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February 9, 2024
Dear Kehillah Community
When I first started at Kehillah, I shared a book with our faculty called A School of Own, which tells the story of an educational researcher and her son who collaborated on the creation of a new school where students could pursue their passions, cultivate mastery, and take meaningful ownership over their learning. Freed from the constraints of traditional schooling, education would become a space of possibility, one that catalyzed the tremendous potential of educators and students alike.
Thankfully, this innovative spirit is alive and well at Kehillah, whether our students are working on Citizen Science projects in collaboration with NASA or designing advanced GPS systems in our MakerSpace. Meanwhile, our faculty continues to study how to strengthen and diversify our academic program, so that students are truly positioned as active participants and protagonists in the learning process. For these reasons and more, I’ve never been more excited for the extraordinary future that lies ahead for Kehillah.
Advanced Study at Kehillah
With these values in mind, I write with an exciting update about our curriculum. Beginning in the 2025-2026 school year, we will no longer offer Advanced Placement (AP) courses at Kehillah. Instead, we will be offering independently designed, accelerated courses—KAT: Kehillah Advanced Topics— that empower students to pursue their passions and engage in challenging and sophisticated inquiry across our academic program. Although AP courses will continue through the 2024-2025 school year, we will offer new courses under the Kehillah Advanced Topics designation in the Fall of 2024. We anticipate continuing to administer AP examinations should students elect to take them, with time set aside during the two weeks in May they are offered.
Our decision reflects growing concern about the limitations of the AP program, which outsources curriculum planning and assessment for our most advanced students and compels teachers to “teach to a test,” a process that places a premium on memorization and rapid content acquisition, thus limiting students’ college readiness and preparation. In contrast, Kehillah Advanced Topics (KAT) courses – which are UC-accredited Honors Courses – allow us to infuse our most advanced course offerings with innovative curricula based on intensive research, writing, and problem-solving.
Our Process
We want to assure you that this decision emerges from extended deliberation with our faculty, administrative, and college counseling teams, combined with the work we did with Challenge Success in helping us reimagine our curriculum, schedule, and academic program. We have also been in regular contact with many of our partner schools who have successfully transitioned away from the AP program, including Mid-Peninsula High School, Hillbrook School, Lick-Wilmerding, Crystal Springs Upland, The Bay School, Shalhevet High School, Drew High School, Marin Academy, Urban School, Athenian, and countless others both locally and nationally.
Meanwhile, our own discussions with college admissions officers and partner schools indicate that the sort of student-driven, exploration-centered learning that Kehillah intends to offer is far more compelling than an AP score. As college admissions officers routinely note, the real question for colleges is whether an applicant has taken a high school’s most demanding courses; the AP designation itself is irrelevant.
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