To the State Board of Education (SBOE) of Texas and Plano ISD:

On September 16th, 2016, 19 TAC Chapter 112 of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Science, Subchapter D, Other Science Courses was amended. Before these amendments, the SBOE mandated the following for Advanced Placement Science courses:

1. 1 to 1.5 credits for Advanced Placement (AP) Biology could be awarded to students completing a course in that material.
2. 1 to 1.5 credits for Advanced Placement (AP) Chemistry could be awarded to students completing a course in that material.
3. 1 to 1.5 credits for Advanced Placement (AP) Physics B could be awarded to students completing a course in that material.
4. 1 to 1.5 credits for Advanced Placement (AP) Physics C could be awarded to students completing a course in that material.
5. 1 to 1.5 credits for Advanced Placement (AP) Environmental Science could be awarded to students completing a course in that material.

Since 1998, many changes and concerns have occurred in the AP Science world that may have caused some initiative to make some changes. These include:

• Starting with the 2014-2015 school year, the College Board discontinued AP Physics B and replaced it with AP Physics 1: Algebra-Based and AP Physics 2: Algebra-Based. Many school districts, including Frisco ISD, Allen ISD, and McKinney ISD, elected to create two new full-year courses each with 1.0 credit for both AP Physics 1 and AP Physics 2. Plano ISD, however, elected to combine them into one course, creating a 1.0 credit AP Physics ½ course.
• The College Board has a list of recommended labs in all AP science courses that are critical to help students understand the concepts in order for them to succeed in both the course and the exam. In addition, during AP Course Audits, the College Board makes sure that school AP courses follow their regulations, one of which includes 25% of all instructional time going toward laboratory experience. Because many of these labs take an extensive time that extends longer than what a 1-hour time frame can afford, many school districts have taken steps to combat this. Through their 2-hour, 2-day system, Frisco ISD and Allen ISD already have a solution built in. Plano ISD and McKinney ISD, with their 1-period, 1-day system, have to make some revisions. Specifically, Mckinney ISD adds lab components that are taken along with AP Science courses, and Plano ISD bundles AP Biology and AP Chemistry as 2-period courses. The issue with this was that the original 1998 rule adoptions maxed out AP science courses at 1.5 credits, which meant that school districts could only give this much to students completing 2-period courses. In Plano ISD’s case, they supplemented the remainder of this credit with Honors Research and Design, and McKinney ISD only made their lab component worth 0.5 AP credits. The main issue with this, especially in Plano ISD, was that because AP Biology and AP Chemistry only offered 1.5 AP credits for a 2-period course, many students did not want to take these courses as the honors credit would give them a disadvantage in the weighted GPA system that calculates rank. Because many school districts, Plano ISD included, give extra weight to grade points in AP courses to incentive students to take them, not being able to give full AP incentive to AP Biology and AP Chemistry meant that students were not incentivized to take them, which may have had a negative role in student participation.

However, while the amendments to 19 TAC Chapter 112 of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Science, Subchapter D, Other Science Courses clearly had an intent to solve these problems, some of its effects will be catastrophic for many of these students. The main changes include:

1. Dropping the 1 to 1.5 credit range that gave at least some flexibility to school districts to a 1 credit maximum for all Advanced Placement science courses.
2. Splitting AP Physics B into AP Physics 1 and AP Physics 2, each of which would be able to get 1 credit.
3. Splitting AP Physics C into AP Physics C - Mechanics and AP Physics C - Electricity and Magnetism, each of which would be able to get 1 credit.

Avoiding the rule that all changes to rules must be done 90 days ahead of a school year by a ⅔ majority, these rules were applied to the 2016-2017 school year in October 23, 2016. Let’s go through the effects of each.

Change #1:
By dropping the maximum amount of credits that can be received for an AP science course to 1, adverse effects are created on many courses. Looking specifically at the example of Plano ISD, the 2-period courses of AP Biology and AP Chemistry now would only be able to offer 1 credit at the AP level and then would offer 1 credit at the Honors Research and Design for the 2016-2017 school year. This would create a significant disadvantage for these students in grade point average, because many students who did not take these courses elected to take other AP courses instead in order to allow for an increased GPA. In other words, it is simply difficult for students in programs like Plano ISD’s AP Biology and AP Chemistry in 2016-2017 to compete with this additional 0.5 Honors credit (which was not AP) against students who take 2 full AP credits, giving them a near-insurmountable advantage.

