By "cramming" most people mean the kind of studying that enables you to remember information for one or two days, which would not result in good AP scores. Are you sure by "cramming" you don't just mean "intense studying?" If you and your classmates got good AP scores, then you must have understood most of the material well enough to retain it, since you would only have had time to cram a small amount before the test.

You misunderstand. Please note that from the start, I've allowed that people do retain some knowledge from cramming-based classes. (For that matter, someone writing notes to sneak into a test probably gained some small benefit from the act of writing the notes.)

But no, there's no mistake, here. Much like other high school classes, the AP classes I took were sequences of sections followed by intense "reviews" the day prior to each test. They were the very model of how schools encourage cram-and-forget education.

I really don't understand how it could be "cram-and-forget" unless the students failed the AP tests. If they did well on the AP tests -- covering an entire year's worth of material in one day -- it was more like "cram-and-remember" and it was apparently a good way to learn the material.

I'm not sure what your difficulty is in understanding this. They cram before the tests in the class, then they cram before the final exam (or AP exam). The "forget" is after the AP test.

This naturally made students who crammed have a tougher time in later classes in college. I wasn't one of them, but I refuse to look down on the people who were behaving exactly as the teachers were training them to behave.