No More 'Advanced Placement Study Hall'

The College Board's first ever audit of high school Advanced Placement courses found that most of these high school classes did meet college preparation standards. Concerned that some high schools were slapping the AP label on inappropriate classes—in one case, a high school student submitted transcripts to the University of Virginia showing he had taken "AP Study Hall"—the College Board, which administers the AP tests, analyzed 134,000 course syllabuses from 14,383 schools worldwide. More than two thirds of those syllabuses, or 67 percent, were immediately approved by the 839 college and university professors hired to conduct the review, according to the report released last week. The other classes have either been rejected or are still under review, says the College Board's Trevor Packer, vice president of the AP program.