By JOSEPH KELLARD
Oceanside High School students enrolled in Advanced Placement classes will now be required to take the final exams after the Board of Education voted to mandate the previously optional three-hour AP test and to cover the cost parents must pay for their children to take this test in May.
During its general meeting on Feb. 12, the board approved $70,000 to pay for the test ‹ with the necessary money being transferred from a reserve fund in this year¹s budget ‹ and will account for it in the 2007-08 budget. An AP test costs $82 per student.
The district has made allowances for students who decline to take the test for any reason. But they nevertheless must take a final written exam created by Oceanside¹s teachers, and the AP designation for the class will be dropped from their transcript, said Superintendent Dr. Herb Brown.
AP is an optional program that offers high school students college-level courses to earn credit toward higher education. Students who pass the AP test won¹t be required to take the course in college. Colleges vary in where they place AP students -- some placing them in introductory 101-level courses and giving them college credit, while others, such as Ivy League schools, may simply put AP students in their more advanced 201 courses.
Oceanside offers 22 AP classes ranging from art history, world history and English literature, to calculus, computer science and physics. While some students take one AP course, others may sign up for multiple classes, potentially saving their parents a substantial amount on college tuition for those particular classes.
Brown said that he and curriculum supervisors had two basic reasons for mandating the AP test. ³First, it is that this is really the final exam, and that when the kids get to college and take a course, they are going to be expected to take the final exam,² Brown said.
Second, the College Board provides the district with feedback on how Oceanside students did on each exam question. ³This is so that we can see which questions they got right and wrong, and we can then improve our program,² Brown continued. ³Because maybe it¹s a weakness in our program that the students were getting certain questions wrong, and this feedback can help us improve the program for future kids. [As it was] the district is not going to get good feedback from the College Board because it will only be based on those kids who are sitting for the test.²
Al Lyson, president of the Board of Education, said Oceanside is mandating the test now because the College Board has conducted an audit of Oceanside¹s AP curriculum, and is generally ³putting a lot of pressure on school districts to make sure that the AP courses are sufficient and correct from a curriculum standpoint, and not something that¹s advertised as AP but really isn¹t.²
Lyson added that just as New York state requires school districts to provide funding for the calculators that students are required to use for the mandated algebra Regents, so too they must pay for the mandated AP test, even though the College Board does not mandate the test, Lyson said.
³The rule is if it¹s required, the district has to pay for it,² he added, noting the litigation that some school districts have faced when they fail to fund certain mandates such as the calculators.
During the Feb. 12 meeting, the school board voted 5-0 in favor of mandating and funding the test. Trustee Kim Garrity was absent and trustee Sandie Schoell abstained from voting. When asked about her abstention, Schoell said that by the time of the Feb. 12 vote, she had yet to fully research the issue of mandating AP tests, and was considering some arguments against it.
³I knew that there were parents and kids out there with issues and objections, and I just wanted to make sure that we had heard and addressed them to their satisfaction,² Schoell said.
Among the concerns Schoell said she heard from parents is that they wanted to retain the option for AP students to not take the final exam. Debbie Cohen, whose daughter Jillian is a senior at OHS, is one such parent.
³I still don¹t agree with the mandate,² said Cohen, who sits on the district¹s PTA Council and attended three successive board meetings to address the board¹s decision to mandate the AP tests. ³I think that is a choice that should be made between the student and the parent ... College Board may ultimately mandate the test as part of their curriculum. I feel that when they do, then it should be part of the curriculum, and now since they consider it optional, we should consider it optional.²
Lyson believes that if AP classes have students who announce that they will not take the final exam, this can negatively affect the learning environment for their classmates. ³If, say, 20 or 50 percent are taking the class but not the test, that hurts the class because they have no incentive to do that job or the work and that reflects on the school district.²
Cohen said that she understands the district¹s concern, but that she¹s not fully convinced of that argument.
³I¹m not quite sure how valid it is,² she said. ³ ... Ultimately, you know it doesn¹t really matter what you get on the AP exam because it¹s not going to affect that grade that appears on your transcript. It¹s not going to affect their grade.²
Comments about this story? Jkellard@liherald.com or (561) 569-4000 ext. 287.
