In recent years, Erie has pushed AP courses more than ever. Everywhere you look AP this, AP that. There is no end to “You should take all AP classes”. AP classes are great for a high schools’ statistics, but does Erie push these classes too hard?

There are numerous classes offered at the AP level at Erie. 21 to be exact according to the EHS class catalog. These classes are focused mainly in the S.T.E.M. fields. These are all great classes for students looking for early college credit for a discounted rate. But what about the students that do not take these classes. It seems to me, they are left out and almost discouraged to succeed. I say this because when somebody talks about any classes at Erie, they bring the mindset that normal classes are the “dumb” classes. And this mindset tends to discourage any students in these classes from trying. At Erie there are students that want to enjoy their time here and the strong AP push by the administrators and counselors is a roadblock in order to do that. On the other side, I do see why they push it so extremely hard to students, AP classes really set a student up for college.

For example, my sister went to college with numerous AP credits that would be honored for credit at Colorado State University and she was able to play division one softball and graduate early. In this way AP can be beneficial for college. If you aren’t going to college, at Erie High School you are classified as lazy. This is not a fair assumption at all. There are many students that are not prioritizing college because of the upfront cost and the burnout of school itself. There are many opportunities outside of college to progress in the world. These alternate routes have become more viable due to the need for more specialized labor. And yet the high school still pushes the higher standards of going to college and going into debt as an early adult.

Post-secondary schooling is starting to become irrelevant even in the world of technology as larger employers such as IBM are more fond of experience. These employers are also starting to hire uneducated candidates so that they can specialize them. Forewarned these options are silenced by the path of college. When a high school student thinks about college, the first thing that comes to mind is; how many AP classes should I be taking? Regardless of interest, most of the staff at EHS will tell you to take as many as you can handle. Usually due to the fact that freshman or first time AP students have never taken any AP class and load their schedule with too many for them to handle. This, in turn, causes many GPA issues, that will impede on students wanting to go to college because of how much GPA factors in your admission to college. There are positives and negatives of having so much pressure on students to take AP classes but if done wrong it can lead to the exact opposite intent of taking those classes. I believe Erie is moved to the more aggressive side of AP classes and needs to tone it down because of the failure that it is inducing on its students.