With 49 chapters and 900 pages, the Advanced Placement Biology book is one of the high school’s most daunting texts. And of teacher Kellie Whited’s four classes (Whited also teaches Biology, Anatomy and Physiology, and Health and Nutrition), AP Bio is her least favorite.

“I’m under so many time constraints, and I have to push the students so hard,” she said. “I find it ridiculous that my AP Bio class doesn’t have time to do extra labs or go down to the American River when we’re learning about ecology.”

So when Whited heard that the College Board is planning to revamp the AP Biology curriculum to reduce memorization and increase analytic thinking, she was “thrilled.”

“I’m like, ‘Great! It’s fantastic! Let’s just do it now.’”

But the changes will not be implemented until the 2012-13 school year.

In the meantime, AP French Language and Culture curriculum changes will go into effect next year (though the high school will not offer AP French in 2011-12).

AP Latin will also change in 2012-13, and AP United States History will change in 2013-14.

The College Board announced its AP Biology overhaul—part of a broader plan to redesign the AP program—last month. With the new plan, the College Board will revamp the exams and provide a curriculum framework for each course rather than simply telling AP teachers what will be on the test.

“The biology teachers have talked for a long time about how difficult the exam is and how difficult it is to cover everything they require,” said Sue Nellis, head of high school.

“It seems the College Board has reacted and made it more reasonable.”

The new AP Biology curriculum will be significantly reduced. Memorization will be deemphasized, and the course will revolve around four key concepts—which the College Board calls “big ideas.” Teachers will be encouraged to skip around the textbook and use different areas of biology to explain the key concepts.

As a result of the curriculum changes, only students who have taken a biology course in high school may take AP Biology.

But SCDS students who take AP Physics or Chemistry in their junior year will still be permitted to take AP Biology their senior year if they take a summer biology course. (At SCDS, students usually take regular biology as juniors.)

Whited is enthusiastic about the College Board’s plans.

“(The new AP curriculum) takes it from listening and memorization and dry labs, and it slows it down and teaches students to be scientists and think like scientists rather than just memorizing,” she said.

“The changes will make it a true college-level class.”

Labs will comprise a much larger portion of the revised AP Biology class, and students will be able to design labs themselves rather than executing pre-fixed ones.

While the College Board claims 20 chapters of material will be cut from the course, Whited is skeptical.

“I don’t see that it will be 20. It’s around 10 in my book,” she said.

Whited said that the 10 chapters on taxonomy (which her students are required to read on their own during Winter Break each year) will be slashed from the curriculum, as will information that is “not as ‘big picture.’”

“For example, when we study photosynthesis, we’ll no longer have to memorize the names of specific enzymes and intermediates. Instead, we’ll focus on the big picture and what photosynthesis does,” she said.

According to a recent New York Times article, 95 percent of the 400 teachers surveyed by the College Board commended the changes.

And past and current AP Biology students are enthusiastic about the changes as well.

Parker Murray, ’10, who took AP Biology last year, thinks the class didn’t adequately prepare him for college biology.

“(AP Bio) focused on things that were trivial. The class was centered on memorization,” he said. “It should focus on getting students to understand the broader spectrum.”

Thus Murray thinks the new changes will benefit the course.

Lily Kramlich-Taylor, ’10, agrees.

“There was an insane amount of material. Everything was so complex, and there was so much information that you didn’t have time to learn it,” she said.

“There wasn’t time for the teacher to teach the material to you. She just lectured it to you.”
In fact, Kramlich-Taylor dropped AP Biology after only three weeks.

Senior Sarah Habbas, who is currently enrolled in AP Biology, said she found the amount of material on the recent AP Biology final exam “overwhelming.”

“And that was only half of what’ll be on the AP.”