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Arkadelphia High School advanced placement students in AAIMS subject areas display their award certificates shortly after the group collectively received $7,100 for passing AP exams.
Explained by the numbers –
AAIMS
Arkadelphia
High School is one of 39 schools in Arkansas which was selected to participate
in the Arkansas Advanced Initiative for Math and Science. The AAIMS program
provides teacher training and student and teacher incentives for succeeding in
advanced placement (AP) courses. The central focus of the program is to
increase the number of students enrolling in, and earning college credit
through, the more challenging AP classes. Since the AAIMS program is designed
to assist the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Initiative (STEM), the
AP classes included in AAIMS are only Math, Science and English.
$1,956,930
When the
number of passing scores on Math, Science and English AP assessments is
multiplied by the average cost per college class in Arkansas, the total
represents the amount that AAIMS students state-wide offset college expenses in
the 2011-12 school year. By earning these college credits as high school
students passing AP exams, they collectively saved $1,956,930 in tuition alone.
$215 (average cost per college credit hour
in Arkansas)
X 3 (hours per average class)
$645 (tuition cost per class)
X 3,034 (AAIMS-supported passing AP scores)
$1,956,930
$45,795
Using the
same figures for calculating college tuition, AHS students offset college
tuition expenses by $45,795. Fifty-two AHS students earned 71 passing scores on
AP assessments in Math, Science and English during the 2011-12 school year. Not
only will these students enter college with credit hours already accumulating,
but they will be better prepared for the academic challenges of higher
education because of the increased rigor of the high school AP curriculum.
“This curriculum, paired with our intense training and open
enrollment, has allowed our campus to really dig deep and prepare our graduates
for the rigor of college and career,” AHS Principal David Maxwell said.
$645 (tuition cost per class)
X 71 (passing AHS AP scores for 2011-12)
$45,795
$14,200
At September
19’s AAIMS award assembly held at AHS, $14,200 of cash incentives were
distributed to students and teachers. For every passing score a student earns
on a Math, Science or English AP exam, they receive $100. For every student
that earns as passing score on an AP exam in Math, Science or English, the
teacher of that class earns $100. And cash incentives are just the beginning. AAIMS
provides extensive training for the AP /Pre-AP teachers during the summer as
well as sessions throughout the school year. With the additional training, the
teachers provide Saturday test prep sessions, after school tutoring, lead
teacher to teacher teaming, and vertical team meetings for both middle school
and high school campuses.
“This program has dramatically increased the number
of students in my AP classes,” AHS AP Chemistry teacher Tanya Ruble said. “But
more than that, it has provided me with training to ensure that I am able to
help my students achieve success on the AP exams.”
$100 (cash
incentive per passing score for student / teacher)
X 71 (passing scores)
$7,100 to students / $7,100 to teachers
103%
In 2010 and
prior to their involvement in AAIMS, AHS produced 35 passing scores on AP
assessments. In 2012, after AAIMS had been in place for two years, the number
of passing scores on AP assessments at AHS increased 103 percent, from 35 to
71. This statistic demonstrates that AAIMS is effective in achieving its
primary goal: Producing more passing scores on AP assessments in Math, Science
and English and therefore better preparing high school graduates for further
study in STEM subject areas.
“The results
from the past two years show a rather dramatic increase in enrollment in these
challenging AP courses,” AHS AAIMS coordinator Nancy Mortensen said.
82%
Participation
in the AP program at AHS has also seen a substantial increase. In 2010, 252 AP
assessments were administered. In 2012, that number increased to 459. Some
students even elect to take AP assessments in subjects that are not offered at
AHS as a class, yet several still pass the AP test.
4
AHS ranked
No. 4 in Arkansas in The Washington
Post’s High School challenge index. The index score is the number of
college-level tests given at a school in 2011 divided by the number of
graduates that year.
The Washing Post ranking in Arkansas
– top 20
By Sean
Ruggles, APSD Director of Communication
More about the local and national AIMS program:
The Walton Family Foundation and the Winthrop Rockefeller
Foundation are partners with Arkansas AIMS.
The University of Arkansas at Little Rock is the supporting partner, and
Arkansas AIMS is housed at UALR.
About the National Math + Science AP Program and the
Arkansas advanced Initiative for Math and Science: The National Math + Science AP Program dramatically
increases the performance of high school students in rigorous AP courses in
math, science, and English. The comprehensive approach includes intensive
teacher training, support from master teachers, more time on task for students
in special study sessions, open enrollment, and incentives. Passing AP exam
scores are almost universally accepted for course credit by the nation’s
colleges and universities, which see success in AP courses as reliable
indicators of students’ subject-area knowledge and capacity for college-level
thinking.
