FAYETTEVILLE — High school teachers and administrators gave mostly positive feedback to the College Board’s Pre-Advanced Placement program, which is being rolled out this year at select schools across the nation.
“It’s been a huge success so far,” said Mark Oesterle, executive director of secondary education for the Fayetteville School District.
Fayetteville High School and Arkansas High School in Texarkana are two of about 100 schools participating in the pilot program for freshmen. Another 100 schools will be invited to participate next school year. The program will be available to all schools starting with the 2020-21 academic year.
All of Fayetteville’s roughly 700 freshmen are taking at least one Pre-AP class this semester. The school’s 147 sections of Pre-AP courses have a total enrollment of 3,264, according to Oesterle.
The College Board owns, develops and publishes the SAT and Advanced Placement program tests. Schools long have offered classes they called “pre-AP,” but starting in two years, any class labeled as such must meet the board’s guidelines.
“When provided with the tools and high-quality teaching, students are rising to the challenge,” Oesterle said.
Arkansas High School teachers have bought into the program, said Anne Formby, the school’s Pre-AP coordinator.
“They like what the College Board has presented them with because it is getting the kids to think, and it gets them to delve into a problem at a higher level than what has been done previously,” Formby said.
Arkansas High School has 155 freshmen taking at least one Pre-AP class.
All Pre-AP courses are designed to give students a foundation to develop the skills they need for success in high school and beyond, according to a Texarkana School District news release. Pre-AP courses prepare students for AP and other college-level coursework.
Research indicates students who participate in AP courses have a higher retention rate in college than non-AP students of similar background and ability, according to the release.
Mathew Holden, a Pre-AP biology teacher at Fayetteville High School, called the curriculum’s lessons “engaging” but said the quizzes don’t always tie directly to the objectives.
Kaitlin Brink, a Pre-AP English teacher, said the curriculum has allowed her students to slow down and “really read closely, read multiple times, which I think is a great skill for every subject area.”
Jay Dostal, in his first year as Fayetteville High School’s principal, said his 10th-grade daughter is in a “grueling” course. If she’d had to take a Pre-AP course, she probably would have been better prepared for the rigor, he said.
“I’m excited that all of our kids are going to have equity and access to this,” he said. “I truly believe that kids are going to meet the bar that we set for them, and Pre-AP has allowed us to at least set a little bit higher bar.”