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July 29, 2002
Blair Advanced Placement exam scores high
Blair students scored well on the 2001-2002 Advanced Placement (AP) exams.
According to guidance counselor Alan Campbell, 92% of Blair students' scores were 3 or above. "92% is pretty good," he said. The total number of Maryland students scoring 3 or above was 68.4%.
Campbell said that 74.7% of all scores were 4 or above, and 47.7% of scores were 5's.
Statewide, 36.8% of test-takers identifying themselves as "Black/African American" scored 3 or higher; 67.6% of test-takers identifying themselves as Latino (all categories) scored 3 or more. Nationally, the numbers are 31.2% and 52.5%, respectively. These calculations do not include students who chose "Other" as their race or did not mark their race.
Results for Blair broken down by magnet/CAP/on-level groupings and racial groupings were unavailable.
AP exams are administered each May by the College Board, which claims that AP courses correspond to introductory-level college courses.
The highest possible AP score is 5, which is the equivalent of "extremely well qualified" according to the College Board. The lowest possible score is 1, which is the equivalent of no recommendation. Many colleges give students credits, exemptions, or other benefits for scores of 3 or higher on an AP exam.
According to the College Board, a student who earns a 5 on an AP exam would receive an A in the corresponding college course, a student who earns a 4 would get a B, and so on.
According to guidance counselor Alan Campbell, 92% of Blair students' scores were 3 or above. "92% is pretty good," he said. The total number of Maryland students scoring 3 or above was 68.4%.
Campbell said that 74.7% of all scores were 4 or above, and 47.7% of scores were 5's.
Statewide, 36.8% of test-takers identifying themselves as "Black/African American" scored 3 or higher; 67.6% of test-takers identifying themselves as Latino (all categories) scored 3 or more. Nationally, the numbers are 31.2% and 52.5%, respectively. These calculations do not include students who chose "Other" as their race or did not mark their race.
Results for Blair broken down by magnet/CAP/on-level groupings and racial groupings were unavailable.
AP exams are administered each May by the College Board, which claims that AP courses correspond to introductory-level college courses.
The highest possible AP score is 5, which is the equivalent of "extremely well qualified" according to the College Board. The lowest possible score is 1, which is the equivalent of no recommendation. Many colleges give students credits, exemptions, or other benefits for scores of 3 or higher on an AP exam.
According to the College Board, a student who earns a 5 on an AP exam would receive an A in the corresponding college course, a student who earns a 4 would get a B, and so on.
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But the really important question for Blair is: HOW ARE THE KIDS OF COLOR PERFORMING ON THESE EXAMS? I bet one can drive a Mac Truck through the achievement gap at Blair High School.
J. Hawkins
A concerned county taxpayer
Seriously, I have to agree with that comment. Honestly - I'm betting most of the kids taking APs are CAP/Magnet students, because they've been groomed for it and it's on their "track," so to speak. And, as Chips reported last year, CAP and Magnet are overwhelmingly white and asian. Saying that Blair students did well on APs actually says little about performance at the school as a whole and certainly not the state of the achievement gap.
But as a note, I think the College Board officially designates a 1 as "No recommendation" rather than "Not Qualified".
and just so this comment doesn't get dismissed as being irrelavent, the stats should show the percentage of the school (excluding cap and magnet) that took AP exams as compared to other schools, and the percentage of 3 or higher for those people. This statistic really shows nothing if FOR EXAMPLE 80% of that 92% was from the cap and magnet and 80% of the 8% that got 1's and 2's was from the general school.
I believe special programs should be moved to their own school. It would disillusion many administrators and parents to see how 'normal' students are doing without taking into account GT/Magnet/CAP/IB-like programs.
I would like to see the percentages for 4 or higher.
The whole "point" of a magnet program (which encompasses both the Magnet and CAP) is to draw students from more affluent areas of the county and who have the highest test scores to help out w/the statistics of a school in a poorer area whose students do not achieve the same results. The point is to bring up the scores of low-performing schools by offering high-performing students special classes that act as incentives.
