My To-Do List for Improving Our AP Program

Happy New Year Everyone! As we head into a new year and a new semester, I have a long list of things to do in the coming week in order to continue expanding and improving our AP program. Perhaps my to-do list will give you some ideas of things that you might think about to improve your program as well.

1. Plan for AP Ambassador meeting after school tomorrow. I sent an email out to the kids and hope they will show up to pick up their new and very classy t-shirts. We need to make plans for Friday’s AP Scholar reception and to start figuring out how we will encourage students to register for AP exams this year when the cost has gone up (our state budget cut the subsidy they have provided for AP exam fees.) In your school, how do you get students involved in promoting the AP program?
2. Finish details for the AP Scholar reception on Friday. We have food ordered, invitations sent out, patches and program are ready. It will be great to see some of our alumni and hear about their first semester in college. These kids will do a great job of encouraging current students to take full advantage of our school’s AP offerings. How do you make use of your alumni and celebrate the success of your AP program?
3. Organize requests for campus award money. Texas has provided funds for improvement of AP programs and teachers at our school and two feeder middle schools have submitted grant proposals that have to be presented to a committee for funding decisions. Have you talked to your school/district leadership about setting aside funds for improving your AP program? This is the time to request funds that will be needed this summer and next year.
4. Register teachers for upcoming training opportunities. We will be sending teachers to College Board and LTF training both during the spring semester and this summer. Have you investigated training opportunities in your area and identified teachers who might need/want to attend?
5. Use PSAT scores to identify students capable of being successful in AP classes but who are not registering. Also, identify sophomores with National Merit potential and invite them (and their parents) to breakfast informational meeting. PSAT scores have recently arrived on our campus. While students make use of the College My Road features, we will make use of AP Potential and SOAS. How do you make use of PSAT scores and the many free tools available from College Board that come along with those reports?

Well, that’s my list for this week. I hope to do shorter, more frequent posts during the coming year. Would appreciate hearing from some of my readers out there. Let me know if there are any topics you would like me to address in an upcoming post.

Mid-Year Assessment of Your AP Program

As the fall semester draws to a close, this is a good time to take a step back and do an assessment in order to better build your AP program through the spring semester. Here are a few things to consider:

• Are AP teachers using actual AP exam questions as much as possible to best prepare students for the May exams? Many teachers have already started “Multiple Choice Mondays” and “Free Response Fridays” to give kids experience with the format and rigor of the AP exam.
• Have AP teachers fully explored the resources available at AP Central? I am always surprised in speaking to AP teachers who are not aware of the curriculum modules and special focus materials that are posted there. Perhaps there will a few hours during the winter break that you can click around and see what all is available.
• Have AP teachers set particular goals about topics they would like to improve based on their Instructional Planning Report and have they sought professional development opportunities to address those topics?
• By now, you have probably identified a few areas in which your students can be better prepared for their AP class through their previous coursework. Have you spoken to other teachers on your vertical team about how they might better prepare students by tweaking their curriculum, instructional strategies or assessments?
• PSAT results from October will soon be available. Have you made use of the Summary of Answers and Skills to identify strengths and weaknesses in your curriculum and instruction? Have you looked at AP Potential data to determine what students may be recruited for your AP class next year? You might want to check out some of my previous posts about utilizing PSAT results.
• Right now, many of your former students are returning from college for their winter breaks and can serve as excellent sources of motivation for your AP students by coming to your classes in early January and talking about what best prepared them for college and what they wish they had known while still in high school. Just today, one of my former students was saying how much he wished he had taken AP courses in computer science and statistics.
• Many schools will begin course registration for the 2012-2013 schoolyear in the first few weeks of the spring semester. What plans do you have in place for promoting your AP class? My school is hoping to carry out an AP Awareness Week during February. I will write about that in a future blog post.
• I know summer is really far off, but you might want to think about summer activities that will build your AP program. My school offers a summer Pre-Calculus class to juniors who are excelling in Algebra 2 who want to take AP Calculus as seniors. I need to start identifying possible candidates for that summer school class based on first semester grades. One of our principals also wants to host an “AP Boot Camp” for students who will be new to AP or PreAP classes next year.
• With the economy as it is, I will spend some time brainstorming during winter break about how we can help students who might not be able to afford their AP exam registration fees. Fee waivers are available but many families being squeezed by the economy right now might not qualify.

