Washington Post December 14, 2006

HEADLINE: High Schools Reach Higher, Score Better

By Jay Mathews

Crossland High School in Temple Hills has many virtues, but for the past several years a challenging academic program has not been among them. The most Advanced Placement tests it ever gave was in 2001, a total of 57, and last year it gave only 30. At the same time last year, Wakefield High, an Arlington County school of similar size and demographics, gave 473 of the college-level exams.

This year, Crossland Principal Charles Thomas decided to do something about that. He knew that many of his students were taking the AP courses but not taking the exams, a common situation in U.S. high schools that often results in a watered-down AP experience.

Crossland AP coordinator Sandra Craft said that Thomas's solution was to find the money to pay the test fees for every AP student. The result was breathtaking: 162 AP tests. Large jumps in AP test-taking also occurred at Bowie, DuVal, Eleanor Roosevelt, Flowers, Laurel, Northwestern, Oxon Hill and Suitland high schools, producing the biggest jump ever in Prince George's County's rating on The Washington Post's annual Challenge Index.

The number of AP and International Baccalaureate tests given in the county increased 42 percent, and its average rating on the Challenge Index went up 34.9 percent. The growth is expected to continue, as new Superintendent John E. Deasy says AP and IB growth will be an important part of his plan to improve county schools.

For the first time, three county schools -- Roosevelt, Bowie and Flowers -- reached the benchmark of having at least as many college-level tests as graduating seniors. That puts them in the top 5 percent of all U.S. schools and qualifies them for mention on Newsweek's list of America's Best High Schools next year.

The AP program, created by the College Board in 1955, and the IB program, begun in the late 1960s by international school teachers in Switzerland, were designed for the most exclusive and high-performing public and private high schools. The idea was that if students could pass tests in high school comparable to final exams in college introductory courses, they could save time and money by skipping those courses when they got to college. The IB program was also designed to give students living outside their home countries an exam that would qualify them for entrance to colleges all over the world.

In the 1980s, AP and IB teachers in the United States began to experiment with giving AP courses and tests to average students in average, and in some cases below-average, schools. The successes, such as Jaime Escalante's AP calculus course for low-income students at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles, persuaded more schools to adopt AP and IB.

Two large studies in California and Texas show that good scores on AP tests correlate with second-year college success or higher college graduation rates. But some scholars say this could be because of the character of the students who do well in AP, not because of the AP experience. Other educators say AP and IB provide a vital taste of college trauma in high school that makes it more likely students will earn their college degrees.

In the Washington area, Fairfax County raised AP test-taking to a new level in 1998 by announcing it would pay the test fees for students taking AP courses, as it was already doing for IB students. The number of AP tests in the county jumped 71 percent in a single year, and many other districts, including Anne Arundel and St. Mary's counties, adopted the same policy, which Prince George's has not yet done for all schools.

The policy can be expensive. The College Board charges $83 for each AP test, although that is cut in half for low-income students, and federal money is available to pick up the rest of the cost if necessary. School districts that pay the test fees usually require that all AP students take the tests, and deny them the extra grade points that often come with AP participation if they don't. AP tests must be graded by human beings, and the results do not arrive until summer, so report card grades are based on work and tests the teacher has given, not the AP test written and scored by outside experts.

Some educators have complained that the Challenge Index list does not show how well students did on the exams. Nancey E. Parker, a former AP biology teacher at Laurel High School, said that although Prince George's County wants its students to do well on the tests, the emphasis has been on getting more students to take the courses and the exams, and the scores have not been good.

At Crossland, for instance, 1 percent of the 162 AP tests taken this year received passing scores. At Wakefield High in Arlington, 46 percent of the exams received passing scores that could earn college credit. Superintendent Deasy has said he plans to raise AP and IB participation and achievement.

The Post's Challenge Index has added a new statistic, the Equity and Excellence rate, to show which schools had the highest percentage of seniors passing at least one AP or IB test before graduation. The top 10 schools on that scale on the new list are Clarke County (74 percent), Langley in Fairfax County (72 percent), George Mason in Falls Church (71 percent), Churchill in Montgomery County(70.4 percent), Whitman in Montgomery County (70.2 percent), Wootton in Montgomery County (69.5 percent), H-B Woodlawn in Arlington County (69 percent), McLean in Fairfax County (67 percent), Bethesda-Chevy Chase in Montgomery County (64.2 percent) and Yorktown in Arlington County (62.3 percent). The AP national average this year was 14.8 percent.

The highest Equity and Excellence rate in Prince George's County was at Roosevelt, 32.1 percent. Next highest was Northwestern at 16.9 percent, then Bowie at 15.2 percent.