Report: State, Valley trail nation on AP exams

A new report released Wednesday shows Texas continues to trail the national average of high school students scoring well on college-level Advanced Placement exams.

And the Rio Grande Valley has seen a drastic decrease in its scores in the past decade, though some educators believe the regional and state slump stem from a boost in the number of students taking AP test.

“The more students you have testing overall will always drive a dip in scores before they eventually come back up,” said Sharon Roberts, coordinator for advanced academic services in the Mission school district.

“The exciting thing is we have introduced many more students, many of them low-income, to the rigor and level of a college course,” she added.

On Wednesday, the College Board released its annual AP Report to the Nation, detailing the amount and performance of students who participate in AP courses across the country.

According to the report, 906,630 U.S. public high school graduates in 2011 took at least one AP exam, which can count as college credit at 3,293 colleges and universities. Among those students, 18.1 percent earned a 3 or better, the score that commonly transfers as college credit. The scale ranges from 1 to 5, with 5 being the best.

In Texas, however, only 16.7 percent of Class of 2011 students scored a 3 or better. Though a 6.2 percent gain from 2001, that number still falls below the national increase of 7.3 percent.

And the majority of AP exams taken in Texas – 32.1 percent of them – only produced a score of 1, while just 9.5 percent produced a perfect 5, the College Board report shows.

“We have seen tremendous growth in the Texas AP program, but we’ve also seen an increase in students who aren’t achieving a high enough score to earn college credit,” said Texas Education Agency spokeswoman DeEtta Culbertson in an email.

According to the TEA’s own data, the percent of students who earned a 3 or better on an AP exam dropped from 50.1 percent in 2001 to 46.7 percent in 2010.

“This is a concern,” Culbertson said. “However, even for these students, the AP classes make them better prepared for college because of the challenging course work they encounter in these classes.”

ALONG THE BORDER

Though the College Board report does not offer details beyond the state level, TEA data reveal Valley students first appear to perform worse than their state peers, despite and perhaps because of the fact that they take college-level exams in greater numbers.

In 2010, just 25 percent of examinees in school districts from Laredo to Brownsville scored 3 or better on an AP or similar college-level test; 46.7 percent of all Texas students did the same that year, according to state reports.

And Valley and statewide achievement on college-level exams actually fell by 10.1 and 3.4 percent, respectively, since 2001.

Since 2001, Valley schools have welcomed a 7.7 percent increase – from 17.2 to 24.9 percent – in the number of students taking a college-level exam. Statewide participation only grew from 14.3 to 22.7 percent during that same time period.

And the state average fell below Mission schools, where 24.1 percent of students took a college-level test in 2010 compared to just 11.5 percent a decade earlier.

However, average scores in Mission significantly decreased during those 10 years. Only 20.7 percent of Mission students earned a 3 or better in 2010, whereas 30.6 percent of them did so in 2001.

“Those scores will rise eventually,” Roberts said, “as more of our students get more familiar with the pace and rigor of a college class.

“You're essentially targeting a much larger population (that) has not experienced this level of academics,” she added. “They'll carry that on to college without paying for all those credits and be better prepared to succeed on a college campus once they graduate.”