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Star Ledger - Advanced Placement exams for high school students begin tomorrow [May 5, 2014] NJ Spotlight - TWENTY YEARS LATER, THEY’RE STILL MAKING SURE WE -- AND OUR CHILDREN -- NEVER FORGET...Landmark legislation signed in 1994 requires all NJ schools to teach kids about Holocaust
Star Ledger - Advanced Placement exams for high school students begin tomorrow
By Peggy McGlone/The Star-Ledger
Email the author | Follow on Twitter on May 04, 2014 at 7:35 AM, updated May 04, 2014 at 8:03 AM
Thousands of students in New Jersey and millions across the country will put their No. 2 pencils to paper tomorrow to answer the tough questions about chemistry and psychology appearing on the national Advanced Placement exams.
Administered by the College Board (the company behind the SAT), Advanced Placement, or AP, courses challenge high school students with college-level lessons in 34 subjects, from core courses like world history and calculus to electives such as Chinese and music theory.
The national exam schedule starts tomorrow at 8 a.m. with chemistry and environmental science and concludes May 16 with comparative government and politics, and microeconomics. In between are U.S. history (May 14) — the most popular in New Jersey, with 10,015 exams taken last year — and English language and composition (May 9), the most popular in the country, with some 476,277 takers in 2013.
At a time when everyone in education is talking about the need to graduate high school students who are “college and career ready,” it’s no surprise that AP courses are gaining traction.
“It’s a way to move up the gears and ramp up rigor,” Cranford High School principal Rui Dionisio said. “You’re engaging students in high-level coursework. And more often than not, when you give kids opportunities they will rise to the level of expectation you set for them.”
Last year, Cranford had a total enrollment of 807 students in 27 different AP courses, and the program continues to grow. Next year, Dionisio predicts more than 40 percent of the student body will take at least one AP course before graduation.
“We tried to expand younger and younger,” he said, noting that freshmen and sophomores are enrolled in history and English classes.
New Jersey’s enrollment in AP courses topped 111,030 last year. (That figure represents classroom spots and not individual students because some students take multiple AP courses in a given year.)
Bridgewater-Raritan Regional High School had the largest enrollments, with 1,525 last year. Ridge High School in Bernards Township and John P. Stevens high in Edison were two and three.
More students are taking the test, and more are doing well. New Jersey ranked 10th in the nation in 2013, with 23.6 percent of public high school graduates succeeding on AP exams, according to the College Board, which grades the tests on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 the highest. The College Board considers success a score of 3 or higher.
Nationally, 20.1 percent of the 2013 public high school graduates scored a 3 or better.
Last May, 2.2 million students from 18,000 schools around the world sat for 4.4 million exams.
The benefits of AP courses are many. Students enrolled in AP courses gain the attention of college admissions officers who are looking to admit students who are challenging themselves academically. And if they score well on the final exams, students can earn college credit.
“We give credit as long as a student has earned a 4 or higher,” said Alyssa McCloud, Seton Hall University’s vice president of enrollment management. The South Orange university will accept up to 30 credits from AP tests.
Every college has a different policy for accepting credits, and most have different policies for different programs. Drew University will give credit and exempt students from introductory classes, but not for every subject, Associate Dean Sharon Sundue said.
“Are they an exact replica of what happens in a college class? Sometimes, but sometimes not,” Sundue said. “We do it by program and they look at the content of the course. For biology, they are exempted from the lecture portion but still have to do the lab.”
AP courses also provide students with flexibility, college officials say.
“It gives them more curricula freedom once they are in college if they have courses already under their belt,” said Phyllis Micketti, Rutgers University’s director of applicant services. “It can release stress because they have a bit of a credit cushion.”
Micketti said most students won’t have enough credits to skip a semester or a year, but having a few AP courses will mean they can take 12 credits (usually four courses) during a few semesters and still graduate in four years.
Most educators say the draw of the AP course is the gold star it adds to your college application.
“A lot of the motivation comes from putting together a competitive transcript so they increase their chances for getting into the college of their choice,” Bridgewater interim Superintendent Cheryl Dyer said. “They are looking to show they are taking honors and AP and they are doing well.”
Studies have shown that students who successfully complete AP courses in high school have better success in college.
“These are college courses taught with college textbooks and at a pace that you’d find at a college or university,” Margaret DeLuca, chief academic officer in Edison Township, said. “They better prepare students for what they will face when they get to college.”