About National Math + Science: National Math + Science, a nonprofit
organization, is an agent of change that was launched in 2007 by top leaders in
business, education, and science to improve student achievement in math and
science across the American public school system. National Math + Science’s mission is to bring
best practices to the education sector by replicating proven programs on a
national scale: the AP Program; Laying
the Foundation, which provides training and resources for pre-AP and AP
teachers; and UTeach, a program to recruit and prepare college students
to become qualified math, science and computer science teachers.
National Math + Science has
received major funding support for its ground-breaking national initiatives
from Exxon Mobil Corporation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the
Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, with additional support from the Carnegie
Corporation of New York and Lockheed Martin Corporation.
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Monday, September 24, 2012
Explained by the numbers – AAIMS
Monday, September 17, 2012
Data driven decisions - TLI and The Assessment Wall
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Goza Middle School Principal Angela Garner explains the
arrangement of color coded cards on "The Wall" as they relate
to student test scores during September's instructional
leadership team meeting.
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What happens after the test ends, the pencils are down and the students breathe a sigh of relief? For students in Arkadelphia Public Schools, the end of a TLI test marks the beginning of a comprehensive examination of every test question and every test answer.
Do you ever wonder where test result data goes after it is
delivered to schools? How is that data used? Does it impact the way teachers
teach and classrooms are operated? Or does it sit on a shelf or in a closet? In
Arkadelphia Public Schools, that data becomes the driving force behind almost
every instructional decision, guiding teachers to adjust their classrooms to
fit the needs of every student.
Every year for The Learning
Institute tests’, the district invests a lot of resources, the staff spends
a lot of time organizing, and teachers spend a lot of time preparing the students,
who spend a lot of time testing. This produces a lot of valuable information
that teachers can use to determine what is working and what is not. TLI testing
dates average twice a month from September to April, so a school with more than
450 students, such as Goza Middle School, is analyzing about 7,200 individual test
results in a school year. How does a school manage so much information?
Enter “The Wall.”
“The Wall” is the instructional facilitator’s war room. This
is where test data becomes a visual aid and the results are tracked
test-to-test and year-to-year for every single student in both math and
literacy. Trends in individual student, and overall school, performance are
easily appreciated once the color coded cards, which show a combination of
scores and demographic information, are arranged on white boards on the walls
of the instructional facilitator’s room. TLI test are administered multiple
times a month throughout the school year and the trends in progress can be seen
just days after the test is given. A room is set aside on each campus in the
district to house the assessment wall. Access to the room is restricted to
faculty and staff since the information on display is confidential.
“The cards are placed to show the most current round of
scores,” GMS’s instructional facilitator Joan Crowder said. “Every time the
students test and the results come back, the cards are rearranged.”
The APSD September Instructional Leadership Team meeting was
held on GMS’s campus and led by school Principal Angela Garner. School
principals and instructional facilitators were joined by members of the
administration at the meeting to share ideas about increasing student
achievement and utilizing test data to provide unique student guidance. Garner
and Crowder’s presentation explained the ways their TLI data becomes a critical
role in GMS’s classrooms.
“This (the assessment wall) shows the facts, the numbers,”
Garner said. “There’s not any getting around it. The teachers meet in here and
look at where their students are and they are able to see the results for
themselves. This allows us to translate test data into individual student
success. We see where we might need to push a student harder or provide an
intervention to get one on the right track. The teachers that buy-in see
positive results.”
District-wide, TLI data keeps students, as well as faculty,
on track to reach their greatest potential.
“The information we get from TLI interim assessments and the
data walls being used on each campus allow our teachers and principals to make
very specific, targeted instructional decisions based on the needs of
individual students,” APSD Director of Curriculum and Instruction Jeanette Turner
said. “We strongly believe in the power of data-driven decision making.”
Because of the focus on student-specific results, school
faculty can tell what kind of misconceptions a student may have based on the
wrong answer choices they make on a TLI test. For example, if a student
adds “47 + 15” and incorrectly selects “52” as the answer and that student is consistently making
the same mistake, then it can be assumed the student understands the concept of
addition, but he or she is forgetting to “carry” or regroup. The teacher
would then work with that student individually to correct that specific
misconception instead of unnecessarily spending valuable class time re-teaching
multi-digit addition to the entire class.
The end goal is
student success. TLI tests and “The Wall” are another set of tools in the
educator’s quiver.
“With these tests, practice is harder than the game,” Garner
said. “Often students will take the state (Benchmark) test, after testing with
TLI throughout the year, and say that the state test was easy.”
By Sean Ruggles, APSD Director of Communications
sean.ruggles@arkadelphiaschools.org