Program’s growth prompts review

Not by the IRS, but by the College Board, an organization that wants to ensure the class he’s teaching at Cheyenne High School meets a university-level standard.

Thrasher is one of about 130,000 teachers worldwide who must provide written proof to the College Board by June 1 that the AP classes they are teaching are worthy of the designation.

“I’m OK with it,” said Thrasher, a fifth-year AP calculus teacher who submitted an audit form and course syllabus online last month. “If I were a first-year teacher, it would have been tough. But everything they asked for is stuff I’ve already put together for the course.”

The College Board is a nonprofit organization based in New York City that publishes college preparatory exams for AP courses taught in high schools. The standardized exams are used to determine if high school students get college credits for AP courses they complete.

The audit is largely the result of the explosion of student enrollment in courses with the AP label. Enrollment in the program has nearly doubled in the past decade, a trend that has some education experts worried that the courses aren’t up to snuff.

“The AP program is growing and has been growing for the last decade,” said Jennifer Topiel, a spokeswoman for the College Board. “We need to make sure that the quality and level of rigor of these courses is at the level of where they should be at. The purpose of the audit is to provide teachers and administrators with clear guidelines of the resources that must be in place for AP courses.”

Beginning with the 2007-08 school year, only teachers whose syllabuses have been approved by the College Board may call their course AP. Topiel said her organization expects to create a Web site in November, which will be available to the public and college admission officials, that will have high schools and the AP courses they offer listed if they were approved in the audit.

Topiel said if a particular teacher’s class doesn’t get approved, the teacher will have two additional opportunities to submit an audit form and syllabus in order to get AP approval.

The Clark County School District mimics the overall trend of more students enrolling in AP courses.

During the 1999-2000 school year, 2,380 students were enrolled in an AP course. This school year, 11,908 students are enrolled in the district’s AP program. The district has also increased the number of courses available since that time, to 28 from 17.

But Kim Boyle, the district’s director of guidance and counseling, said the increased number of students and courses doesn’t translate to a less stringent curriculum.

“They are absolutely valid (AP) courses,” Boyle said. “Our goal has been to increase our rigor for students and prepare them for college. Students who spend more time at the high school level in a rigorous course of study do better in college.”

Since the 2001-02 school year, between 49 percent and 58 percent of all district students who took an AP exam earned scores that would get them at least partial college credit for the subject they were tested in. The tests are graded on a scale of one through five, and any score of three or higher earns students college credits.

In the 2005-06 school year, 49 percent of the 7,079 students who took an AP exam passed with a three or better.

Dave Tonelli, a spokesman with the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said his institution does not track the percentage of incoming students who took an AP exam or how those students fare compared with other UNLV students.

“We’re always happy to have academically talented students attend UNLV,” Tonelli said. “Rigorous high school courses like AP are an excellent predictor of academic success in higher education. But as far as pulling that data out and studying it, or using it as part of admissions process, that’s not something we do.”

Rachel Lane, a senior at Cheyenne who is headed to the University of Nevada, Reno in the fall, said despite having to work harder in AP classes, there are benefits.

“I’m getting a feel of what college is like and getting prepared for when I go to college next year,” said Lane, who is enrolled in Thrasher’s AP calculus class. “Teachers in AP classes expect more and set higher goals for their students.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.