An AP program does not build itself. It takes hard work from students, teachers, counselors and administrators. Sometimes we get so consumed in that work that we forget to take a break and rest and rejuvenate so we can come back to our classrooms with fresh energy and motivation. Take some time to enjoy the holiday season with friends and family. I have big plans for fun during the winter break! You will hear from me again in early January. Thanks, as always, for reading.

The Role of the Principal in Building an Inclusive and Effective AP Program

In my last post, I responded to a comment from a reader whose principal had set forth the expectation that AP performance be improved. I offered suggestions that the teachers in their professional learning communities might consider. In this post, I will turn to the role of the principal himself. How might he contribute to improved AP participation and performance? (Obviously, principals may be female, but the writer indicated a male so I will stick to male pronouns.)

I had an interesting experience with one of my own principals this summer. He attended the AP Annual Conference (APAC) with me in July and returned to our campus a man with a mission. The equity and access strand of the conference was particularly enlightening to him and made him very concerned with the under-representation of low income and minority students in the AP program. Some of the statistics describing the gap are quite shocking. At the beginning of the school year, he made it a project to search through all of his freshmen and to identify any students who seemed to have potential for success in PreAP classes (based on state assessment results), but were not enrolled in those classes. He was both pleased and disappointed that he was only able to identify about a dozen of those students. We are obviously doing a good job of casting a net that captures most of the students who should be taking those classes. Nonetheless, he pressed on with his small list, contacting those students’ parents to request that they meet with him and consider adding a PreAP class to their child’s schedule. He mailed home literature describing the advantages of the AP program. At a special meeting held in conjunction with open house, he had current AP students talk to the parents about the program, as well as a parent whose child took AP classes and is now at a major university on an athletic scholarship. He wanted the parents to see students and other parents who look like them and share their same concerns in order to break the stereotype many associate with AP students. The teachers the children would have were also there to answer questions and assure parents that the classes are both challenging and supportive.
Every school should be so lucky to have a principal who wants to help build the AP program like this.

Many principals adopt a laissez-faire approach to AP classes and teachers, but there are many things they can do to help insure the program grows to reflect the diversity and strengths of their campus. What all can principals do?
• Familiarize themselves with the AP program by attending College Board conferences and encouraging others on their campus (counselors and teachers) to do so as well.
• Assign teachers to teach AP classes who have the content knowledge to teach the course as well as a willingness to support students who might struggle. AP teachers should have the time and energy to devote to extra tutorial sessions as well as to possible Saturday prep sessions.
• Schedule AP classes to avoid conflicts and maximize student participation.
• Provide funds to purchase necessary equipment and resources and to send teachers to training.
• Provide a vision for the AP program that includes participation that reflects the diversity of the school’s population and performance that reflects rigorous instruction to meet high standards.
• Promote the concept of vertical teaming so that more students are better prepared to be successful in AP classes.
• Celebrate successes visibly both within the school and the larger community.
• Learn to interpret AP Potential data as well as the Teacher Instructional Planning Report so that he can set goals and provide constructive feedback as to both participation and performance.
• Encourage successful AP teachers to become AP readers, College Board consultants or to otherwise contribute to the larger AP community.
• Encourage individual students who have a strong ability or interest in a particular subject to take the associated AP class.
• Look for opportunities to expand AP offerings and to provide AP teachers opportunities to promote their classes.

Principals have a challenging job and much of their time is devoted to dealing with the lower end of the academic spectrum. Building a strong AP program will improve their school’s reputation in the community and provide their graduates with a valuable advantage as they move on to post-secondary education. It is a task definitely worthy of their time and attention. Thanks for reading and keep making suggestions for future posts.

