Cambridge Advanced International Certificate of Education (AICE) is a newly offered program at Apopka High School. If 7 AICE courses are completed and passed, there is eligibility for up to 100% college tuition. AICE started being offered during the 22-23 school year as ELA courses for class of 2026. On the other hand, Advance Placement (AP) classes have been offered for a while. With AP classes, if you pass the AP exam at the end of the year with a 3 or higher, you earn a college credit and the grade for that class will be changed to an A on your transcripts. AICE classes are slowly starting to replace AP classes–is this a good thing?
Dr. Korkes is the Assistant Principal in charge of guidance here at Apopka High School. The Blue and White interviewed her and asked her what she thinks about AICE classes overtaking AP classes. She answered: “Student requests also played a role in the move to add AICE classes. Since the AICE program was introduced at Apopka, the number of requests for AP classes has fallen and the number of requests for AICE courses has increased. Since the master schedule is driven by student requests we do not know at this time which courses will be in demand enough to schedule and which teachers will be teaching them.” The Blue and White then interviewed Sophomore Ashlynn Speck to see her feelings on this topic. She responded, “I don’t feel like this is true because on registration forms they don’t have as many AP classes offered like they say they do. A lot of colleges expect us to take AP classes so we’ll get into better colleges, and they’re not offered.” Another concern with requesting classes is how students are able to request classes when we don’t know where to request and don’t know what classes we can request.
Since AICE is a newly offered program mainly only in Florida, not many schools out of state take the AICE diploma. With AP classes, there are many schools outside of Florida that take AP credits and can exchange those credits for college class credits. “I feel like I would much rather take AP class because I would like to go to college outside of Florida. So there’s not really any point in me taking these classes because the AICE diploma only applies to schools in Florida,” exclaimed Sophomore August Rice. Sophomore Hannah Moffa expressed her concern about schools that do take the AICE diploma: “I remembered I asked my counselor, ‘What colleges take the AICE diploma,’ and she didn’t know at all. So I had to do my own research and find a list of schools that accept it.” Students don’t know how/where to apply the AICE diploma because resources aren’t given.
Now that a lot of courses are being changed to AICE, teachers are getting their courses changed. The Blue and White interviewed Ms. Carder, a French teacher at Apopka High School to look at her perspective of starting to teach an AICE class. “The themes of the AICE test are the same as the AP test. So, the curriculum is the same. It won’t be harder. The sections are also the same: reading, listening, writing and speaking. The activities in each section are different though. For example, students will have the choice between prompts on the AICE test, which is not the case on the AP test,” stated Ms. Carder. Mr. Mellon was the AP Psychology teacher until this school year started; he now teaches AICE Psychology and has been teaching it for almost year. He argues, “It’s similar to AP; we need to go through a training in order to be approved but it’s not a difficult process.” So AICE teachers are trained and have to get a certification to teach the class just like they have to do with AP classes. Having experienced AICE classes the past two years, Hannah Moffa worries, “It’s the first year they’re offering it and a lot of teachers don’t know what to do and what’s on the test because they weren’t trained properly.”
There are some troubles with the AICE program from upperclassmen. “As someone who has taken AP courses since my freshman year, I’m disappointed to see classes I was looking forward to taking In school being taken away. For example, I was on track to take AP environmental science my senior year, but that course was changed to AICE. I simply see no point in enrolling in an AICE class so I’m deciding to start AP Environmental over the summer,” stated Junior Shila Gillis. I can relate to this having the same problem. Shila and I both decided to take AP Chemistry next year, which is the harder option. There is another problem that has occurred as class registration comes to a close. Hannah Moffa stated, “I was gonna take AICE Probs and Stats next year because I’m not going to be able to take AP Calculus because it’s going to be too hard. But they took away the class so I’m going to have to go down a level to honor Probs and Stats. Which I know is probably not going to look good on my transcripts because it’s like I repeated a level of math.” Shila Gillis added, “Half of my friends were planning to take AP Stats next year, but that was taken off the schedule. It’s messing up a lot of senior year plans and is frustrating for many high-achieving students. I know many have sent emails to Mr. Heinz to voice their complaints, but I’m not sure this is something we can reverse.” Another negative about AP classes being taken away is that upcoming seniors are only taking AICE classes because AP classes are not as avaliable. AICE classes are useless to them because they don’t have enough time to get the AICE diploma.
As this article is being written we were not able to get access to the registration forms due to class changes being made on the forms; even though class registration is already over. As AICE classes continue to rise in popularity this situation will probably smooth out for later generations but there are still many concerns to worry about.
Course registration forms were updated as of March 4 and were shared with The Blue and White. If these changes affect you, you should contact your guidance counselor to update your schedule for next year.
