Explosive growth for AP in Florida: Good news or not?
On the occasion of last week’s release of the “2010 AP Report to the Nation,” the Orlando Sentinel’s Leslie Postal took a thoughtful look at where Florida stands in the Advanced Placement universe.
Florida is now tied for fifth in the nation (with Connecticut) in the fraction of high school graduates that passes at least one AP exam, with a rate of 21.3%. The national average is 16%. The state is making rapid progress up the national rankings in this area, having been only 11th last year. Top-ranked Maryland leads with a rate of 25%.
However, the news is not so good for Florida in AP science exams. The state’s pass rate on science exams was 35%, compared to a national rate of 51%. The only two individual science exams among the state’s 10 most popular (and therefore the only two for which state data were given in the national report) were Biology and Environmental Science. The Florida pass rate for Biology was 32%, significantly lower than the national rate of 49%. The story was the same in Environmental Science, where the state pass rate of 37% fell far short of the national rate of 50%.
Postal talked with Kristen Klopfenstein, a professor at Texas Christian University and a senior researcher at the Texas Schools Project who has published research results on links between AP coursework and college success. Klopfenstein told Postal that while AP students often do fine in college, it is “other rigorous courses – especially in math and science – that lead to that success.”
Tags: Assessment
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