The main issue with this is the fact that students were not aware of the possibility of changes when making these course selections. School districts generally try to allow students to choose their courses in the February or March before the school year begins, and prefer not to allow students to change when the school year begins in order to ensure that there are balanced class sizes, among other benefits. However, with this rule being effective 20 days after being placed on the Texas Register, which at earliest would be October 6, 2016, students did not know they would be receiving this additional disadvantage when making their course selections, and thus, would be affected unfairly as by this time, it would be too late for them to change courses. In addition, school districts did not inform students immediately of these changes, making it even harder for them to find out about these adverse effects and making an informed decision regarding them.

For the future, this also creates two adverse choices for students. School districts who have these 2-period systems would either have to create 1 AP / 1 Honors credit courses or simply drop their courses down to 1 period in length. The first choice would result in a massive drop in participation in these 2-period courses (specifically AP Biology and AP Chemistry at Plano ISD), meaning that Texas schools would find an even harder time maintaining these courses than they do now and as a result, have a disadvantage when it comes to producing talented students in biology and chemistry. With over 100 degrees at the college level finding benefit from students taking these courses, this would be an extremely problematic step to take. The other choice, dropping course time to 1 period / 1 day, would result in many lab omissions as well as make it more difficult for schools to make their courses pass AP course audits, making it more likely for schools to discontinue some of their AP Science programs. If this doesn’t happen, these watered-down courses would be less able to allow students to be more successful at both learning the material in the course as well as do well on these corresponding AP exams, making them below the high par we have come to expect out of our school district AP science programs.

Change #2 and Change #3:
These were undeniably changes that needed to be made. The 2014 revision of AP Physics B meant something had to be done regarding AP Physics 1 and 2 in the TEKS, and it was definitely beneficial for this issue to finally be cleared up. AP Physics C has been referred to as both the “hardest math and science course”, reflecting its usage of difficult concepts all the way to multivariable calculus and its extremely low participation rate. Splitting these courses into two was definitely a good decision, and allowing students to get maximal amounts of credit immediately was also smart. So let’s look at how they work in practice:

Physics students in AP Physics C, which in almost all school districts combines the Mechanics and Electricity/Magnetism portions, would see their class be worth 2.o credits as opposed to 1.0 to 1.5. For students enrolled in a class that combines AP Physics 1 and 2 into a single course (far less common but still a very real possibility), they would see a similar benefit. However, to students who took AP Physics 1 and AP Physics 2 as separate, two-block full year courses, they would be in the same situation as those negatively impacted by the first change (knocking down credit maximum from 1.5 to 1).

For Plano ISD’s 2016-2017 school year, because these changes were applied retroactively up to the beginning of the school year as well, they elected to give double credit to their AP Physics 1-2 and AP Physics C courses. This meant that they would get twice as much credit for simply taking one course. In the world of grade point averages, this would give them an additional AP credit’s worth of inflated grades to tack on, providing them an even larger advantage against those in Plano ISD’s AP Biology and AP Chemistry programs. In addition, providing 2 credits for a single period is quite unfair to many of these students, as they don’t have the opportunity to gain the same.

It is to Plano ISD’s credit that they have noticed this massive disparity unintentionally created by the SBOE’s new rules. However, their solution to solve it - by banning students currently enrolled in AP Physics 1-2 from taking AP Physics C and vice versa - is unfairly limiting upon these students. AP Physics C, which is notable for the fact that it provides additional benefits in engineering and computer science fields (as a calculus-based physics course can provide much of the foundation for the work in these fields), is the goal of many current AP Physics 1-2 students who planned to take AP Physics C the year after. However, with this route being closed off in the middle of the year without their knowledge, they, too feel trapped by the system and can’t act in their own best interest for their college future and careers. Like Plano ISD’s AP Biology and AP Chemistry students, they, too, have been disadvantaged.

