A-Plus: District cited for A.P. Excellence

The efforts of Malverne students and teachers, and the commitment of administrators to put academics first, have paid off: The Malverne school district has been added to the College Board’s Advanced Placement Achievement List — an honor bestowed on 400 school districts nationwide for increasing access to A.P. courses and maintaining or improving the rate at which students score well on A.P. exams.

“It’s gratifying to see that all the hard work is paying off,” said schools Superintendent Dr. James Hunderfund. “We had some very good school districts in company on that list that I know have also worked hard to have their kids improve. And, nationally, out of 27,000 schools, that’s not too bad.”

The district has seen an increase in the number of students participating in the A.P. program and an improvement in the percentage of those earning exam scores of 3 or higher, the score typically needed to earn college credit. In 2008, there were 82 students in the program and 17 percent scored 3 or higher. In 2010, 101 students took A.P. classes, and 38 percent scored 3 or higher. The district also began offering additional courses, increasing its total from eight to 10.

“We were not happy with our upper-level results … so what we did is, we told students seriously if they wanted to be in A.P. — we didn’t have a restriction on students entering A.P. — they must work hard, and we established that as an absolutely priority,” Hunderfund said. “Everybody got on the same bandwagon and said, ‘If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right.’”

The district undertook staff development with some teachers, sent others to various conferences and brought in consultants from districts that had success with A.P. testing. It also gave students extra help by adding lab periods and supplemental classes where students would have more time with teachers to work on the curriculum. According to Hunderfund, the district also brought in teachers from Malverne High School to conduct learning-center and homework assistance for students.

Hunderfund said that some of the credit for the district’s improvement goes to the students’ eagerness to participate in the MSG Varsity Long Island Challenge, a televised academic program in which students from schools throughout Long Island compete.

“A lot of our A.P. students participated in that, so that got a lot of motivation in the air to do well in academics and to be able to compete at a high level,” Hunderfund said, noting the increase in A.P. course enrollment. “You could see that the momentum was growing in A.P. for more children who wanted to take A.P. and wanted to excel.”

In two years, the number of A.P. exams taken in the district jumped from 165 to 187. “So, overall, there’s been a shift. We see a positive a positive shift upward — we see more children doing better,” Hunderfund said. “We see it as a work in progress. We don’t see it as having reached the top. We need to do much more in terms of continuous improvement, but we are very thrilled that we made the list.”

Eleven of the 400 school districts selected for the list are Long Island districts. In order to be eligible for the award, Malverne had to meet the following criteria: examination of three years of A.P. data, from 2008 to 2010; demonstrate an increase in participation in and access to A.P. courses of at least 11 percent; a steady or increasing percentage of exams taken by African American, Hispanic/Latino and American Indian/Alaskan native students; and maintaining or improving performance, with either more than 70 percent of the students taking the exams scoring 3 or higher or a higher percentage of 3s in 2010 than in 2008.