But when the two-week window of exams concludes May 16, about 1 in 4 students will not take the exam for the course. Most high schools do not require it (and most give their own final exams because the scores for the AP aren’t available until July).
And some students don’t want to pay the $80 for the test if they don’t think they will get credit for it anyway.
“When crunch time comes, they have to make decisions about which test they will actually take,” Dyer said. “They become strategic about it.”
When the exams are completed, students still have four or five weeks of class until summer break. High school officials say the learning continues with projects or material not covered on the exam.
“Because the teachers and kids have worked so hard, on full court press, now is the time for them to work on projects, maybe explore a component further,” Cranford principal Dionisio said. “Instruction doesn’t end, it just looks a little different from the pedal to the metal.”
NJ Spotlight - TWENTY YEARS LATER, THEY’RE STILL MAKING SURE WE -- AND OUR CHILDREN -- NEVER FORGET
JOHN MOONEY | MAY 5, 2014
Landmark legislation signed in 1994 requires all NJ schools to teach kids about Holocaust
For all the support it has now, New Jersey’s requirement that schoolchildren be taught about the Holocaust was hardly a given at its inception.
Yesterday at the Jewish Federation of Greater Metrowest in Whippany, more than 100 people – including at least a dozen survivors of the Holocaust, as well as original members of the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education – marked the 20th anniversary of the state Legislature’s unanimous 1994 vote to make New Jersey the second state in the nation to mandate that every public school student learn about the Holocaust and other historic acts of genocide.
RELATED LINKS
NJ Commission on Holocaust Education
But even amid the celebration, the talk was as much about how the law could have easily not come to pass if not for some critical voices and the good timing of public sentiment.
Margit Feldman, a former commission member and a Holocaust survivor, remembered the commission meeting held at Stockton State College when members were still not certain whether to push for the legislation.
“I got very emotional, and with tears in my eyes, I said, ‘If not now, when?” she said yesterday.
Others recalled that Holocaust survivors on the committee pushed hardest, while educators on the panel were hesitant to add another mandate to various other requirements already placed on public schools.
“Our survivors made it clear that it must happen in their lifetime, it must happen now,” said Jeffrey Maas, vice chairman of the commission at the time.
Not just the moral point was debated, he and others said.
“What would be the curriculum, how would we train teachers, would there be need to be a certification?” said Paul Winkler, the commission’s longtime executive director who still serves in the post.
Politics also intervened. In the first iteration, the bill listed more than 30 different historic acts of genocide that would be included in the curriculum, which spurred political posturing and battles over what was listed or what was not.
The specific inclusion of the Armenian genocide even brought a letter of protest by the Turkish government. A push by then-Assembly Speaker Garabed "Chuck" Haytaian, who recalled a great-great uncle killed in the Armenian genocide, help keep the bill alive and gave it even more momentum.
Released in 1993, the Academy Award-winning film “Schindler’s List” had a profound effect on popular opinion, as did the media coverage that same year of an inflammatory speech given at Kean University by Khalid Muhammad, an aide to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
The Holocaust education bill, which was signed into law by then-Gov. Christie Whitman, was co-sponsored by a young senator who would go on to become governor.
He recalled yesterday the idea of a mandate initially made even some supporters uneasy.
“Everyone wanted to be true to the sense of democratic spirit,” said former Gov. Jim McGreevey, among a half-dozen people who spoke during yesterday’s ceremony. “But it was also my own sense of Irish frustration that if we don’t advocate for it, who will?”
New Jersey now stands as one of just five states where every school must include instruction about the Holocaust and other genocide in their curriculum.
But nobody yesterday was claiming total victory.
Some questioned whether such a law could pass now, when partisanship is so acute at all levels of government.
Winkler, who leads the commission’s staff of two people inside the state Department of Education, said, “We can’t sit back and feel good that we passed this law.”
He said the commission and groups like the Jewish Federation continue to organize meetings between the fast-declining number of Holocaust survivors and New Jersey young people, including upcoming events at Raritan Community College and Brookdale County College, which thousands of schoolchildren are expected to attend.
“Students don’t just learn with their heads, but also with their hearts and their hands to do something with it,” Winkler said.
