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Md., Va. Among Top 3 In Passing '07 AP Tests
In the Washington Post...
Maryland public schools had the second-highest percentage of graduating seniors who passed Advanced Placement tests last year, and Virginia's had the third-highest, College Board officials disclosed yesterday. Maryland also ranked second in the nation for gains on that measure of college readiness.
High marks for the two states were driven largely by dramatic increases in AP test-taking in the Washington suburbs, particularly Northern Virginia and Montgomery County. Some educators are worried, however, that budget cuts will limit that growth. Fairfax County, for example, is weighing a proposal to force many students to pay for their AP exams.
Read more HERE
3 comments:
Jay Matthews is still peddling the fact that Maryland is "Having everyone that can inhale or has a free lunch and takes an AP class" makes a school system great.
What utter nonsense.
I quote the Washington Compost below:
"Judy Estep, an assistant superintendent in Charles County, credited more support for teachers and students for the doubling of AP tests in her school system and rising student success in the past five years." So what? Why don't you, Ms. Estep, go to the local detention center and pay for all the inmates to take the AP tests? That would certainly make Jay Matthews wet his pants, seeing the huge increase in the number and success of an even higher rising number of AP tests.
Come on Ms. Estep, support for teachers and students for doubling the AP tests in YOUR school system?
What a helaciously obnoxious statement. This is as much of her school system as it is a bar room bouncer. We pay her salary. We pay THEIR salaries. She didn't build any of the schools. These are our kids, not hers.
Ms. Estep, after doing a weighted average of the scientific classes AP Bio, AP Calc(AB), AP Chem, AP
Physics B, Electricity, and Mechanics, along with a kind of/sort of math class AP Stat, you get an absolutely disgusting 1.96
For anyone with half of a brain, let's turn on the light bulb a second and ask ourselves, "Does this represent any type of a success?" In who's slow or just plain ignorant mind equates a 1.96 out of 5 in scientific classes to any sort of success?
In private industry, this would result in catastrophic firings from the top down.
You people in the central office had better start evaluating these teachers. These averages are a reflection upon the:
1) Administration
2) the supervisors of the teachers of these classes
3) the principals that allow this type of BS to continue, year after year.
These results are a total waste of taxpayer money.
We are talking about 541 students taking these tests (the ones listed above) and averaging an embarrassing failure.
No college would ever accept these lousy scores for the replacement of college level credit.
How in God's name could you ever dream that high tech firms would move to a county with such a poor showing of students having an extremely low showing of college-level preparedness?
And I ask you, could you with a straight face tell me that the grades handed out on the report card correlates with these utterly failing AP scores?
If not, that constitutes academic fraud.
You have got some lousy teaching on your hands. Why don't you benchwarmers over at central office get back in the classroom and start teaching these kids?
Obviously, there are absolutely no management skills whatsoever between administration and the teachers.
These AP tests are to offer students and their parents the ability to save on precious college tuition. With such paltry scores, I would think you'd feel guilty enough to pony up the money for the students remedial classes these kids have to take, wasting precious dollars and time their freshman year at college.
Wow, what a sad state of affairs.
And for all of the parents that actually read and analyze this data, march over to central office and demand an explanation for academic apathy and total disregard for a decent education from the Charles County Board of Education.
Check out these links:
http://www.psu.edu/admissions/steps/understanding/ap.htm
http://www.tce.umd.edu/apchart.html
http://www.admissionsug.upenn.edu/applying/advanced.php
http://gwired.gwu.edu/adm/apply/ap_credchart.html
http://www12.georgetown.edu/undergrad/bulletin/admissions.html#advanced
Good schools. University of Pennsylvania, Penn State, George Washington University, University of Maryland. Georgetown.
Not one of these schools accepts anything less than a "4" for Calc AB, Bio, Chem, Physics, or Statistics.
What's more embarrassing? Having your child waste a year in a county school looking to save money on college tuition, or worry about a local school board member worry about their own embarrassment?
So, administration is blabbering about the success of an average of a 1.9 when that score wouldn't get you a day's worth of credit for any of these classes.
Yes this is sobering. It's also a wake-up call to parents who believe this malarkey that the AP program is such a success.
At 1.9 it's a joke.
My question is, "will the elected board officials take the bull by the horns, or just continue to feed the public the same line of BS that Jay Matthews is continuing to perpetuate year after year?
Don't we give a s&^t about our children and their education?
Can we please get the brightest teachers teaching these classes?
This is no joke. The AP program is serious business and we need to get people to teach these classes that command excellence and have enough self-respect to get the job done.
The job ain't getting done now.
When can we stop BS'ing about this program?
Have the balls to correlate the grades with the AP scores received.
Yea, I know damned well the scores come in after the report cards are calculated. Giving students "A's" and "B's" on a transcript while the student obtains a 2 or 1 on the AP exam equates to fraud and outright bamboozlement. Simply put, it's CYA for a lack of ability to help students master the AP curriculum, but yet, keep the parents happy that their children "passed" their AP class. Have we lost all honor and conscience?
So are there any teachers out there willing to dredge up the AP curriculum?
The bottom line is that the results are simply horrific.
I say get the AP teachers to take the AP test in the subject they teach.
If they can't ace the AP test, then vamoose and teach in the lower level classes.
Our children's future is much more important than a good old boy system that keeps poorly performing teachers locked in jobs at the detriment, damage, and academic deprivation of our children and their chances of admission into an excellent four year university.
The 4th Annual Report to the Nation: Maryland Supplement, prepared by CollegeBoard, has a different view.
One of their charts explains that "All Students" in AP classes for 02', 06' and 07' show that while the number of students has in fact increased (from 23.5% of students in AP classes in 02' to 35.3% of students in 07') the numbers on how that increase is actually performing is way down.
While we put more students in AP classes, less of them score a 3 or higher in their AP tests. For 02' the number of students with 3 or higher in at least one AP test was 16.4%; in 06' the number of students with 3 or higher is 21.7%; and for 07' the number of students getting a three of higher is 22.4%.
Now that might look like "rising" scores on the surface until you look at both sets of numbers.
In 02' with 23.5% of students in AP classes and 16.4% getting a three or higher, that leaves 7.1% not achieving that (three) score. Compared to 06’ total population in AP classes of 32.6% and 21.7% getting a three of higher, a difference of 10.9% (up from the 7.1% in 02’) and in 07’ total population of 35.3% and 22.4% with a three or higher, another decrease from the previous year (06’) with 12.9% not achieving, up from the 10.9% not achieving in 06’. With these numbers it becomes apparent that as the percentage of students increases so does the number of students not achieving the minimum of three, and almost exactly to the number of the increase of students.
So, as we increase our student population in our AP classes we decrease the number of students achieving what the College Board(s) are looking at in terms of quality passing grades.
In 02' total population in AP classes to 06' total population there was that 9.1% increase (total population in AP classes) while in 06' there was that number of 10.9% not achieving the minimum level score. From 06' to 07' we saw a 2.7% increase in total population and in 07' a 2.0% difference (increase) between the numbers of students not scoring a three of higher. (From 10.9% in 06' to 12.9% in 07').
I downloaded the report and now have no idea where I got it from, but if anyone wants a copy and can not find one, let me know and I can email it to you. It covers all the demographics (very interesting in how those numbers have played out also) and numbers for the years 02’, 06’ and 07’ for the State. I might have first seen it at EdWeek or GreatSchools.com, but am not sure.
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