A Principal’s Mandate to Improve AP Scores

I recently got the following comment from one of my readers:
At the beginning of school this year our new principal showed the faculty that our passing rate for AP was 40% while the state rate was 70%. He then announced that every AP teacher would be placed into the same PLC in order to raise scores. Our school is in a working class town. We have just under 800 students. We offer 7 AP courses along with 9 ECE courses. Any suggestions about where we should start in addressing this problem. Every teacher would like their scores to improve, but as a group, we are all over the place as to what would be a good initial strategy. I have looked at our reference groups in state and we are near the top.
I do think I have some suggestions for you.
• By this time of the year, you should have determined if there are any areas of weakness that your students have come into your classes with. Now would be a good time to determine if there are things that prior year teachers could do so that next year’s crop of AP students can enter the course better prepared to hit the ground running. For example, I want my students to have fluent recall of unit circle values. When they didn’t have that, I needed to talk to our Pre-Calculus teacher about placing greater emphasis and not allowing the students to use a “cheat sheet” showing the unit circle values. In exchange for more time spent on that topic, I was also able to identify some other topics that were not as important and on which the teacher could spend less time.
• AP teachers as a group should work out a schedule for extra tutorial sessions, mock exams and Saturday prep sessions. Beginning in February, I offer additional AP prep time before or after school twice a week. I coordinate my schedule so that I don’t conflict with the other AP teachers extra tutorials. We also set our mock exams so that the students only have one or two during a week. English is able to do theirs much earlier (February) while Calculus normally waits until mid-April. You might want to find an experienced reader and hire them to score some of the English or social studies essays. You might find that an essay that your teacher scores as a 7 might only get a 3 from an experienced reader. That reader may be able to give your kids some hints and feedback to improve those scores while there is still plenty of time to incorporate those suggestions into your own teaching. As we get closer to exam time, we offer Saturday sessions with each subject getting 2 Saturdays to work with the students. We also plan that as exam week approaches, we focus on the exams that are coming up most immediately. If my exam is in two days, the AP government teacher might let me pull students from his class to spend extra time working on calculus. Then, when my exam is over, the kids use my class time to study for the later AP exams. I might have one group in class working on AP economics, another group preparing for AP chemistry, while still others go to the lab to complete an activity for AP biology.
• Spend some time trolling AP Central and make sure you have all of the resources available from there such as released exams, curriculum modules, special focus materials, etc. There is a free downloadable spreadsheet index for calculus that allows me to sort all of the released questions by topics and then incorporate them throughout the year as I hit those topics.
• Look at my blog post from 9/19/2009 on interpreting your AP Instructional planning report and spend some time as a group looking at those reports and trying to choose a few areas or topics on which to focus improvement efforts.
• Is there one subject in which the students seem to do particularly well? What is that teacher doing differently? Do teachers feel as though they need additional training? College Board does offer training or you might travel to a nearby school that is more successful and spend a day observing their classes and talking to their teachers about what they are doing differently.
• Read the post on creating master learners from 11/9/2009 and discuss as a group the extent to which you are doing this in your classes and what additional efforts might be necessary in this regard.
• Talk to the principal about what additional resources he is willing to provide to help meet the challenge he has set forth. He might need to purchase additional materials or equipment or pay to send teachers to training. He might be able to find funds to pay experienced readers to score some of your essays or to even have that reader come and spend a Saturday working with your students on improving essays.
• In January, when you are back in school but college students are still home for the holidays, have some former students come to your classes and talk about how their AP experience has helped them be more successful in college. Have them describe some of the strategies that they used in preparing for their exams.
I hope that these suggestions have given you a place to begin. Any challenge is better undertaken with a group of like-minded folk who can share ideas and strategies. Good luck to you and your fellow AP teachers.
If any of my readers have suggestions to add, please send in a comment!

Sink or Swim in the AP Classroom?

I recently got the following comment from one of my subscribers:

I am curious what your thoughts are on assessments in AP classes. Some teachers feel that if they are going to teach the class as an AP class then they will only test 3-5 times and that is it. No quizzes or reinforcement between … just be a college student and sink or swim. Other teachers believe that if they are going to teach with an open enrollment, then they need to help those weaker students with plenty of assessing and reflection on their abilities. How often and what type of assessing do you think is important for student success in AP classes? I know teachers who have open enrollment but yet reach most of the students in helping them be successful. Others see them as sinkers or swimmers and then are upset when their scores are low, yet these weaker students struggle throughout the year.