Star Ledger - Advanced Placement exams for high school students begin tomorrow
By Peggy McGlone/The Star-Ledger
Email the author | Follow on Twitter on May 04, 2014 at 7:35 AM, updated May 04, 2014 at 8:03 AM
Thousands of students in New Jersey and millions across the country will put their No. 2 pencils to paper tomorrow to answer the tough questions about chemistry and psychology appearing on the national Advanced Placement exams.
Administered by the College Board (the company behind the SAT), Advanced Placement, or AP, courses challenge high school students with college-level lessons in 34 subjects, from core courses like world history and calculus to electives such as Chinese and music theory.
The national exam schedule starts tomorrow at 8 a.m. with chemistry and environmental science and concludes May 16 with comparative government and politics, and microeconomics. In between are U.S. history (May 14) — the most popular in New Jersey, with 10,015 exams taken last year — and English language and composition (May 9), the most popular in the country, with some 476,277 takers in 2013.
At a time when everyone in education is talking about the need to graduate high school students who are “college and career ready,” it’s no surprise that AP courses are gaining traction.
“It’s a way to move up the gears and ramp up rigor,” Cranford High School principal Rui Dionisio said. “You’re engaging students in high-level coursework. And more often than not, when you give kids opportunities they will rise to the level of expectation you set for them.”
Last year, Cranford had a total enrollment of 807 students in 27 different AP courses, and the program continues to grow. Next year, Dionisio predicts more than 40 percent of the student body will take at least one AP course before graduation.
“We tried to expand younger and younger,” he said, noting that freshmen and sophomores are enrolled in history and English classes.
New Jersey’s enrollment in AP courses topped 111,030 last year. (That figure represents classroom spots and not individual students because some students take multiple AP courses in a given year.)
Bridgewater-Raritan Regional High School had the largest enrollments, with 1,525 last year. Ridge High School in Bernards Township and John P. Stevens high in Edison were two and three.
More students are taking the test, and more are doing well. New Jersey ranked 10th in the nation in 2013, with 23.6 percent of public high school graduates succeeding on AP exams, according to the College Board, which grades the tests on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 the highest. The College Board considers success a score of 3 or higher.
Nationally, 20.1 percent of the 2013 public high school graduates scored a 3 or better.
Last May, 2.2 million students from 18,000 schools around the world sat for 4.4 million exams.
The benefits of AP courses are many. Students enrolled in AP courses gain the attention of college admissions officers who are looking to admit students who are challenging themselves academically. And if they score well on the final exams, students can earn college credit.
“We give credit as long as a student has earned a 4 or higher,” said Alyssa McCloud, Seton Hall University’s vice president of enrollment management. The South Orange university will accept up to 30 credits from AP tests.
Every college has a different policy for accepting credits, and most have different policies for different programs. Drew University will give credit and exempt students from introductory classes, but not for every subject, Associate Dean Sharon Sundue said.
“Are they an exact replica of what happens in a college class? Sometimes, but sometimes not,” Sundue said. “We do it by program and they look at the content of the course. For biology, they are exempted from the lecture portion but still have to do the lab.”
AP courses also provide students with flexibility, college officials say.
“It gives them more curricula freedom once they are in college if they have courses already under their belt,” said Phyllis Micketti, Rutgers University’s director of applicant services. “It can release stress because they have a bit of a credit cushion.”
Micketti said most students won’t have enough credits to skip a semester or a year, but having a few AP courses will mean they can take 12 credits (usually four courses) during a few semesters and still graduate in four years.
Most educators say the draw of the AP course is the gold star it adds to your college application.
“A lot of the motivation comes from putting together a competitive transcript so they increase their chances for getting into the college of their choice,” Bridgewater interim Superintendent Cheryl Dyer said. “They are looking to show they are taking honors and AP and they are doing well.”
Studies have shown that students who successfully complete AP courses in high school have better success in college.
“These are college courses taught with college textbooks and at a pace that you’d find at a college or university,” Margaret DeLuca, chief academic officer in Edison Township, said. “They better prepare students for what they will face when they get to college.”
But when the two-week window of exams concludes May 16, about 1 in 4 students will not take the exam for the course. Most high schools do not require it (and most give their own final exams because the scores for the AP aren’t available until July).
And some students don’t want to pay the $80 for the test if they don’t think they will get credit for it anyway.
