I have a question for everyone here, how many of you have taken either AP or IB classes in any subject, whether it be US History, English, Chemistry, Calculus, whatever. Then I would like you to say how it differed from a supposedly less rigorous class at your school in the same subject.

I have taken 8 different AP exams and 6 different IB exams while I was in High school.
AP-Spanish,Biology,English Language, English Literature, European History, US History, and Statistics
IB-Spanish,Biology,English, International History, Geography, General Math( covering everything from advanced algebra and trig to up to basic Calculus)

I took them all in a public high school and were all extremely more challenging than any "Honors" class my school provided. I would also like to add with the exception of the 2 history APs, I took the honors equivalent of all of those courses.

For those of you who have taken these kind of classes, do you believe we should start focusing our goals more towards getting students in honors and AP/IB classes rather than on standardized testing? While I am sure some people will say it costs $85(the cost to take when I took them, not sure they rose or not) and not all school boards provide money to take them, however, I believe even taking the classes themselves will help in the long run. Personally, I believe we should reach to teach every student calculus and physics because that is what the top students are capable of rather than have them learning basic geometry and earth/space science(or insert whatever joke science class your district offers) because every student can.

I had quite a few friends who were just as smart as me in high school but opted to take either standard or one or two honors courses. It ended up with them sitting there not caring because the classes moved at such a slow pace. Good example, I took a honors chemistry class at my school while my 2 friends took standard chemistry. It took them the entire year to cover what we did in about a quarter and a half.

Anyways would like to get some opinions.

I had the option of doing the IB program in high school (I think AP is just an American thing, so we didn't have that here) and I chose not to do it, because I felt that it would be extra work that my local university, the only one I was considering, wouldn't care about.

If I could do things over again, I would do the IB program. I'm not sure how much better it is, but it can't possibly be more of a joke than the standard schooling program. At the time, I wasn't smart enough to realize that I could have gotten more learning for free. Fortunately, I'm smarter these days!

Having studied engineering in university, most of my peers took IB, and they, almost without exception, felt that it helped better prepare them for the university workload and difficulty, while I spent the better part of my first year struggling to keep up.

I live in Alberta, Canada, and the way we do IB here, the classwork is more advanced, but the final exam is the same, so the IB students usually aced it, naturally. I'm not really familiar with the concept of 'standardized testing' in the States, but here we just have standard testing in grades 3 and 6, or at least that's how it worked back in the days of the dinosaur when I was that age.

Personally, I believe we should reach to teach every student calculus and physics because that is what the top students are capable of rather than have them learning basic geometry and earth/space science(or insert whatever joke science class your district offers) because every student can.

I agree with this. I think that the school system should have two main goals, one being to raise the below-average student to a more acceptable level, and the second, to provide whatever the most advanced students need in order to become even smarter. My reasoning is that the brightest of the bright are the ones who will change the world, and should be prepared to do so, and the dumbest of the dumb are the ones who will hold us back, so if we can improve those two groups, society as a whole will benefit. We shouldn't neglect those in the middle, either, but I think that the two extremes are the key areas to focus on.