I am now going to express my personal opinion based on twenty-three years of AP teaching experience to an inclusive and diverse student population where I also achieved high scores. Many folks will disagree with me, as is their right. We can all have different philosophies and still have good programs. I PERSONALLY believe that the great beauty of the AP program is that we teach COLLEGE-LEVEL CONTENT in the MORE SUPPORTIVE ENVIRONMENT AND STYLE OF THE HIGH SCHOOL. While the students are tackling college-level material, they are not yet college students. This is especially true for AP courses taught to sophomores and juniors. Even seniors at the beginning of the school year are not there yet. I start the year off (I do teach a senior level course) with much more support and opportunities for redemption, but by the end of the year, have greater expectations that students can function more like college students. To that end, I do assess pretty frequently and allow for second chances. I give my students pop quizzes over basic knowledge like the unit circle and derivative rules, maybe as many as a dozen in a grading period and then drop several of the lowest of those. I give section quizzes maybe once every week and allow students to correct those to a passing grade or earn five points back if they passed it initially. If a student blows a major test, they MIGHT have the opportunity to re-take it. None of these are common practices in our area universities. I do point out to students when my classroom practices are different from those they should expect in college. The fact is that I want to hold the kids responsible for learning the material. If they don’t learn it on the first go round, I expect them to keep at it until they do achieve mastery and I want them to know that I will continue to work with them and to hold them to a high standard. Simply letting them fail would be the easier route for them and for me. If I see someone drowning, I believe in throwing them a life preserver and then demanding that they take swimming lessons.

The subscriber continues:
Also, on that note, how and at what point do you suggest students drop an AP course if they are struggling. If there is a drop period then how would you suggest identifying those students who will not or do not want to perform at the level expected?

The issue of dropping an AP course is pretty tricky. Each case is very individual and many factors should be considered. My class is not required for graduation so if a student ends up failing, it’s not a tragedy. It is often a valuable lesson learned that they need to work harder if they hope to succeed in college level studies. If a student lacks the mathematical foundation necessary to succeed in the class, I might recommend that they retreat to a previous course and shore up their foundation. I would also look into our curriculum and insure that what I am expecting of students is actually being taught at the appropriate level in our feeder courses. On the other hand, there are AP teachers who are too quick to drop a student because they lack some skill that the teachers have deemed essential. “This student cannot factor! How can they be successful in calculus?” is a frequent lament. I have already identified students this year who are not factoring correctly or who don’t know unit circle or whatever. In the high school, I believe that I have the time and inclination to remediate these deficiencies much more so than a college instructor can. I tell the student, “You should have learned to factor in Algebra 2. Since you didn’t, you need to come to my tutorial time so we can work on this skill.” I’m not letting the kid out of my class that easily. When students end up dropping my class (a rare event), it is more often because of personal issues. They might have to work 30 hours a week to support family and have three other AP classes more closely aligned to their intended major. They do not have the time necessary to devote to my class. I try very hard to balance compassionate understanding with high standards and teaching students resilience and perseverance.

As always, thank you for reading and keep the comments coming!

Shaping the Path to Improve AP Programs

This is the fourth in a series of posts I am writing based on a book I read this summer called Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. Building a high performing and inclusive AP program is a change that many schools and districts are seeking to make, but it is tough. You have to get teachers, parents and kids all on the same path and keep them going even when the work is difficult. They may know (through their rider) and feel (through their elephant) that the AP program is a good investment of time and energy. The final piece is to make the path to your goal as clear as possible. The authors present three strategies aimed at making the environment “friendlier” to the change you are seeking to make.

TWEAK THE ENVIRONMENT: Just like the dieter who throws out fattening foods and stocks the fridge so that the only choices are fruits and vegetables, some schools have decided to make the AP class the default class in which every student is automatically enrolled. Students can switch to a regular course only with a parent’s permission. I personally think this is extreme, but it does work for some schools. In my school, AP classes are open enrollment which means that any student who has completed the prerequisite classes can enroll in AP. There are no grade criteria or test score or teacher recommendation. We also changed the policy regarding dropping an AP class (discussed more fully in an earlier post) so that students cannot drop for the first three weeks. We have a one week drop window and after that, students are expected to remain in the course and take the AP exam in May. Teachers will say “when you take the AP exam,” not “if.” Are their policies or practices in your school that you might want to re-visit?