“When crunch time comes, they have to make decisions about which test they will actually take,” Dyer said. “They become strategic about it.”
When the exams are completed, students still have four or five weeks of class until summer break. High school officials say the learning continues with projects or material not covered on the exam.
“Because the teachers and kids have worked so hard, on full court press, now is the time for them to work on projects, maybe explore a component further,” Cranford principal Dionisio said. “Instruction doesn’t end, it just looks a little different from the pedal to the metal.”
NJ Spotlight - TWENTY YEARS LATER, THEY’RE STILL MAKING SURE WE -- AND OUR CHILDREN -- NEVER FORGET
JOHN MOONEY | MAY 5, 2014
Landmark legislation signed in 1994 requires all NJ schools to teach kids about Holocaust
For all the support it has now, New Jersey’s requirement that schoolchildren be taught about the Holocaust was hardly a given at its inception.
Yesterday at the Jewish Federation of Greater Metrowest in Whippany, more than 100 people – including at least a dozen survivors of the Holocaust, as well as original members of the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education – marked the 20th anniversary of the state Legislature’s unanimous 1994 vote to make New Jersey the second state in the nation to mandate that every public school student learn about the Holocaust and other historic acts of genocide.
RELATED LINKS
NJ Commission on Holocaust Education
But even amid the celebration, the talk was as much about how the law could have easily not come to pass if not for some critical voices and the good timing of public sentiment.
Margit Feldman, a former commission member and a Holocaust survivor, remembered the commission meeting held at Stockton State College when members were still not certain whether to push for the legislation.
“I got very emotional, and with tears in my eyes, I said, ‘If not now, when?” she said yesterday.
Others recalled that Holocaust survivors on the committee pushed hardest, while educators on the panel were hesitant to add another mandate to various other requirements already placed on public schools.
“Our survivors made it clear that it must happen in their lifetime, it must happen now,” said Jeffrey Maas, vice chairman of the commission at the time.
Not just the moral point was debated, he and others said.
“What would be the curriculum, how would we train teachers, would there be need to be a certification?” said Paul Winkler, the commission’s longtime executive director who still serves in the post.
Politics also intervened. In the first iteration, the bill listed more than 30 different historic acts of genocide that would be included in the curriculum, which spurred political posturing and battles over what was listed or what was not.
The specific inclusion of the Armenian genocide even brought a letter of protest by the Turkish government. A push by then-Assembly Speaker Garabed "Chuck" Haytaian, who recalled a great-great uncle killed in the Armenian genocide, help keep the bill alive and gave it even more momentum.
Released in 1993, the Academy Award-winning film “Schindler’s List” had a profound effect on popular opinion, as did the media coverage that same year of an inflammatory speech given at Kean University by Khalid Muhammad, an aide to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
The Holocaust education bill, which was signed into law by then-Gov. Christie Whitman, was co-sponsored by a young senator who would go on to become governor.
He recalled yesterday the idea of a mandate initially made even some supporters uneasy.
“Everyone wanted to be true to the sense of democratic spirit,” said former Gov. Jim McGreevey, among a half-dozen people who spoke during yesterday’s ceremony. “But it was also my own sense of Irish frustration that if we don’t advocate for it, who will?”
New Jersey now stands as one of just five states where every school must include instruction about the Holocaust and other genocide in their curriculum.
But nobody yesterday was claiming total victory.
Some questioned whether such a law could pass now, when partisanship is so acute at all levels of government.
Winkler, who leads the commission’s staff of two people inside the state Department of Education, said, “We can’t sit back and feel good that we passed this law.”
He said the commission and groups like the Jewish Federation continue to organize meetings between the fast-declining number of Holocaust survivors and New Jersey young people, including upcoming events at Raritan Community College and Brookdale County College, which thousands of schoolchildren are expected to attend.
“Students don’t just learn with their heads, but also with their hearts and their hands to do something with it,” Winkler said.
Star Ledger - Advanced Placement exams for high school students begin tomorrow
By Peggy McGlone/The Star-Ledger
Email the author | Follow on Twitter on May 04, 2014 at 7:35 AM, updated May 04, 2014 at 8:03 AM
Thousands of students in New Jersey and millions across the country will put their No. 2 pencils to paper tomorrow to answer the tough questions about chemistry and psychology appearing on the national Advanced Placement exams.
