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Back in January, the College Board announced major upcoming revisions to AP courses and tests, and The New York Times currently features a couple of articles (here and here) in their education section about these plans.

In light of critiques of the federally-mandated overemphasis on standardized testing that narrowly targets rote memorization, the College Board’s decision to change AP courses to address these sorts of concerns from high school teachers, among others, is heartening. High school teachers have been involved in the actual planning of the revisions and in feedback polling on proposed changes (and vast majorities approve of the new emphases).

According to the College Board website, new curriculum is slated for the 2011-2012 school year in World History, German Language, and French Language; biology, Latin, and Spanish Literature will debut in 2012-2013; and U.S. History is projected for the 2013-2014 school year. Changes to the other courses will follow later.

For all courses the board says it will make revisions to better emphasize future use of the knowledge students accrue, and especially for biology and U.S. history the new curriculum and exams are aimed at reducing memorization and encouraging analytic thinking. For example, there are recommendations on chapters that can be skipped in a popular biology textbook—amounting to nearly half of the chapters—to make thoroughly covering the most important information more feasible.

The new biology tests will also feature fewer multiple choice questions and more free response (indicating the changes do not simply mean a dumbing down of the tests, and that the test will cater more to creative thinking and problem-solving skills). The new curriculum also allows for more time to conduct experiments and working with lab equipment. And while previously anything in the broad curriculum was fair game for the test—which again fostered superficial coverage and memorization—now teachers will receive more specifications on what the test will cover.

Similarly, the new plans will refocus U.S. history to allow teachers more leeway in teaching important topics from among nine time periods, rather than necessitating spending so much time on mentioning so many disparate events and memorizing data like dates. The new curriculum will also encourage teachers to help student learn to develop historical arguments and think critically.

Let’s hope these efforts by the College Board to make students more ready for college and careers (and allow for greater teaching flexibility) will extend to other tests and school mandates as well—not to mention that this approach would be beneficial for non-AP courses as well.