Awww…
Just read this blog post by Scott Aaronson, which discusses the fact that the college board is pulling the AP Computer Science AB test. According to Scott, the reasons basically boiled down to not enough people taking the test. I understand this from a businessmen’s point of view, as having a test causes the College Board to spend money maintaining and administering it.
However, I’ve never heard of it. This could be due to the fact that the University of Oregon’s Computer Science Department does not accept the AP Computer Science AB test, but I think it is actually from a much bigger problem. Scott points out that the test definitely covers the more “theoretical” aspects of CS, such as big-oh notation. Unfortunately, at least in Oregon, it is impossible to be certified to teach if the only college level education you have is CS. This means that the teachers at the high school level in oregon that teach CS are either (best case) math teachers, or (worst case) shop/PE teachers. Both of these categories of teacher would not know of the existence of certain of the concepts, and therefore would doubtless push aside the CS AP test because of this.