Administered by the College Board (the company behind the SAT), Advanced Placement, or AP, courses challenge high school students with college-level lessons in 34 subjects, from core courses like world history and calculus to electives such as Chinese and music theory.
The national exam schedule starts tomorrow at 8 a.m. with chemistry and environmental science and concludes May 16 with comparative government and politics, and microeconomics. In between are U.S. history (May 14) — the most popular in New Jersey, with 10,015 exams taken last year — and English language and composition (May 9), the most popular in the country, with some 476,277 takers in 2013.
At a time when everyone in education is talking about the need to graduate high school students who are “college and career ready,” it’s no surprise that AP courses are gaining traction.
“It’s a way to move up the gears and ramp up rigor,” Cranford High School principal Rui Dionisio said. “You’re engaging students in high-level coursework. And more often than not, when you give kids opportunities they will rise to the level of expectation you set for them.”
Last year, Cranford had a total enrollment of 807 students in 27 different AP courses, and the program continues to grow. Next year, Dionisio predicts more than 40 percent of the student body will take at least one AP course before graduation.
“We tried to expand younger and younger,” he said, noting that freshmen and sophomores are enrolled in history and English classes.
New Jersey’s enrollment in AP courses topped 111,030 last year. (That figure represents classroom spots and not individual students because some students take multiple AP courses in a given year.)
Bridgewater-Raritan Regional High School had the largest enrollments, with 1,525 last year. Ridge High School in Bernards Township and John P. Stevens high in Edison were two and three.
More students are taking the test, and more are doing well. New Jersey ranked 10th in the nation in 2013, with 23.6 percent of public high school graduates succeeding on AP exams, according to the College Board, which grades the tests on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 the highest. The College Board considers success a score of 3 or higher.
Nationally, 20.1 percent of the 2013 public high school graduates scored a 3 or better.
Last May, 2.2 million students from 18,000 schools around the world sat for 4.4 million exams.
The benefits of AP courses are many. Students enrolled in AP courses gain the attention of college admissions officers who are looking to admit students who are challenging themselves academically. And if they score well on the final exams, students can earn college credit.
“We give credit as long as a student has earned a 4 or higher,” said Alyssa McCloud, Seton Hall University’s vice president of enrollment management. The South Orange university will accept up to 30 credits from AP tests.
Every college has a different policy for accepting credits, and most have different policies for different programs. Drew University will give credit and exempt students from introductory classes, but not for every subject, Associate Dean Sharon Sundue said.
“Are they an exact replica of what happens in a college class? Sometimes, but sometimes not,” Sundue said. “We do it by program and they look at the content of the course. For biology, they are exempted from the lecture portion but still have to do the lab.”
AP courses also provide students with flexibility, college officials say.
“It gives them more curricula freedom once they are in college if they have courses already under their belt,” said Phyllis Micketti, Rutgers University’s director of applicant services. “It can release stress because they have a bit of a credit cushion.”
Micketti said most students won’t have enough credits to skip a semester or a year, but having a few AP courses will mean they can take 12 credits (usually four courses) during a few semesters and still graduate in four years.
Most educators say the draw of the AP course is the gold star it adds to your college application.
“A lot of the motivation comes from putting together a competitive transcript so they increase their chances for getting into the college of their choice,” Bridgewater interim Superintendent Cheryl Dyer said. “They are looking to show they are taking honors and AP and they are doing well.”
Studies have shown that students who successfully complete AP courses in high school have better success in college.
“These are college courses taught with college textbooks and at a pace that you’d find at a college or university,” Margaret DeLuca, chief academic officer in Edison Township, said. “They better prepare students for what they will face when they get to college.”
But when the two-week window of exams concludes May 16, about 1 in 4 students will not take the exam for the course. Most high schools do not require it (and most give their own final exams because the scores for the AP aren’t available until July).
And some students don’t want to pay the $80 for the test if they don’t think they will get credit for it anyway.
“When crunch time comes, they have to make decisions about which test they will actually take,” Dyer said. “They become strategic about it.”
When the exams are completed, students still have four or five weeks of class until summer break. High school officials say the learning continues with projects or material not covered on the exam.
“Because the teachers and kids have worked so hard, on full court press, now is the time for them to work on projects, maybe explore a component further,” Cranford principal Dionisio said. “Instruction doesn’t end, it just looks a little different from the pedal to the metal.”
