The scheduled May 22nd School Committee contained a lengthy discussion, postponed from the May 8th meeting due to time constraints, about NPS Advanced Placement (AP) courses and student performance therein. Katy Hogue (Director of Data Analysis), Toby Romer (Assistant Superintendent for Secondary Education), Henry Turner (Newton North High School Principal) and Tami Straus (Newton South High School Principal) gave a presentation that summarized the detailed findings in the A.P. Analysis report compiled by Ms. Hogue. Both of the high schools’ principals cited their previous experience as A.P. teachers during the presentation and discussion.
Ms. Hogue began the discussion by going through the presentation, which contained the following key takeaways:
- More total students are taking AP courses in NPS (Slide 7) versus previous years, which the presenting administrators stated was a direct result of NPS deciding to eliminate certain “unnecessary” prerequisites to AP courses such as course-specific preliminary exams and summer school work in that subject.
- Alongside the increase in AP enrollment, a relative decline in AP test scores has occurred (Slide 10).
- Increasing numbers of students are enrolling in the courses but electing not to take the AP exams, which is an option offered to students in Newton, but not in many neighboring school districts, according to the presenters.
The remainder of the question-and-answer dialog between the School Committee and the administrators centered on how to interpret the facts above, and what their meaning is for evaluating AP programming within NPS. The NPS administrators uniformly stated that research demonstrated a student simply attending an AP course in high school, regardless of that students’ performance in the class or on the AP exam, led to improved educational outcomes for that student. The administrators said that because of this research, the district has embarked on specific policies over the past three years to facilitate more students enrolling in AP courses.
However, it was unclear whether this increased enrollment was statistically significant in explaining the drop in test scores. The effects of the pandemic, fewer students who received grades of ‘A’ and ‘B’ in the courses taking the respective exams, and budget-related challenges to professional development for educators were all hypothesized as possible reasons for the drop in students receiving a ‘4’ or ‘5’ on AP exams. The administrators only cited students being able to reduce college tuition by receiving AP credit for courses as the motivation for a high school student to take an AP exam, and did not reference students who wish to place out of entry-level courses with AP credit in order to take higher-level college courses.
Over the course of the dialog during the meeting, the administrators and School Committee members appeared to agree that expanding NPS AP access has contributed to lower overall test scores due to expanding access beyond students who are determined to score well on the exam, with Mr. Romer stating that lower scores for some students was an acceptable tradeoff for the district to incur for the long-term benefits to students who otherwise would not have gained access. Ms. Straus added that increasing access to minority students is going to continue to be an NPS priority in the future. The student representative on the School Committee gave feedback that too few AP courses are available for sophomores and juniors, and the administrators replied that this was primarily due to budget cuts.
The meeting replay is available on NewTV.
