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AP U.S. Government and Politics Course Perspective
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by Peter Pew
William S. Hart High School
Santa Clarita, California
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| | Please note: The official College Board® Course Description is available below in "More."
Teachers who are new to AP often approach it with some trepidation. In my years of training AP "rookies," I have heard it all:
- "Do I have the right background to teach this course?"
- "How do I prepare my students for the AP Exam?"
- "What if my kids bomb the AP Exam?"
While teaching AP U.S. Government and Politics is a challenge, it is by no means an insurmountable challenge. I like to think of this as a "doable" course, both for teachers and students. With some training and some materials, this is a course that you can teach. With some work, your students can be successful on the AP Exam.
Now, let's get down to basics. This course is intended to be the equivalent of the one-semester college introductory course in United States government and politics. It is important to keep in mind the introductory nature of the course. New teachers, and some veterans, often go overboard and expect students to learn far more than what they need to know for this course. Perhaps you recall your own first-year course in American government. It wasn't too complex, was it? Wasn't it fairly "doable"?
Here are the six units to be covered in the course, with the weighting that each is given on the multiple-choice section of the AP Exam:
- Constitutional Underpinnings: 5-15%
- Political Beliefs and Behaviors: 10-20%
- Political Parties, Interest Groups, and Mass Media: 10-20%
- Institutions: Congress, Presidency, Bureaucracy, Courts: 35-45%
- Public Policy: 5-15%
- Civil Rights and Civil Liberties: 5-15%
Some notes and comments about these units:
- It is essential to cover each of the six units. You can't afford to get bogged down on just one unit at the expense of the other five. Determine the number of instructional days that are available to you, and allot course time proportionally.
- In teaching the course, it is important to show students the links between units. Students should not see the six units in isolation; rather, they should see how the topics are related to each other, e.g., they need to understand the relationships between PACs (Unit Three), Congress (Unit Four), and Public Policy (Unit Five).
- Be careful with the Public Policy unit. Most textbooks devote several chapters to this unit, and you might be tempted to spend a great deal of time on it. However, as you can see, its weighting on the multiple-choice section of the AP exam is only 5-15%. In my one-semester class, I like to spend a day on the general policy-making process, and then a day each on the various policies, e.g., social welfare policy, environmental policy, foreign/defense policy. I typically spend no more than seven or eight days on this unit.
- Another cautionary note concerns Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. For many of us these are favorite topics and because of our interest we might be tempted to devote a great deal of time to them. Again, however, note the relatively low weighting allotted this unit. You definitely must cover the unit, but it should not take up more than 5-15% of your instructional time.
- The most important unit is Institutions. If you are going to overweight a unit, this would be the one. Not only will there be a considerable number of questions from this unit on the multiple-choice section of the exam, but you can also expect some questions from this unit on the free-response section, too. On both the 2000 and 2001 exams, for instance, there were two questions that, in part or in whole, concerned Institutions.
While teaching AP U.S. Government and Politics certainly has its challenges, these challenges can definitely be met. If you are just starting out, be patient. Look at teaching AP as a three-year process: in the first year, you will be scrambling to keep up; in the second year, you will learn from the mistakes that you made in your first year; in the third year, you will "fine-tune" your course. It does get easier as you acquire more experience. Good luck!
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