BUILD HABITS: The authors suggest using “action triggers” to encourage good behaviors. What if counselors automatically presented AP as an option to any student who met a certain grade threshold or if AP Potential letters were automatically sent out to students who show a strong likelihood of success in AP classes? Checklists are another tool that can be useful along with calendars that will remind teachers what needs to happen when. Teachers are busy and might forget that they need to plan recruitment efforts to coincide with class registration. Our AP leadership team meets at certain times throughout the year with a somewhat set agenda of what needs to be discussed at each meeting. Because it’s on the calendar from the beginning of the year, we don’t let things slip by when school gets busy.

RALLY THE HERD: There are two aspects to this. AP teachers who are trying to build a successful and inclusive AP program need time to meet with others who share their philosophy and are trying to make similar changes. These might be teachers from different subject areas within your school or it could be teachers from various schools who might “meet” via the internet. Students also need to feel like they are part of a group with similar goals and aspirations. This might sound silly, but many AP students enjoy making t-shirts for their AP classes. They might also form a group identity by having a yearbook photo made of their class. There was a school in the Dallas area that put out a yearly brochure featuring their AP Calculus program, one of the largest and most successful in the nation. People are naturally social creatures and we gain strength and determination from knowing that others are alongside us in our endeavors.

That’s one of the reasons for this blog—to provide a forum for like-minded folks who are looking for ways to improve their AP programs. I have over 100 subscribers. If each of you sent in just one question or one idea about improving participation and performance in AP, think of how much we could all benefit. Thanks for reading and please take the time to send me something! I will compile and include your comments in a future posting.

Motivating the Elephant to Improve Your AP Program

In this series of blog posts, I am reporting on what I learned from reading the book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. The authors describe how successful change follows a specific pattern with three important aspects to be considered. The change that I advocated for in my first blog is for schools to build stronger (better scores) and more inclusive (better participation) and more diverse AP programs. In the second post, I gave tips for “directing the rider,” appealing to our more rational need for change. In this post, I hope to give tips for “motivating the elephant,” the more emotional aspect of our personalities that often manages to derail change efforts.

•FIND THE FEELING. The authors point out “knowing something isn’t enough to cause change.” Millions of folks KNOW smoking is bad for them, but continue to light up. Smoking cessation campaigns show disgusting photos of smokers’ lungs or get parents to think about their children having to grow up without them in order to motivate change. Teachers and school administrators often KNOW that a strong AP program will benefit their students; they have seen the data and read the studies. I believe that students’ personal stories are much more likely to bring about change. I know of one school that had some of their top notch graduates return to address the faculty after they had struggled academically in their first year of college. They were on academic probation and had lost their scholarships because they were not able to compete with students who had taken more rigorous classes (AP classes had not been offered at their school). Listening to their stories was certainly painful and I admire the courage of the principals who were willing to admit that the school was not doing everything it could to prepare students. If possible, a more positive approach might work as well. One of my former students showed up in class a few days ago to tell this year’s seniors that he had earned 28 hours of college credit through his AP exams, thus saving his family about $14,000 in tuition and fees. Putting a student’s face on the need for change or giving it a monetary value might motivate some people when data and statistics are not enough. Go to www.teachertube.com and search for Berkner HS cardboard confessional 2009 to see how one school motivated teachers to accept more struggling students into their college preparatory classes.

•SHRINK THE CHANGE. If your school doesn’t have a particular AP class or even an AP program right now, jumping in with both feet and expecting kids to earn great scores in the very first year might be too daunting of a challenge. Maybe it’s best to spend one year preparing to offer the AP class—identifying the teacher, obtaining necessary resources and training, recruiting students, beefing up the feeder courses, etc. Administrators need to be willing to schedule a class even with a small number of students in order to give it a chance to grow and should expect that the AP scores for the first three years might not be as stellar as the new teacher develops their content knowledge and instructional strategies. Their needs to be emphasis on growth in both participation and performance (though some established programs might need to focus on just one of these aspects. You might already have plenty of kids in the AP class and now need to work on improving scores. Or, your scores might be stellar (in terms of percentage earning recommended scores), but you have very few students participating.

