<blockquote>“To us, their courses don’t look any different from high-quality A.P. courses,” [College Board VP Trevor Packer] said. “Simply changing the letters

<blockquote>“To us, their courses don’t look any different from high-quality A.P. courses,” [College Board VP Trevor Packer] said. “Simply changing the letters on the course from A.P. to A.T. looks very cosmetic to us.”</blockquote> I would have to agree; these students are still expected to take the AP exams. If this helps them get away from "teaching to the test," though, more power to them. At my (very good, private) high school, I took the AP English and AP Literature exams without having ever taken courses branded as "AP." In fact, my school didn't even make a distinction between honors and "regular" English; it was just a uniformly excellent program. I got a 4 on both exams. I did take a course called "AP European History," but I cannot think of one instance that I studied for the AP test curriculum the whole year. But, hey, coming up with a dynamic curriculum that doesn't focus on rote memorization and easy-to-grade multiple-choice tests is hard, especially with class sizes larger than 15-20 like mine were.