The report was issued by the NRC, not the NSF, but the NSF apparently agrees because they paying for an overhaul of the AP curriculum based on the report.
Also, if you do a Google search for:
NSF criticism of AP curriculum
You see an overview of this as the second result. Also, I couldn't find this in that Alfie Kohn book, so I must have stumbled upon it in something I read around the same time.
"The AP and IB courses, while including some of the best education in the subject currently available at the secondary level, tend in general to be out of date, too broad, and too inflexible in their curricula."
So the argument the NRC is making is that the AP curriculum needs to be improved, but is currently some of the best available. In addition, the curriculum is being overhauled.
So what exactly is the problem with advocating increasing AB and IBO students when, even though there are problems, it's currently some of the best education available, and an overhaul to bring it in line with the NRC/NSF recommendations is underway?
First, "including some of the best education currently available" != "currently some of the best education available." What the report is actually saying is that a few components of the curriculum are good, but the courses overall suck. If you read the rest of the executive summary, it absolutely shits on the AP. This might be couched in academic language, but make no mistake about what they're saying.
Now obviously if the courses are made to be completely different then advocating them might not be a bad thing. But right now all that's happened is the NSF has given the college board a small amount of money to reform the curriculum, a process which just started this summer. Right now we have no idea if any changes were actually made, and if so what those changes are and whether or not they are really inline with the NRC & NCTM standards.
Anyway, all we know is that right now the president elect is advocating a curriculum that has kids going through the motions of science and math without actually learning the principles of either subject, and without learning what it means to think like a scientist or a mathematician. And these are just the science and math courses. There is every reason to think the other AP courses, the majority which are not being overhauled, are just as bad if not worse.
Further, even if the science and math courses are overhauled, there are still lots of problems with them. For example, the assessments are inauthentic and norm referenced, and there is no reason to think this is going to change.
E.g. calculus - it's the "hardest" high school math class, but it's the most basic and foundational college mathematics course.
I took Calculus both at one of the top California non-magnet schools (AP Calculus) and a California community college (as well as took vector calculus and differential equations after transferring to a university). AP Calculus AB in high school in a way is "designed to be hard", people dropping the course, plenty of failing grades. It's the course for the "top of the class", the people "good in math". In college it's the course freshmen in any science major takes (at a community college it's the first course to be taken once the students complete remedial/"catch-up" math courses; at a university it's _the_ first math course in a math department other than finite math/statistics for humanities/social science majors).
