We’re roughly two weeks out from the end of the school year, and yet there seems to be no shortage of school news this time of year.

Yesterday we talked about the struggle to get through college financially, but let’s look at the path to actually getting to college.

The number of advance placement classes around the state has increased over the last year, and while the jury’s still out on whether it's producing better results, > the classes are seeing increased interest from students.

As much as we’d all like to think students take AP courses for their betterment and intellectually curiosity, it’s mostly to try and vault ahead in some college courses, as today’s story points out.

But it appears that now maybe even that may not be good enough:

"Researchers at Harvard University and the University of Virginia found little evidence that AP science courses improve a student's performance in college science courses.
Although some schools, such as the University of Pennsylvania, no longer give credit for AP courses in some departments, Maine colleges generally do, although there are some limitations."

Define "prepared." But in terms of who’s really prepared for college, the debate on what prepared means seems to be continuing. A recent report from the people who make the ACT found that core classes – the basics everyone is supposed to get – are not cutting it in getting students ready for college. Worse, students were able to get high grades in classes where they may not have learned that much, the report says. Via the Washington Post:

"'Students today do not have a reasonable chance of becoming ready for college unless they take a number of additional higher-level' courses beyond the minimum, the report said. Even those who do, it concluded, 'are not always likely to be ready for college either.'"

Take a number. So if the core classes don’t cut it and the results on AP classes are still up in the air, what’s the point of trying to get ahead academically in high school? Turns out in some schools you may not even get a shot at valedictorian anymore.

Being the best is a pretty big motivator for some students, but more high schools are finding the standard for who’s the best is a moving target. What does that mean? No more valedictorians. Schools in Minnesota are the latest to switch over. At Eden Prairie High School they’ll send off 23 valedictorians this year, and they figure maybe they need a new system.

But more and more schools around the country are dropping valedictorians in favor of letting top students graduate with honors. Some chalk it up to unecessary stress on students, others say it's too difficult to determine the best of the best with students taking different AP or honors coursework.

It's an interesting debate in what motivates students – the need to compete against their peers, an interest in knowledge or an unstoppable pursuit of the perfect college resume?

Speaking of testing...Steroid talk is pretty much everywhere these days as fans are getting more skeptical about just what makes their favorite players so great. All the 'roid and supplement talk has not escaped the high school level, and this week the Texas state legislature approved a law that approves testing on student athletes.

Last year New Jersey became the first state to announce plans to test student athletes for steroids. At the moment, coaches and student athletes in Maine don’t believe there is a problem and hope testing could be far off for Maine.

The real action. It’s that time of year again, the time of hard-fought competition, cut-throat instincts and other hyphenated sports clichés. I am of course talking about the annual Scripts National Spelling Bee, which begins the preliminary rounds today. Why watch a table surrounded by stone-faced poker players in yet another tournament or horse racing when you can see the potentially childhood-obliterating experience of misspelling words like "Slantindicular."

There are more than 280 spellers in the contest this year, including Maine’s representative, Klaas Pruiksma, a sixth grader from the Montello School in Lewiston. Unfortunately Klaas took a tumble today in the early rounds.

Over at CNBC they offer a primer on this year’s top contenders and handicap some possible winners...not that anyone would gamble on something as innocent as a spelling bee.

E-mail this entry to a friend