“Penn Charter has decided to move beyond the College Board Advanced Placement (AP) program in favor of our rigorous advanced courses that provide for innovative teaching and deeper exploration of content areas,” says an announcement on Penn Charter’s website. 

Penn Charter is not the only school that has decided to abandon their AP offerings altogether. The McDonogh School, a similar-sized hybrid independent boarding and day school in Baltimore, has also abandoned APs, according to their website. 

McDonogh’s website states, “We believe that our students are better served when the course curriculum is designed using McDonogh’s greatest asset: our faculty.” 

Schools like Penn Charter and McDonogh make a similar argument. They believe that their faculty-created courses allow for more academic flexibility. These schools find that when teachers are not bound to the AP curriculum, students can take classes that are both rigorous and more well-suited to their particular students. With this philosophy, the curriculum can incorporate more projects, group work, or other activities that go beyond lecture-based, content-driven classes. 

However, not all independent schools are making the shift away from APs. 

Germantown Academy (GA), another school in the Inter-Ac, has kept a number of AP courses, including AP Calculus AB/BC, AP Spanish, AP Biology, and AP Environmental Science, to name a few. However, GA decided not to keep their AP English electives. 

Perkiomen School, a boarding school that has 332 students in its Upper School, offers 27 AP classes. That’s a significant number given their size. Some notable AP classes that Perkieomian offers include: AP Macroeconomics, AP Microeconomics, AP Art History, AP Music Theory, AP Psychology, and AP Computer Science.

Perkiomen cites that the courses are for “students who aspire to be challenged academically,” and that “Students must obtain faculty recommendations to register for these courses.” 

The stark contrast that exists between Perkieomen and Penn Charter reflects a gap between independent school philosophies.

History

Before the College Board created the AP program, they were best known for administering the SAT. As time went on, research revealed that some American high schoolers could take college-level courses. During the Cold War, many Americans felt that American students were falling behind their Soviet counterparts, and a demand for college-level courses for high schools was created: soon after the AP program was launched. 

APs were first launched in 1952. In the beginning, AP courses served high-achieving students at elite high schools, but have since evolved and expanded the reach to a diverse student pool. In 1964, fewer than 40,000 exams were administered, but the AP program was already highly regarded; in fact, in the early 1960s half of the incoming class at Harvard had taken an AP class. 

The College Board’s offerings are recognized on a national level. Because the courses are so standardized, colleges and universities can interpret them easily when reviewing applications. Colleges already know how rigorous the course is, and how difficult the exam is, and can compare that across applicants. Without this context, the rigor of a non-AP advanced class, similar to those offered at Penn Charter or McDonough, may be lost on the college admissions process. 

Where is SCH going?

“It’s kind of a shorthand way of them being able to designate that you’ve had rigor in your courses,” said Head of School Delvin Dinkins. He agreed that, “Some schools have ramped up their number of APs, and some have actually sunsetted the entire program in favor of mainly teacher-created courses that are still advanced and still rigorous.”

Brian Walter, the Director of SCH’s College Counseling Department, does not think that we will move away from APs, “Independent schools having no AP classes is sort of saying they want more flexibility.” 

A key reason SCH will be keeping AP courses is for brand credibility. “If you drop APs as a school, the risk would be that the colleges who are reading students’ applications are gonna have to work harder to understand how tough the course is,” said Walter, “So when you have APs, it gives you a little more of a known brand.”

In previous years, AP Literature and AP Language and Composition were offered during senior year, forcing seniors to choose between the two. In a move to allow students to experience both English APs before graduating, the English department dropped honors junior English and added AP Language and Composition as the only advanced choice for English junior year. In another change, this year, the English department is offering rising juniors honors English 11, as well as AP Language and Composition. Qualified students can take AP Literature their senior year.

SCH is also adding a new AP course to the curriculum. This year SCH was one of 10 test schools for AP Business Principles/Personal Finance, which will become an official AP class in two years, according to the AP Website. 

Some prospective SCH families are interested in AP courses. Head of Admissions at SCH Katy Friedland stated, “Parents who are applying to SCH are still interested in APs. They often ask us what AP classes we offer and how many” With Penn Charter dropping all AP courses in 2025 and GFS having no AP courses, SCH and GA are the last two private schools in the area to have them. This gives SCH an advantage in admissions for families who are interested in AP courses. 

Friedland also said, “[It’s] a differentiator for us. That means that people who want APs will maybe be more interested in SCH” than they would be in schools that don’t offer them.

For now, the AP curriculum is here to stay at SCH.