AHS AP Courses Picking Up Steam

According to administration and teachers, advanced placement courses are now becoming more mainstream, and that’s a good thing.

Pia Durkin, PhD Superintendent of Attleboro Public Schools, Attleboro High School principal Jeffrey Newman and AHS Asst. Principal for Curriculum and Supervision David Sawyer all gave a presentation on why AP courses are picking up steam.

They said that AP courses are not just for the “top 15 students” in the course material anymore.

“There’s this persistent belief that AP classes are great,  but not everyone can take an AP class, certainly not a lot of them,” Sawyer said. “We could say that this idea that AP is only for a certain kind of kid, isn’t quite true.”

Sawyer said that changes in junior and senior classes have been going on since 1999, moving away from a three-tier system. That means that, a class like English III used to have levels including college prep, honors and AP. He said that they have been changing that approach to have a two-tiered system, eliminating the honors-level class in favor of the AP. He added that these changes have not and will not affect freshman and sophomore classes.

“What we’ve done is raise the floor, so that the rigor in these classes are much higher, so that we do not have courses that address only parts of the curriculum at a high enough level,” Durkin said.

Sawyer said that English III Honors, English IV Honors and U.S. History II Honors would be eliminated in this system. While not all honors courses are being removed, chemistry honors will actually be added, most of the programs will be removed to allow more students to take AP courses.

“When we put the advanced placement designation on our transcript, colleges know what that means, and they have faith in that,” he said. “Colleges do not know what our non-AP courses cover, or what the grade students receive in these courses mean. I’m not saying that they necessarily feel negative about it, but to them it’s a question mark, and this plays a real role in the college application process.”

The main reasoning behind this is that AP courses are becoming more acceptable to the student mind and, in the long run to college, more beneficial, regardless of the score a student receives on the AP test.

AP tests are graded from 1-5, with anything above a 3 being a qualifier for college credit. While some colleges do not accept these credits, colleges still recognize the standards of the course, since it is nationally recognized and accountable. Honors courses, however rigorous and beneficial they may be to the student, are not nationally recognized and therefore, in the eyes of a college applicant reader, do not determine as much as an AP course.

AHS students who do not receive a qualifying grade still benefit from the course and do better in college, according to data compiled this year, because they are better prepared for the college experience and know what to expect.

“Every student who takes the test gets a 1 [grade] as long as they answer the question,” Sawyer said. “Even those students are better prepared in college than students not taking the test. There’s a real direct correlation between an AP experience and college readiness.”

This process of getting more kids into AP classes has seen results in the qualified grade as well. Sawyer said that in 2009, less than 10 percent of AHS graduates had a grade of 3 or higher. In 2010,  27 percent students received that grade.

“That says that we’re graduating students who are actually ready for college,” he said. “We’re really proud of that.”

School committee vice chair Brenda Furtado said that student may feel like they are being pigeon holed into taking the AP classes because of the lack of option for the honors courses. She said that students may feel disenfranchised and take the college prep courses instead.

“For instance, what happens to a child who has taken the honors English in ninth grade and tenth grade, and now it’s not an option?” Furtado said.

AHS English department head Kevin Gorman said that AP is becoming the honor option for 11 and 12 grade students.

“Since we’ve come to realize that AP coursework is the best we can do to prepare kids for college, we now say that if a qualifying equals college preparedness, than every student who has college aspirations should aspire to take and strive for a qualifying score in an AP class,” Sawyer said.