Arguably the worst impact, however, comes to students not currently enrolled in an AP Physics course in their junior year and wanted to take it in their senior year. Because of the splitting of AP Physics C into Mechanics and Electricity & Magnetism 1.0 courses, it means that in many cases, they cannot take both these courses together like students in previous years could. This results in them having a disadvantage in their learning and course opportunities, and reducing the possibility of them taking these courses and going into math, engineering, physics, and computer science fields.

It is worth mentioning that these changes appear to disproportionately impact women. The American Association of University Women (AAUW) explains in a report titled Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mechanics from February 2013 that women represented “majority of bachelor’s degrees in biology, one-half of bachelor’s degrees in chemistry, and nearly one-half in math” (American Association of University Women). However, this number drops to 20.7% for degrees in physics and 19.9% for degrees in engineering. This also appears to translate to the high school (American Association of University Women). However, this difference also seemed to translate to the high school level as well, as reported by the 2016 AP Program Summary Report. While females were more likely to take AP Biology and AP Environmental Science (145,030 female test takers vs 93,050 male test takers in Biology and 82,320 female test takers vs 66,776 male test takers in Environmental Science) and had approximately equal levels in AP Chemistry to males (76,095 females to 77,370 males), they were far less likely to take exams like AP Physics 1 (58,292 females to 101,012 males), AP Physics 2 (7,589 females to 18,796 males), AP Physics C: Mechanics (14,762 females to 38,348 males), and AP Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism (5,752 females to 17,595 males). Noting the fact that most AP exam takers tend to enroll in an AP class, it appears that these new rule changes could create a disproportionately negative impact on women as well. Specifically, the 1.5 to 1 credit maximum reduction would most negatively impact in Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Science (subjects that women tend to be in a greater percentage than men), and the subjects that receive additional weight (at least for the 2016-2017 school year), the Physics courses, are notable for their lack of female participation. Because of this, changes to this policy are heavily recommended, since this gender disparity should not be allowed to progress.

Many students are not happy with the changes that school districts, particularly that of Plano ISD, will have to implement. However, they must act fully within the rules that the State Board of Education (SBOE) makes, and since these rules can result in many unfair disparities, the signatories of this petition call for the members of the SBOE and the Plano ISD board to make new amendments to Chapter 112, Subchapter D. Other Science Courses and to school district policy that would also be effective through the full 2016-2017 school year. The signatories call for:

The SBOE to implement…

 

1. Allowing for each school district to give a maximum of 2 AP science credits (with a minimum of 1) for each AP class - this includes all classes: Biology, Chemistry, Physics 1, Physics 2, Physics C: Mechanics, and Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism. A school district should be required to give at least as many AP credits for a course as they are allowed by the SBOE to give, but they should not be required to give any more credits than the number of periods the course accounts for. For example, for a 2-period course, school districts must give 2 AP credits for that course. For a 1-period course, school districts must give at least 1 AP credit.*

 

Plano ISD to implement…

1. For the purposes of grade point average, if any course offers two credits within one period, only one credit can count towards grade point average. The other one will be factored in a student’s transcript but cannot be counted toward GPA.
2. For a prohibition on students enrolled in AP Physics courses from being banned from taking other AP Physics courses - students have the right of choice in order to bolster their own potential of having a successful future in STEM fields, and school districts should not be allowed to restrict this.

For both the SBOE and Plano ISD to implement…

1. For these policies to also apply retroactively to include the first semester of the 2016-2017 school year, meaning students who were negatively impacted by the previous amendments of September 16, 2016 would no longer be adversely affected. This would mean that grade point averages and credits would also be changed to accommodate this, since even one semester of this disparity is simply too much for students to expect and is unfair for the SBOE and school districts to expect students to comply with. It is simply unfair to change rules in the middle of the year that have negative impacts and expect adversely affected students to follow them.*

Citations:

"2016 AP Program Summary Report." Advanced Placement (AP). College Board, 2016. Web. 19 Dec. 2016.

"Chapter 112. Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Science Subchapter D. Other Science Courses." 19 Texas Administrative Code (TAC) Part II: Texas Education Agency. Texas Education Agency, 23 Oct. 2016. Web. 19 Dec. 2016.

"Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mechanics." American Association of University Women. American Association of University Women, Feb. 2013. Web. 19 Dec. 2016.

*After a sufficient amount of signatures have been reached, a formal petition to the SBOE written to the Commissioner will be completed.