, Tommy's problem two to three, four years from now. And then I really care about Tommy in two, three, four years, even though it's them. So that's where it really comes in and parents can help guide students because all people struggle with prioritizing the future in teenagers really on average struggle to prioritize the future. So it just gets discounted, but, you know, we should all strive to make more to make wise decisions and investing some time in getting a three or four or five can be very, very smart use of time. I mean, if you're going to get college credit to move from a two to a three on an AP exam, I mean, what are we talking? 20 hours of studying to then maybe save yourself an entire course that you have to take in college. This should be a no brainer, but again, discount the future so much. So that's where parents and teachers can come in and say, like, look, kid, I understand that you want to go play Fortnite or you want to, you know, do this with your friends, but just take this time that you'll never get back and you'll be so glad that you did in the future. Yeah. Where do AP scores fit into the scholarship and mediate picture? Is this something families should be thinking about strategically? It's a great question and so it's not necessarily a major factor, but it is a factor and it's especially a factor for those from merit aid or for merit scholarships or merit programs that are more selective because again, they don't want to just go based on A's because what is an A mean? They want more of that authenticated proficiency. So yes, AP exam scores can help you get more merit aid, more merit scholarships or get into maybe an honors college at a school as well. For a family staring at a course catalog, how many APs is enough? Eventually, students start preparing and what comes as a good score for admissions versus what credit? So I would take as many as you can take and so get A's with the caveat to that that you can get A's in all of them without really being miserable in life. So again, we only get one life and you do want to set your your future self up and your future family up for success, but not at the expense of making yourself totally miserable today. And so I would say, take as many class AP classes as you can get A's in without also going crazy in the present. And then it's going to vary what scores you need for admissions. Again, it's probably just fours and fives that are going to help you or not hurt you. But again, it's only the top 50 schools that are really using AP exam scores for college admissions. Well, David. Finally question, David. Look ahead five years. What's the role of AP classes and exams in 2031? Do you see the college board expanding AP style exams to every core subject and could that actually cool the AP harms it is rather than heat it up? So five years ago, AP exams were not really used in admissions because SAT subject tests were what were used. So in just five years, the whole landscape surrounding AP exams has completely shifted. You went from essentially zero of the top 20 schools, having public statements on their admissions websites that they use AP exams or recommend or require them to 90% of them. So from zero to 90% of them in five years, I expect that trend to continue. And then in the next five years, I think it will accelerate and broaden out below the top 50 colleges. Because I don't see grade inflation reversing itself on its own for a number of reasons. So if grade inflation doesn't reverse itself, more and more colleges will say, hey, we really just, what are we doing here? We can't we can't trust these grades. So I expect that just like right now, every year, it was just last year, the Caltech and Stanford for the first time in US history required AP exam scores if you took the AP exam. So I expect the top colleges to just more and more of them to start requiring it, more and more of the top 50 to not just say we use AP exams, but to recommend it. And then to that, go down the list and more and more of the top 100, 200, top 500 maybe even say we use them. And again, the more top school saying we recommend to require them. Good news. It's not the top 50 top 20 easily. Yes. David, David, thanks so much for your time. It was insightful is always having you on the podcast. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. All right. Thanks for listening and while you wait for the next episode, go and check out EdisonOS.com, the digital testing platform for all standardized tests.