(In contrast - in a school "Challenge Index" compiled by Jay Mathews, Washington Post, for example, the key measure developed is simply the number of AP or IB courses taken by a student without any regard to examination success.)
That's a pretty irresponsible comment... people always assume Magnets and CAPs and otherwise "gifted" (what a stupid term) students have it all easy, with no problems to speak of for all of life, but it's really not true. And it's not right to segregate us into our own little school and deprive us of Blair's unique atmosphere and opportunities. That goes even more true for CAP students, since they're in the Blair cluster anyways.
I don't think anyone would be disillusioned if we the magnet/CAP scores were seperated from the rest of the scores; people expect "normal kids," as you said, to do worse. Put another way, it's still a problem, but I don't think it'd surprise anyone.
In other news, we're trying to get more information from the College Board and Blair about scores, but we haven't gotten a response yet.
A Proud African American student
What is unfortunate, however, is that there IS an achievement gap. Perhaps you are doing great, as are many other students 'of color' (as Mr. Hawkins calls them), perhaps you don't feel there's a problem. But statistically, blacks and hispanics tend not to perform as well as whites and asians.
The solution is not to point to those that are successful and block out the problem simply because of racial pride. The solution is to recognize the situation for what it is and work to improve that situation.
In fact, you, as a successful student of a race that is profiled as 'underachieving' should be more concerned about this underperformance than anybody else. Instead of insulting those that try to bring the problem to light, perhaps you'd like to consider how to solve the problem.
And just for the record, I am not white.
Irresponsible? Mr. Chang, I was a Magnet student. I know all about how that life is. I know about the problems, about being classified as socially ungifted and nerdy. I know about people being frustrated at and jealous of our success (as written in Elizabeth Green's Asian profiling article in SC).
It wouldn't be segregation, it would be placing students with other students of similar mindset and ability. From my point of view, being in a Magnet school would not 'deprive' me of anything. In fact, there are several completely Magnet schools around the country that are very good at turning out successful students at ever-increasing rates.
It would have to depend on the results if anybody was surprised. While we all anticipate that 'normal' students would do worse, perhaps the results will show that they did worse than we dared to have thought, or perhaps they did better than we dared to hope. Either way.
At any rate, my comment about moving the Magnet to it's own school was an impulse comment, resulting from a desire to protect such students from some of the crap they have to put up with from normal students simply because they are Magnet.
If this offends anybody, I apologize in advance.
Resident Cynic (02), sure, lots of exclusively magnet schools turn out intelligent people, Intel finalists, and whatever other "smart" labels you want to attach. But they don't get to be in the "real world" with normal people, which isn't a good thing. How will you be able to interact with people if you spend all of high school with a bunch of magnets? Not that there's anything wrong with magnets, but everyone's different, and magnets are a rather homogeneous bunch.
A quick search on Google yielded these examples:
http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/whatshappening/nr/nr2001/nr-ib03-01.html
http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/seind00/access/c5/c5s3.htm
Please note that I'm not blaiming the students from lower socioeconomic levels in any way. These are just the facts.
Although plenty of Magnet/CAP students are not from "more affluent areas of the county", I'm positive that the average family income of Magnet students is significantly higher than the average family income of Blair students as a whole. I'm also positive that Magnets generally perform better than non-Magnets. Again, I'm not saying that this is a good thing in any way, but this is just the way things stand. I think calling Jared ignorant for making this point was innappropriate.
We're plunged into a school that for better or worse is usually considered "ghetto" by the upcounty. We're told we're the smartest people in the school by our teachers. We're handed a near-automatic group of friends (fellow magnets) by mere virtue of who we are. It's small wonder more magnets don't associate with nonmagnets that often.
And as a magnet who does... I can say that my magnet friends are missing out on a whole heck of a lot.