All of us have strengths and weaknesses, such is the human condition.

The statement will hardly come as a revelation, but when it's applied to individuals, well, that's where the trouble starts. We all like to be praised for doing well and, while we're apt to be aware of it when we do poorly, we don't want to have such things showcased.

When it comes to our children, that goes double. Though children, like all people, have strengths and weaknesses, too often we as parents are wont to single out instances of early learning and other strengths and cite them as examples of superior intellect. Other areas where there is weakness are dismissed with almost as much vigor as goes into praising strengths.

Given the reality of parental pride, it's only natural that our public schools, which are, after all, extensions of the parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles who make up the general public, would place a great deal of emphasis on those who excel in a particular area.

Thus, we have in our high schools Advanced Placement courses wherein students who show documented promise in a particular area — be it humanities, math or science — have the opportunity to take high school classes that have the potential to be turned into college credits.

These Advanced Placement courses, commonly referred to by their initials AP, have been nationally standardized to a degree that uniform tests can be given to any two students from any two school systems who have taken, for example, AP biology, and the test results would constitute a fair comparison of those two students' proficiency in college level biology.

Students who score well on the AP tests can then use the result once they get to college either to bypass an introductory level course or, in some cases, secure college credit.

Overall, it is a good program in general, as well as in Harford County, where it has lately been a focus for the local public school system.

Last week, Superintendent Robert Tomback announced plans to increase Harford County's AP programs, though he was rather cryptic about exactly how and where, saying anticipated funding had not yet been fully approved.

Tomback's announcement came even as AP test statistics were being released that showed Harford County lags well behind the rest of the Baltimore Metropolitan area (excluding Baltimore City) in percentage of seniors who have received a passing grade on one or another AP test.

Considering that about one in six students in grades 10, 11 and 12 took an AP test in 2011 — that is to say about 16 percent — it isn't necessarily a shock that many of the senior classes in Harford County have been in the single digits to teens in percentages of students who have passed at least one AP test. C. Milton Wright High School, with 32 percent of seniors having taken and passed at least one AP test, is a notable exception in Harford County.

It also is worth noting that Maryland in general has a relatively high percentage of high school seniors who get qualifying grades on the AP tests compared to the country as a whole. The national average of seniors who have taken and passed one or more AP tests is 18 percent; the Maryland average is 29 percent.

On the whole, Harford County, with an average of 14 percent of seniors having passed at least one AP test — isn't far removed from the national average. But when the Harford average is half that of the state average, and no other suburban Baltimore County averaged less than 25 percent, that performance is a cause for concern.

Regardless of how you feel about standardized testing in general — and the real or imagined influences of socio-economic factors on their results, the AP tests are supposed to measure achievement, what a student has actually learned. The students who choose to take them have supposedly been well enough prepared to score at least 3 out of 5 under the tests' format.

If Harford students lag behind their peers elsewhere in the state and the region, then something would appear to be amiss, a disconnect, if you will, involving material taught, material absorbed and material understood.

Tomback's announcement that the AP program for Harford County Public Schools is in line for some fortification certainly is good news as bolstering the public education system has many long term benefits, locally, nationally and personally for those who take the AP classes.