Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Education:

Too crowded to get to the top

More students in Advance Placement classes, but passing scores declining

AP Illustration

Chris Morris / Special to the Sun

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Advanced Placement calculus students crowd into Phil Bombino's class at Clark High. Clark Principal Jill Pendleton says, "I have students fighting to get into Mr. Bombino's class."

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Sun coverage

Having sold thousands of students and their families on the value of college prep classes, the Clark County School District is wrestling with a problem of its own making: How to deliver the goods.

District officials are concerned that some of the most challenging classes have become so crowded, the quality of the instruction may be suffering.

At the same time, the district says it needs to better prepare students for the tougher courses by doing a better job of teaching them in prerequisite classes.

The decision to encourage students to push themselves academically is prompted by national studies showing that students’ postgraduate success correlates to the rigor of their high school curriculum. So several years ago, the district added a fourth year of math to minimum graduation requirements and students were urged to enroll in the tougher advanced classes.

The success of this campaign is seen in the marked increase in the number of students taking college-level Advance Placement classes that can translate into college credit for students who pass a national exam. Even students who don’t pass the exam benefit from the classes’ rigor and perform better in college, studies have found.

The district boasts that participation in AP classes has nearly tripled since 2002, from 5,675 seats to 16,669 this year.

But that has also led to crowded classrooms, with as many as 45 students per teacher in some of the more popular courses because there is no cap on classroom enrollment.

On the face of it, that seems to be taking its toll: Although the participation rate in AP has significantly increased, there’s been a steady slip in the percentage of students passing the exams. In 2009, the pass rate was 43.8 percent, down from 57.8 percent in 2002.

But that downhill trend belies some good news, said Trevor Packer, vice president of the AP Program for the College Board, which administers the exams.

Even if proportionately fewer AP students are passing compared with past years, the raw number of students in Clark County passing the tests has increased to 4,810 last year, compared with 2,129 in 2002.

“Most educators, policymakers, parents and students would agree that 4,810 students passing AP exams is better than 2,129 students passing AP exams,” Packer said.

The College Board recommends that AP courses be taught by teachers who have at least three years classroom experience, “an advanced mastery of the discipline” and undergo some form of professional training in advance.

Toward that end, the School District hosts a summer teaching institute sanctioned by the College Board to prepare instructors to teach AP-level curriculum.

The first year of the institute “we were hoping to get 150 people. We had 300,” said Bill Hanlon, director of the Regional Professional Development Center, which was established by the Nevada Legislature to support teacher training. Last summer more than 500 teachers participated.

Beginning with the next school year, the district will require AP teachers to attend a summer institute at least every three years, and the district plans to offer weekend refresher sessions.

But the decline in the district’s pass rate speaks to a larger problem than just the size of the AP classes, Hanlon said.

Students typically struggle in advanced classes because they haven’t fully grasped concepts they should have learned in earlier classes, Hanlon said. If students are struggling in an AP calculus class, attention should be focused on the quality of instruction in lower-level math courses, he said.

“When you don’t have your strongest teachers teaching entry-level math, and you put 38 or 42 kids in a room, the foundation gets weaker,” Hanlon said. “Without those foundation skills, kids aren’t going to be ready for the tougher classes.”

At the private Meadows School, each AP class averages 13 students. The students are required to take the AP exam and last year, 80 percent of them passed. Bishop Gorman High School averages 20 students per AP class. The school also requires AP students to take the exam, and nearly half passed the test last year.

Daria Hall, director of K-12 policy development for the Education Trust, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, warns that some AP courses may not be sufficiently challenging — a problem that comes back around to whether the best teachers are in those classrooms.

“What needs to be a part of the conversation is whether students are really getting the rigorous, high-quality instruction and support they need to be successful,” Hall said. “Unfortunately, what we’ve found all too often is high school courses that are advanced in name only, and are watered-down curricula and weak instruction.”

Districts need to do a better job identifying their best teachers and making use of their talents, Hall said.

“If one teacher is consistently getting kids to score 3 and above (on a 1-to-5 grading scale), go in and ask, ‘What are you doing?’ ” Hall said. “Then, have the other teachers copy it.”

For Silverado High School art teacher Karen Heater, the test score isn’t the end-all be-all for a successful class.

At Silverado, there isn’t enough time in the daily schedule to offer separate AP art classes in all the disciplines, so Heater uses one class period to help all her advanced students prepare their portfolios for submission to the AP’s judges. Silverado has had a good track record of students earning passing scores, Heater said.

There’s more to the class than just the final score, Heater said.

“They have to set their goals and be self-motivated,” Heater said. “That’s an important skill to learn.”

Clark High School has more AP courses than any other campus in the district, as well as some of the largest class sizes.

But Bobby Roeder, a senior at Clark, says his crowded calculus class — with 44 students — has its benefits.

“It helps us to collaborate,” Roeder said. “Smaller classes are good because you get more time from the teacher, but sometimes you need other students.”

Roeder’s teacher, Phil Bombino, remembers teaching AP math classes 25 years ago at Basic High School with 12 to 15 students in a class.

Bigger classes mean he has less time to circulate the room and help individual students.

“You have to hope they come after school or make appointments when they need it,” Bombino said.

But that doesn’t mean he’s pining for the good old days.

“If you have asked me 10 or 15 years ago, I would have opted for the philosophy of concentrating on the few students who can pass the (AP) test,” Bombino said. “Now I believe that we should increase our participation numbers and give more kids a chance and expose them to the opportunity. Even if all my students don’t pass, they’ve gotten a good introduction to calculus, and that can be very beneficial down the road.”

Clark Principal Jill Pendleton, who is pushing to expand AP participation even further at the campus, cheers Bombino’s enthusiasm.

“I have students fighting to get into Mr. Bombino’s class,” she said.

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