•GROW YOUR PEOPLE. Again, I want to emphasize the importance of vertical teaming and starting to prepare students for success in AP courses as early as possible. Pushing students into AP classes for which they are unprepared does a disservice to both students and teachers. We begin working with students as early as middle school and make sure they are aware of the AP possibilities that will be available to them. We also make sure that “late bloomers” still have access to AP classes by allowing them to double up on math classes as sophomores or take PreCalculus in summer school. Steady growth over a long period of time is great, but we also have to account for sudden spurts. Just as it is important to grow AP students, it’s also important to grow your AP faculty as well. As soon as student enrollment justifies a third section of an AP class, it might be time to start training an additional AP teacher.

For previous posts that might help to motivate your elephant, check out Building the Next Generation of AP Teachers from January 18, 2010, AP Scholar Reception from January 11, 2010 and AP Ambassadors from September 11, 2009.

Thank you, as always, for reading. Please share strategies that you are using to grow your AP program. We can all learn a lot from each other.

“Directing the Rider” to Improve Your AP Program

In their book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, authors Dan Heath and Chip Heath offer advice on managing three distinct issues in making any significant change effectively. From my last post, you should know that the change I am advocating is for schools to build STRONGER and more inclusive AP programs. I emphasized stronger because I want to be clear that I am not advocating lowering standards or just putting poorly prepared students into AP classes. I want to maintain high standards while also putting supports into place that will allow more students to SUCCESSFULLY complete (that means taking and doing well on the AP exam as well) those AP classes. After my last post, I received a comment that made me realize that I was not clear on the type of change I would like to see. I will address this issue further in a future post.

For tonight, I want to share some of the advice that the authors offer for “directing the rider.” In my previous post, I explained that the rider represents the rational side of our brain that understands that a change is desirable. Unfortunately, wanting to make a change and knowing how to make the change are two entirely different issues. The authors offer three specific strategies that will help to direct the rider.
• FOLLOW THE BRIGHT SPOTS. It’s very likely that someone somewhere has made the sort of changes that your school is considering. Learn from their experiences—what worked and what might need to be tweaked to work in your particular situation. That’s the purpose of this blog; I wanted to share what has worked in my school with others who are considering building a more inclusive AP program without sacrificing quality. The College Board is working hard to identify bright spots. Check out the new publication called “Spotlight on Success: Strategies for Equity and Access,” available at AP Central. http://professionals.collegeboard.com/k-12/assessment/ap/equity There might even be a bright spot in your own building. If there is a teacher who is showing success with their AP classes, try to determine what they are doing differently and encourage other teachers to follow that example.
• SCRIPT THE CRITICAL MOVES. Work with your AP teachers to develop a list of five or six critical moves that you believe will lead to improved participation, performance and diversity in your AP program. It might be asking teachers to identify one or two areas of improvement based on their AP Instructional Planning Report, requiring AP teachers to attend College Board training, having the AP teacher visit with the teachers and students in the prerequisite course to explain the skills that will best prepare students for success in the AP class, asking AP teachers to administer at least two full-length AP practice tests, requiring a certain amount of out-of-class tutoring prior to the AP exam, asking that counselors use AP Potential results to help students plan their schedules for the next year. These are just suggestions. The actual critical moves that you and your team agree upon will depend on your particular needs and situation. The most important thing is that the critical moves be very simple and specific so that everyone feels as though they are do-able.
• POINT TO THE DESTINATION. When I interviewed for my current job, the principal told me he hoped to see 50% of the seniors graduating with AP experience. Given the state of their AP program at the time, I thought the man was crazy. Now, however, I think that goal is reasonable and well within reach. I’m thankful he set the bar high and that we continue to move toward that goal. Another one of our “destinations” is for the demographics of our AP program to match the overall demographics of our school. We are not there yet, but that is definitely the direction in which we are moving. What will success look like on your campus? Will it be offering at least one AP class in each of the four core areas? Having a certain percentage of the seniors graduate with a recommended score on at least one AP exam? Improving participation rates among a particular subset of your student body? Determine where you are going and you are much more likely to get there.

In my next post, I will explain how to “motivate the elephant.” Hint: It will take more than peanuts to move the elephant along the path. Thanks for reading!

