AP classes are appealing to high school students due to their weighted grade scale which can help with college applications. The dark side of these classes is the loads of homework and stressful difficulty. The problem is if a student cannot take all of this work and stress they don’t have an easy way to level back down to an easier level class.

I think that the process of leveling down from these AP classes is far too complicated and hard. I think it puts people’s grades and GPA at risk and could affect them for the rest of their life.

A student must stay in their course until the end of the nine weeks. Level change forms become available on Monday of the 7th week of school, and must be done within that week. The teacher will then determine if the student put in enough effort. Finally, a committee will determine if the placement is correct.

With the length of this process and the amount of time the student must stay in the class, this could be the difference between a person failing and passing and could have a serious impact on GPA seeing as they must finish a whole grading period in a class they do not feel confident in. 

I also think that the teacher needing to confirm “effort” is dumb. The topic is too vague to be a requirement. It leaves the student’s future and success in the hands of the teacher which shouldn’t be the case, because if the teacher makes an incorrect assessment of the situation the student is stuck in the class for the rest of the year, giving the student more chance to fail.

I think all these reasons go to show that the student takes an unfair risk just by choosing an AP class. The level down process is almost entirely out of the student’s hands. The student’s choice plays almost no role in the decision-making process which should ultimately be up to the student. 

Some people might say it is the student’s fault for choosing the course. I think this would be a valid argument if the course description completely matched the expectation, but that is ultimately not the case. Courses generally seem a lot easier in the description than they really are. I also think that there should be room for the student to test his academic ability without the risk of losing their future.

I think the system needs to be reworked entirely. I think the best system would revolve around the student and not some quota that the school needs to meet. The process of leveling down is far too stressful and overall harder than it needs to be. The student has almost no say in the outcome and is put in a position to lose.