Melissa Bailey Photo
182 of Co-op’s 630 kids take APs.
More students than ever are taking Advanced Placement courses. Most of them are failing the tests. Is that progress? Should more New Haven kids get the chance to join the college-going track?
At the invitation of New Haven’s schools superintendent, high school kids on the citywide student council are trying to answer those questions.
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They are taking a broad look at Advanced Placement (AP) courses, courses for which students can earn college credit if they score at least a 3 out of 5 on a standardized end-of-year exam.
Students first came to Superintendent Garth Harries with a concern that the district would stop paying for the AP tests. Harries (pictured) challenged them to examine bigger questions, including: How are kids identified for AP classes? Do all students have an equal opportunity to take them? And what is the role of AP courses in putting kids on a successful college-going track?
Harries said he is also meeting with teachers and other staff to discuss how the school district distributes resources between AP and non-AP courses, including the class size and the quality and seniority of the teachers. The review takes place as some educators are rethinking the role of AP programs in high schools.
School district staff shared some early findings in a meeting last Thursday with the citywide student council at Cooperative Arts and Humanities Magnet High School on College Street.
Test-Takers On The Rise
More and more city kids are taking AP tests. The number of New Haven public school kids who took AP tests rose from 415 in 2006 to 724 in 2013, according to the district. The number of exams taken has nearly doubled, to 1,208, during that same time period. In New Haven, every student who takes an AP class has to sign a contract agreeing to take the exam.
The expansion follows a national trend. Nationally, the number of students taking AP exams more than doubled, to nearly 1 million, from 2002 to 2012, according to the College Board, the not-for-profit organization oversees the AP curriculum and tests. College Board took over the AP program a half-century ago as a way to help a few ambitious students prepare for college. Now the program has become a go-to route for any college-aspiring kid.
Course Offerings Vary
Schools vary widely in how many AP classes they offer, depending in part on the size of the school.
Career High, which has about 675 kids, offers 10 AP classes.
Co-op High, which has about 630 total kids, has the most robust AP program: 182 students are enrolled to take 343 exams this year. Students can choose from 15 AP classes taught by 14 AP teachers.
Aja Diggs and Shirley-Ann Feliciano of Metropolitan Business.
At the other end of the spectrum, Metropolitan Business Academy, which serves just shy of 400 kids, offers only three AP classes. Fifty kids are currently signed up. Hyde Leadership Academy, which is half the size of Metro, offers two AP classes: English Language and English Literature. Twenty-six kids are signed up, according to district data.
To teach an AP course, teachers have to go through a one-week training with the College Board. And they have to submit their course syllabus to the College Board for approval, or else the course won’t qualify as an AP course that can earn kids college credit.
Students Fail 67.1 Percent Of Tests
Rates of completion vary from school to school. Citywide, students passed 32.9 percent of AP tests in 2013. That’s far below the state average: Connecticut students passed 70.9 percent of tests in 2012, according to the College Board.
The city’s completion rate has basically stayed even, hovering around 32 percent, as it has vastly expanded the number of test-takers since 2006.
The low completion rate prompted discussion among student council members. Is it good to give everyone a shot at the college-focused curriculum an AP test provides? Or is it a bad idea to have so many kids fail?
Students were asked to produce headlines based on their discussions of the data.
Nina Filippone (pictured), a sophomore at the Engineering and Science University Magnet School, offered this headline: “70 Percent Fail. Is It Worth It?”
Her group discussed whether it’s worth the district’s investment in paying for the tests, she later explained.
Each AP test costs $81 to take. The state and College Board foot the bill for students who qualify for free and reduced-price lunch, a standard measure of poverty. Of the 1,336 tests kids are signed up for this year, 950 are for kids who meet that measure.
The school district is paying the rest of the bill: $81 per test for 386 tests, or $31,266.
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Completion rates vary from school to school. At Wilbur Cross, the city’s largest comprehensive high school, students passed about half of their tests, producing 150 successful passing exams. At Hillhouse High, the pass rate is much lower but has been steadily climbing, from 3 percent in 2008 to 26.5 percent in 2013.
At High School in the Community, students passed a total of three exams, a completion rate of 6.9 percent. At Hyde Leadership Academy, a magnet school currently housed in a North Haven swing space, no student has passed an AP exam since 2008.