NJ Spotlight - TWENTY YEARS LATER, THEY’RE STILL MAKING SURE WE -- AND OUR CHILDREN -- NEVER FORGET
JOHN MOONEY | MAY 5, 2014
Landmark legislation signed in 1994 requires all NJ schools to teach kids about Holocaust
For all the support it has now, New Jersey’s requirement that schoolchildren be taught about the Holocaust was hardly a given at its inception.
Yesterday at the Jewish Federation of Greater Metrowest in Whippany, more than 100 people – including at least a dozen survivors of the Holocaust, as well as original members of the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education – marked the 20th anniversary of the state Legislature’s unanimous 1994 vote to make New Jersey the second state in the nation to mandate that every public school student learn about the Holocaust and other historic acts of genocide.
RELATED LINKS
NJ Commission on Holocaust Education
But even amid the celebration, the talk was as much about how the law could have easily not come to pass if not for some critical voices and the good timing of public sentiment.
Margit Feldman, a former commission member and a Holocaust survivor, remembered the commission meeting held at Stockton State College when members were still not certain whether to push for the legislation.
“I got very emotional, and with tears in my eyes, I said, ‘If not now, when?” she said yesterday.
Others recalled that Holocaust survivors on the committee pushed hardest, while educators on the panel were hesitant to add another mandate to various other requirements already placed on public schools.
“Our survivors made it clear that it must happen in their lifetime, it must happen now,” said Jeffrey Maas, vice chairman of the commission at the time.
Not just the moral point was debated, he and others said.
“What would be the curriculum, how would we train teachers, would there be need to be a certification?” said Paul Winkler, the commission’s longtime executive director who still serves in the post.
Politics also intervened. In the first iteration, the bill listed more than 30 different historic acts of genocide that would be included in the curriculum, which spurred political posturing and battles over what was listed or what was not.
The specific inclusion of the Armenian genocide even brought a letter of protest by the Turkish government. A push by then-Assembly Speaker Garabed "Chuck" Haytaian, who recalled a great-great uncle killed in the Armenian genocide, help keep the bill alive and gave it even more momentum.
Released in 1993, the Academy Award-winning film “Schindler’s List” had a profound effect on popular opinion, as did the media coverage that same year of an inflammatory speech given at Kean University by Khalid Muhammad, an aide to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
The Holocaust education bill, which was signed into law by then-Gov. Christie Whitman, was co-sponsored by a young senator who would go on to become governor.
He recalled yesterday the idea of a mandate initially made even some supporters uneasy.
“Everyone wanted to be true to the sense of democratic spirit,” said former Gov. Jim McGreevey, among a half-dozen people who spoke during yesterday’s ceremony. “But it was also my own sense of Irish frustration that if we don’t advocate for it, who will?”
New Jersey now stands as one of just five states where every school must include instruction about the Holocaust and other genocide in their curriculum.
But nobody yesterday was claiming total victory.
Some questioned whether such a law could pass now, when partisanship is so acute at all levels of government.
Winkler, who leads the commission’s staff of two people inside the state Department of Education, said, “We can’t sit back and feel good that we passed this law.”
He said the commission and groups like the Jewish Federation continue to organize meetings between the fast-declining number of Holocaust survivors and New Jersey young people, including upcoming events at Raritan Community College and Brookdale County College, which thousands of schoolchildren are expected to attend.
“Students don’t just learn with their heads, but also with their hearts and their hands to do something with it,” Winkler said.
Star Ledger - Advanced Placement exams for high school students begin tomorrow
By Peggy McGlone/The Star-Ledger
Email the author | Follow on Twitter on May 04, 2014 at 7:35 AM, updated May 04, 2014 at 8:03 AM
Thousands of students in New Jersey and millions across the country will put their No. 2 pencils to paper tomorrow to answer the tough questions about chemistry and psychology appearing on the national Advanced Placement exams.
Administered by the College Board (the company behind the SAT), Advanced Placement, or AP, courses challenge high school students with college-level lessons in 34 subjects, from core courses like world history and calculus to electives such as Chinese and music theory.
The national exam schedule starts tomorrow at 8 a.m. with chemistry and environmental science and concludes May 16 with comparative government and politics, and microeconomics. In between are U.S. history (May 14) — the most popular in New Jersey, with 10,015 exams taken last year — and English language and composition (May 9), the most popular in the country, with some 476,277 takers in 2013.
