Maryland leads the nation in AP
An argument could be made that the College Board's ranking of Maryland as No. 1 on AP tests passed is a much more significant accomplishment than the Education Week ranking that came out last month.
As my colleague, Childs Walker, writes in today's paper Maryland had the highest percentage of seniors last year who took and passed at least one AP test in their high school career. One can argue that this is the result of a lot of high-achieving students in the Baltimore and Washington, D.C., suburbs, but in fact, the numbers of students around the state taking AP also has increased a lot in the past decade.
Still, the AP is a consistent, rigorous standard and the fact that the state's pass rate was 24.8 percent, nearly 10 percentage points higher than the national average, should give parents and educators a sense of what is possible among its highly motivated students. And there are a lot of them. In Maryland, 40 percent of seniors took an AP course before they graduated, giving them a taste of what college may be like. That is significant because studies have shown that students who have taken a course, even if they didn't pass the test, are three times more likely to graduate from college.
Baltimoresun.com's 
Comments
No where does this article mention whether these figures are for all Maryland seniors or just public school seniors. Nancy Grasmick is happy to step up and take the credit, but the article sounds as though all high school seniors are included, and it would be interesting to see a break down of public/private. Harford County's AP results were FINALLY released by the school system and overall they were pretty sad.
Note from Liz: The scores reported in the story are from the public schools only. I would love to see the private schools release their scores, but I doubt they will.
Posted by: Judy Kinshaw-Ellis | February 11, 2010 10:34 PM
Liz:
You could look into how the loss of instructional time could impact student performance on this May's AP exams. School system leaders have to understand that tacking on extra days at the end of the year will do nothing to help students prep for AP, as they are given nationally the first two weeks in May. Unless something is done, students throughout the Mid-Atlantic region will be at a distinct disadvantage compared to those from other parts of the country. This will also affect students who must take the HSA tests later in May.
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Posted by: Comparateur mutuelle senior | August 2, 2011 7:06 AM