Starting last year, Robinson started offering more Cambridge AICE classes for English, History, Science and Humanities credits. With these classes also came the option to go for an AICE diploma, a certification that gives you a full Bright Futures scholarship here in Florida. However, with the increase of AICE courses, AP courses are starting to become scarce for the students that want to take them. While AICE courses are important for students who want the AICE diploma, we should take into consideration the students who want or need APs.
For a long time, AP courses were the step above Honors for non-IB students who wanted to challenge themselves. Florida legislature recently permitted the AICE diploma to be used towards a Bright Futures scholarship instead of getting a high SAT score. Over 950,000 students rely on Bright Futures to pay for college and with the required SAT score for a full ride being a 1380, an alternative is incredibly attractive for some students.
It makes perfect sense why Florida schools are adding more and more AICE courses, but it does come with consequences. Since we are a smaller school, the switch of AP teachers over to AICE courses hurt AP classes because we are unable hire new AP teachers. Now, we have next to no AP English, AP History and AP Science courses.
While AICE offers up a potential scholarship opportunity for some students, APs are often how some students receive college credit and GPA boosts. To get an AICE diploma you have to take a certain number of classes during high school, and you have to pass all of your exams. Furthermore, not all colleges take AICE courses as college credit yet and may view them as not equivalent to AP courses. You are able to pick what APs you want to take for your GPA and college, but you aren’t required to take a certain amount. In addition, more colleges accept the course credit and see them with more weight than AICE.
That being said, I’m not implying that we don’t need to implement AICE classes or get rid of them to reinstate APs. I believe that we need a decent balance between the two. One of the main issues is that students who want to take certain APs, such as AP World, are unable to because they have been replaced by AICE. A solution would be to offer one or two APs while also offering their AICE equivalent. That way AICE students can get their required classes, while students who want AP can take their classes.
Overall, we need to create more of a balance between AICE and AP. Students should be able to go for an AICE diploma and be able to take an advanced course other than Honors. Even as a smaller school, offering one or two APs in addition to AICE courses would provide the students that want APs with their requested classes.