Who’s Got AP “Potential?”
Linda Powell, a retired teacher who works part-time with the district to coordinate its AP program, said the district aims to expand access to the tests. Part of the quest is to figure out who has the “potential” to succeed in an AP class, and make sure those kids take them.
To help districts figure that out, College Board offers a free Web-based tool called AP Potential, which crunches sophomore and juniors’ PSAT scores, then guesses which AP classes they might do well in. For example, students who score well in the math PSAT would be recommended to take AP Calculus, physics or chemistry.
Powell unveiled a chart showing each school and the number of kids who have AP “potential,” according to the College Board tool. The tool estimated that Cross students had the potential to do well in 304 AP tests of various subjects; Hillhouse had 64 potential test-passers.
Students raised their eyebrows at the numbers. How come our school has only 18 “potential” AP scholars in English Language, while Sound School has 36 and Hyde Leadership has zero? asked Dar’Ron Brown (at left in photo), a senior at Metropolitan Business Academy.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea that they use the PSAT” to decide who takes AP classes, said Shirley-Ann Feliciano, another senior at Metro. The PSAT scores from October of 2012 are used to select students for the following fall. She said she doesn’t believe a student has to score well on the PSAT to succeed in an AP.
Powell later clarified that the district uses those numbers as a starting point. It takes those “potential” AP kids and asks, “who else?” The district has been expanding its AP offerings far beyond the minimum recommendations of the College Board, she said: The AP recommended students take a total of 963 AP tests this year, and students are currently enrolled in 1,336.
The district has an open-door policy for AP classes, Powell said: “If a kid and a parent want in — they’re in,” she said. But there still could be some kids who have “potential” who are being overlooked, Powell acknowledged.
Barriers To Entry
Dolores Garcia-Blocker, the former Co-op principal who’s now the district’s head of college and career readiness, asked student leaders to ponder whether all of the students who have “potential” are actually taking APs.
“I know there were artificial barriers” to taking the APs when she was principal, she said.
The district’s handout outlines some potential barriers: In order to earn high-school credit for an AP class, students have to agree to take the AP exam. They also have to sign a contract, and have their parents or guardians sign it. The contract requires students to attend after-school or Saturday sessions when teachers offer them.
Students returned to their home schools with an assignment to poll their classmates and come up with a stance on the district’s AP classes.
Superintendent Harries, who had to leave the meeting early to meet the governor, said he later heard about the students’ discussions and proclaimed himself “impressed.” He said he hopes the conversation fuels a deeper reflection on how to make sure all kids have access to high-quality courses that prepare them for college. He said the conversation also reflected another change: Empowering the student council to help create policy.
The College Board Advanced Placement Program is one of the nation's great educational frauds perpetrated upon American schools and American students.
It is a multi-million dollar business enterprise even though they might be called non-profit. School systems pay the College Board for special training for AP teachers to be eligible to teach the curriculums of the AP courses. Special textbooks and teaching resources must be purchased from the College Board. School systems or the students must pay for the AP tests. Students who obtain at least a 3 out of 5 on the AP tests may receive college credit.
It sounds like a great deal. But are AP courses really the equivalent of the college course experience?
Many New Haven public high school students have taken "REAL" college courses at Yale, Southern, University of New Haven and other local colleges for decades. It would appear that the real thing would be far superior to the imitation.
New Haven has invested a lot of money in promoting AP. A lot of schools systems do because it looks good, its impressive. They have all bought into the hyperbole that The College Board has pushed on the public at the public's expense.
If you had a choice between having your child take an AP course and a course at Yale or UNH, which would you choose?
New Haven has been pushing AP. More kids are taking AP than ever before, but look at the results: AP students are failing to pass nearly 70% of the AP tests.
It is quite impressive for the Board to say we have hundreds of students taking AP tests, but it is an extreme embarrassment to have to admit the failure rate.
Many students taking AP courses do not meet the high standards and expectations of "advanced" students. Many AP teachers struggle with the tough curriculums which many students find quite difficult. Despite following the AP methodology, drilling students to prepare for the tests and giving students practice tests throughout the school year, most of our students are failing.