Making the Switch to a Stronger, More Inclusive AP Program

This summer on one of my many long plane rides, I read a fabulous book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, by brothers Chip Heath and Dan Heath. The authors develop an extended analogy throughout the well-researched book that made it an interesting and entertaining read. They compare making a change to having a rider trying to keep an elephant on a narrow pathway when it just wants to go stomping off in a different direction. The rider represents our rational mind who understands that change is necessary and good (ie., losing twenty pounds would make me healthier!) The elephant is our more emotional side that seeks pleasure and avoids discomfort (ie., desserts taste great and exercise is yucky!) The narrow pathway is the environment in which the change needs to take place (ie, the teachers’ lounge offers nothing but unhealthy snacks and the television beckons me with wonderful reality shows!)
The authors offer examples, anecdotes and strategies to address how to best address each of these three components in a successful change. As I was reading the book on my way to the AP Annual Conference in San Francisco, I kept thinking that (okay, in addition to losing weight) the change I would most like to see is more schools committing to building a strong and inclusive AP program that will allow more minority and low income students the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of Advanced Placement. Amazingly, I continue to run into people in education who insist that these goals are mutually exclusive. They insist that having a more inclusive AP program will dilute its quality and that a strong programs demands that certain students be shut out of the AP opportunity. I think that everyone who reads this blog would agree that this mindset needs to be changed. The question is how do we go about doing that?
Using the lessons learned in this book, I am going to write four new posts during the next two weeks that will address how to “direct the rider,” “motivate the elephant,” and “shape the path.” Notice that I set a numerical goal and a specific timeline. Each new post will discuss a specific aspect of managing change, but all need to happen in conjunction with one another. You might consider buying and reading this book, but I hope that my posts will give you enough information to help you get started without having to do so. School is about to start; our kids show up on Tuesday. It would be easy to postpone getting started on this, but I feel as though it’s too important a topic to wait any longer and the beginning of the school year is a good time to start making changes. I have promised shorter, more frequent and more focused blog postings so I will end tonight and head to the grocery store to stock up on healthy food and then to the track to walk a mile or two!

Welcome to a New School Year for Your AP Program!

Hello to my loyal readers and new subscribers! I have taken a hiatus from blogging this summer as I was busy conducting teacher training in various locations (including Saipan!) Now that we are gearing up for a new school year, it’s time to get back to work.

Have you taken the time to examine your AP instructional planning report (IPR) and are you using that to plan improvements for this coming school year? Please refer to a previous blog posted on September 19, 2009 on “Interpreting Your AP Instructional Planning Report,” which is available in the blog archives.

One of the things I am working on right now is a report that I will deliver to our faculty detailing the successes of our AP program in improving participation, performance and diversity. I will also identify some areas for potential growth. It’s always important to look back as well as to look forward.

One of the biggest challenges for our PreAP and AP teaching corps is having them increase the rigor of their classes without merely increasing the workload. In some classes, students are receiving very high grades, but very low scores on the AP exams. Clearly, there is a mis-match that needs to be addressed. It’s difficult though to help teachers determine what rigor looks like for their discipline. It’s not merely assigning more problems or ever increasing amounts of reading. It has much more to do with the quality of the problems or reading assignment than the quantity. Let me be clear that some amount of practice (drill) is necessary in some classes so that students develop fluency in applying procedures. If that’s all they are doing however, they are not likely to perform well on an exam that asks them to transfer knowledge and skills and apply them to novel situations.

At the same time that teachers need to increase the rigor of their classes, they also need to make sure they are providing plenty of support so that students can meet the high standards that the course requires. We specifically ask our teachers to identify at least five “safety nets” they have put in place to assist struggling students. These might include, but are not limited to 1) extra tutorial sessions with the teacher 2) peer tutoring 3) study skill sessions outside of the school day 4) opportunity to correct and/or retake assessments 5) optional projects that allow students to demonstrate mastery of the material 6) online support in the form of video tutorials, blogs, etc. For more ideas, please read “Student Support Mechanisms for AP Classes,” posted on 8/26/2010.

Okay, so in summary, look back using your instructional planning report, look forward by setting some goals and priorities for this school year, increase rigor while also increasing support for students. My goal for this year is to write more, much shorter posts. As always, I greatly appreciate your comments and feedback. If there are particular issues you want me to blog about, let me know. Also, check the archives for past articles that might be helpful.

Thanks, as always, for reading and have a fantastic start to a new school year!