Taxpayer Ripoff on Advanced Placement Courses - Not one of 204 students in one shcool passed the test.

Not One of the 204 Students Taking Advanced Placement (AP) Courses Passed the AP Test at Little Rock McClellan Magnet School in 2005

State of Arkansas pays $83 for each AP test - Graduation rate in Arkansas dropped 10% from 2005 to 2006!

On June 6, a newspaper article touted that "Arkansas posted the greatest increase in student Advanced Placement (AP) participation in the nation for the second consecutive year." 1 On June 9, Arkansas Democrat Gazette editorialists, who constantly write editorials pumping up the Arkansas Department Education and trying to prove that government takeover of schools has been successful, followed up with an article crowing about this supposed success. 2 (See all footnotes below)

Neither article mentioned how many students take these AP tests and fail them (by 2003 law the state is required to pay $83.00 a test).3 In Little Rock in 2006, 204 students at McClellan Magnet High School took the AP courses, and zero students passed the AP test. 4 In another school in Little Rock in 2006 , J. A. Fair, 314 students took AP courses, and 2 passed the test. 5

In other words, the editorialists are crowing about wasting about $42,828 of taxpayer money just in these two schools alone, paying for tests that students failed, not to speak of the big money it takes to provide the AP courses. And these editorialists have written numerous articles crowing about the efficiency of those big schools!

Statewide, taxpayers paid $151,475 for failed tests. (18,125 students taking the AP test failed it, a failure rate of 72 %.) That amount is just a drop in the bucket compared to the mega bucks it takes to provide all those AP courses in all those schools for students who either aren't equipped mentally for them or who refuse to do the work. In addition, when you put all those students in those AP classes, the teacher has to water down the courses and probably hurts all the students' chances of passing the test. 6

Why in the world would we want to increase the number of students in AP courses with this kind of costs and failure rate? The other states are keeping their failure rate around 40% rather that 72%. Neither the editorial or newspaper article mentioned above noted that 59. 4% of the students taking the AP tests nationwide had scores of 3 or above on AP tests (passing scores) but in Arkansas only 28% had AP scores of 3 or above. 7

Is that anything to crow about – the fact that Arkansas has increased the number of students taking the test and failing it while taxpayers are picking up the tab at $83.00 a test. Coercing all these students to take AP courses just makes Arkansas students and teachers look bad and gives a false picture of our students in the same way that ACT scores look bad in the few states where ALL students are REQUIRED to take the tests.

And none of the media have mentioned that Arkansas is only one out of three states that mandates that all high schools offer AP courses. I guess that is because Arkansas taxpayers are just rolling in money and can afford the waste. 8

And how many of you have heard that the graduation rate in Arkansas dropped from 81.3% in 2005 to 71% in 2006 (more than 10%.) according to Arkansas Department Education reports on the web, a fact that I have not seen mentioned ANYWHERE. 9 Why aren't we crowing about that?

For rest of article click Wednesday below or go to this link http://www.wpaag.org/Education%20-%20AP%20courses%20taxpayer%20ripoff.htm. Footnotes can also be found at this link.
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