Scores Determine Success

For the first time ever a Shawnee Mission school made Newsweek’s “America’s Best High Schools” list. In fact, both East and Shawnee Mission South were named to the list this past summer.

The list uses a ranking system wherein the number of Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalau- reate (IB) and Cambridge tests a school gives are taken and divided by the number of seniors in the graduating class that year. Any public school with a score of 1.000 or higher makes the list. East’s score last year was 1.718 and ranked 938th while South was 1,705th with a score of 1.025.

The honor correlates with a recent rise in the number of AP exams taken by East students during the past three years. The number of “passed” exams has also been gradually improving since a dramatic drop in scores occurred in 2007. As more AP tests are being taken, students and staff members, including AP Calculus teacher Rick Royer, are wondering whether the greater stress placed on the AP exam is the right thing to do.

Since 2007, the number of exams taken by East students has risen dramatically. Nearly 300 more tests were taken last year than in 2007. This jump coincides with a district policy requiring students in AP courses to take, but not “pass,” the AP exam to receive the AP designation on their transcript. District director of curriculum and instruction Betsy Regan said the district doesn’t believe a student has truly participated in an AP course until they have prepped and taken the AP exam.

“Is it nice that two of our schools are on [the News- week] list?” Regan said. “Absolutely, and I would celebrate that, and as you know, particularly in these challenging economic times and as families are searching for schools for their students to be able to use those competitive factors, it’s very nice for the district, but that’s not the rea- son we went into the policy change.”

According to Leigh Anne Neal, associate superintendent for communications, the policy change was intended to ensure the rigor of the AP course. Neal said that the AP exam is a big part of the AP course and prepares students for tests they may see in college. Neal also said that while getting more students to take the test was the major aim of the policy, it was not the only one.

Principal Karl Krawitz said that the only reason he was ever given for the district policy was to get a SMSD school on Newsweek’s “America’s Best High Schools” list. Jay Mathews, a columnist for the Washington Post and the developer of the Newsweek list, said he is happy to use the clout of Newsweek and people’s needing to be on the list to encourage them to do what he calls “the right thing.”

“Anything they’re going to do to get on the list is going to be for the benefit of students at that school,” Mathews said. “There’s nothing they are going to do to hurt students since the more kids you have taking AP, the more kids you have that are likely to go to college.”

Senior Lauren Stanley doesn’t agree with the district policy. She feels it isn’t fair for students to go through the rigors of an AP course, but not get credit for it because they didn’t take the AP exam.

“People who don’t take the test have done just as much work as [those that do],” Stanley said. “Just because you don’t take the test doesn’t negate any of what you’ve done before.”

Royer believes the policy is “self-serving” because of the district’s desires to have a school on the Newsweek list. On a personal level, he would like to see the policy scrapped.

“I wish that I could teach Calculus the best way I think the students learn it and not worry about a particular evaluation at the end,” Royer said.

Even so, Royer doesn’t think the policy is necessarily a bad one to have. He believes that having students cover the difficult AP material is good for them. One problem he makes a note of is that since East allows any student to enroll in AP courses and take the AP exam, the results East receives aren’t as high as schools that encourage only certain, higher-level students to take the AP exam.

U.S. History AP teacher Vicki Arndt-Helgesen feels that an AP course is complete when the student takes the AP exam.

“I think that [it] is really a good thing when students take that exam—kind of like a final blessing,” Arndt-Helgesen said. “To me, it’s a celebration.”

While Arndt-Helgesen encourages all of her students to take the exam, she feels that if they have taken an AP course that follows the syllabus that AP has approved, the students should receive the AP designation on their transcript.

AP exams are graded on a number scale—a one being the lowest score possible and a five being the highest. Many pub- lic universities give credit for fours and fives, and some accept threes. A three or higher is generally considered to be a “passing” score. In 2007, 72 percent of AP tests taken at East came back with a score of three or higher. The following year, the district policy mandating that students take the AP exam to get the AP designation on their transcript was put in place.

In 2008, the percentage of passing scores went down to 58 percent. It then rose one percent in 2009 and last year was 65 percent.

Even though East’s AP performance has improved in the last three years, it still lags behind two of the four other Shaw- nee Mission schools including South, the perennial leader in SMSD AP exam scores. In 2009, 82 percent of AP exams taken at South received a score of three, four or five. At West, that number was 67 percent.

Dr. Krawitz believes the reason for East’s scores is because students don’t take the AP exams seriously enough because they don’t see any value in it, even though each exam costs $87.

“They don’t want to get a four or five because they don’t want the credit,” Krawitz said. “Look at the socioeconomics of our [school]. Do people here necessarily worry about whether they can save money on a three-hour course? I don’t think so.”

According to Mathews, East’s scores are slightly above the national average and what he would call “a very good number.” He is also glad that East doesn’t restrict who can enroll in AP classes such as schools like Rockhurst High School. According to Greg Owsley, the math department head at Rockhurst, a student must receive an 87 percent or higher in Pre-AP math in order to take AP Calculus and similar restrictions are present in other subject areas. Ow- sley said the rationale for that policy is because allowing lower-end students into honors courses would take away resources from the higher-level students.

“They deserve to have just as much attention for their sake,” Owsley said. “They may get a five on the test if I just threw a book at them, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t get something out of the class.”

Owsley believes that school and district policies encouraging as many students as possible to take the AP ex- ams aren’t there solely to benefit students.

“The motive for [policies that encourage students to take the AP exam] is to make their school look better, to help [the student] get into college because they have AP on their transcripts,” Owsley said. “And AP likes that and will promote that because AP can make more money. Know what I mean? They’re getting more out of it and the stu- dents are getting something out of it by being more com- petitive on their transcript…that’s true. But they’re not necessarily learning more.”

The district allows any student that wishes to enroll in an AP course because, according to Regan, every student should have the opportunity to take advantage of higher level classes such as AP and IB without having certain re- strictions, such as a “cut score,” placed upon them.

Last year, Royer changed his whole teaching philosophy in an effort to have his students do better on the AP exam. He disallowed the use of note sheets and calculators on tests, something he had previously allowed, in an effort to have students study more. He started giving take-home exams instead of worksheets and adjusted in-class tests to focus more on AP topics to prepare students to take the AP exam. His new methods served their purpose as nearly 43 percent of his students who took the exam passed com- pared to just over 11 percent the year before.

Even though his students’ scores improved last year, Royer isn’t sold on the fact that his students know Calcu- lus better.

“It’s hard to write a test that really evaluates how well they understand what’s going on in Calculus, so they’ve got a handful of skills that they seem to emphasize and if the students are good at that, they’re going to score well, even if they aren’t necessarily understanding what they’re doing…” Royer said.

According to Regan, the money students spend on AP exams returns to the district in ways where students wouldn’t necessarily see it such as training teachers and developing curriculum.

“If we wanted to sit down and design college-level courses in Shawnee Mission, we could probably do it,” Regan said. “But, we’ve got another entity who can do that for us and that saves us a lot of money.”

Dr. Krawitz thinks that AP exams don’t function as the subject report card they are supposed to. He also feels that testing has become entrenched in society, and not for the better.

“People believe [standardized tests] at face value because it’s the only thing they’ve ever known,” Dr. Krawitz said. “…Testing in this country is big business. And those of us who understand it, understand what it’s being used for and unfortunately, you know, it prevails because it’s backed by money and people believe that… This is a game and you’re in the game. You’re playing the game.”