Districts weigh in on AP exams

Trinity Area School District is the latest area district to mandate that students take Advanced Placement end-of-course exams.

AP courses are college-level classes for high schools that are approved by the College Board, which also runs the SAT. Students can receive college credit if they score well on the AP exams, which are separate from the tests that schools give during the course.

Sandra Riley, a spokeswoman for the College Board, said more than 17,000 schools in the United States offer AP courses and 75 percent of them responded to its most recent survey for the 2009-10 school year.

In that survey, 35 percent of schools said they require students to take the AP tests and 59 percent said they require students to pay for the test.

Trinity Superintendent Paul Kasunich said the mandated test was one of the ideas that he brought to the district when he started in April. Kasunich said he's a big proponent of AP because of its rigorous curriculum.

"I believe the test is part of the curriculum," he said.

He said a mandatory AP test makes sense because it validates what students learned and also gives detailed feedback to teachers to help make the curriculum better.

Currently, Trinity has 14 AP classes, said high school Principal Donald Snoke. They are English 11 and 12, Calculus AB/BC, music theory, U.S. history, European history, psychology, biology, chemistry, statistics, calculus AB, calculus BC, Java and art history.

Snoke said it's not clear how many students will take AP classes during the upcoming year because the schedule will not be complete until the end of this month.

That means it's not clear how much it will cost Trinity since the school board has agreed to pay the test-taking fee for each student, which is $86 per exam.

"If you mandate it, you have to pay for it," Kasunich said.

He said the exam score cannot be part of a student's final grade because districts receive the results in July. However, if students do not take the AP test, they will not pass the class, he said.

He hopes to expand the number of AP courses by four or six over the next few years.

Trinity Area Middle School will pilot pre-AP courses in English and social studies in 2010-11. The pilot program will allow students to experience academic rigor of advanced classes and prepare them for AP classes at the high school.

Not all Washington and Greene County schools handle AP courses and exams the same way.

Chartiers-Houston doesn't require students to take AP exams, though some choose to, said high school Principal Phil Mary. He said Chartiers-Houston offers AP classes for English, chemistry, physics, calculus AB and history.

Charleroi, which offers AP courses in English, chemistry, physics, biology and history, also doesn't mandate the AP exam, said Superintendent Brad Ferko.

"If you require students to take it, you have the obligation to pay for it," he said.

Roughly six years ago, Bentworth School District started offering AP classes. The district mandated the tests from the beginning, said high school Principal George Lammay.

He said the external test helps ensure students are achieving at the level that is expected.

Bentworth offers six AP courses, which are English, psychology, chemistry, biology, calculus AB and calculus BC.

Students are notified at the time they sign up for the course that the test is required, he said. The district does not pay for the cost of testing. However, low-income students will receive help, he said.

Riley said the College Board reduces the exam fee by $22 for low-income students and in most states, local or state governments chip in most or all of the rest so those students end up paying between nothing and $5 for the exam fee.

Join the Observer-Reporter's conversation about education at our blog at http://www.observer-reporter.com/or/behinddesk/.

Copyright Observer Publishing Co.