At a time when everyone in education is talking about the need to graduate high school students who are “college and career ready,” it’s no surprise that AP courses are gaining traction.
“It’s a way to move up the gears and ramp up rigor,” Cranford High School principal Rui Dionisio said. “You’re engaging students in high-level coursework. And more often than not, when you give kids opportunities they will rise to the level of expectation you set for them.”
Last year, Cranford had a total enrollment of 807 students in 27 different AP courses, and the program continues to grow. Next year, Dionisio predicts more than 40 percent of the student body will take at least one AP course before graduation.
“We tried to expand younger and younger,” he said, noting that freshmen and sophomores are enrolled in history and English classes.
New Jersey’s enrollment in AP courses topped 111,030 last year. (That figure represents classroom spots and not individual students because some students take multiple AP courses in a given year.)
Bridgewater-Raritan Regional High School had the largest enrollments, with 1,525 last year. Ridge High School in Bernards Township and John P. Stevens high in Edison were two and three.
More students are taking the test, and more are doing well. New Jersey ranked 10th in the nation in 2013, with 23.6 percent of public high school graduates succeeding on AP exams, according to the College Board, which grades the tests on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 the highest. The College Board considers success a score of 3 or higher.
Nationally, 20.1 percent of the 2013 public high school graduates scored a 3 or better.
Last May, 2.2 million students from 18,000 schools around the world sat for 4.4 million exams.
The benefits of AP courses are many. Students enrolled in AP courses gain the attention of college admissions officers who are looking to admit students who are challenging themselves academically. And if they score well on the final exams, students can earn college credit.
“We give credit as long as a student has earned a 4 or higher,” said Alyssa McCloud, Seton Hall University’s vice president of enrollment management. The South Orange university will accept up to 30 credits from AP tests.
Every college has a different policy for accepting credits, and most have different policies for different programs. Drew University will give credit and exempt students from introductory classes, but not for every subject, Associate Dean Sharon Sundue said.
“Are they an exact replica of what happens in a college class? Sometimes, but sometimes not,” Sundue said. “We do it by program and they look at the content of the course. For biology, they are exempted from the lecture portion but still have to do the lab.”
AP courses also provide students with flexibility, college officials say.
“It gives them more curricula freedom once they are in college if they have courses already under their belt,” said Phyllis Micketti, Rutgers University’s director of applicant services. “It can release stress because they have a bit of a credit cushion.”
Micketti said most students won’t have enough credits to skip a semester or a year, but having a few AP courses will mean they can take 12 credits (usually four courses) during a few semesters and still graduate in four years.
Most educators say the draw of the AP course is the gold star it adds to your college application.
“A lot of the motivation comes from putting together a competitive transcript so they increase their chances for getting into the college of their choice,” Bridgewater interim Superintendent Cheryl Dyer said. “They are looking to show they are taking honors and AP and they are doing well.”
Studies have shown that students who successfully complete AP courses in high school have better success in college.
“These are college courses taught with college textbooks and at a pace that you’d find at a college or university,” Margaret DeLuca, chief academic officer in Edison Township, said. “They better prepare students for what they will face when they get to college.”
But when the two-week window of exams concludes May 16, about 1 in 4 students will not take the exam for the course. Most high schools do not require it (and most give their own final exams because the scores for the AP aren’t available until July).
And some students don’t want to pay the $80 for the test if they don’t think they will get credit for it anyway.
“When crunch time comes, they have to make decisions about which test they will actually take,” Dyer said. “They become strategic about it.”
When the exams are completed, students still have four or five weeks of class until summer break. High school officials say the learning continues with projects or material not covered on the exam.
“Because the teachers and kids have worked so hard, on full court press, now is the time for them to work on projects, maybe explore a component further,” Cranford principal Dionisio said. “Instruction doesn’t end, it just looks a little different from the pedal to the metal.”
NJ Spotlight - TWENTY YEARS LATER, THEY’RE STILL MAKING SURE WE -- AND OUR CHILDREN -- NEVER FORGET
JOHN MOONEY | MAY 5, 2014
Landmark legislation signed in 1994 requires all NJ schools to teach kids about Holocaust
For all the support it has now, New Jersey’s requirement that schoolchildren be taught about the Holocaust was hardly a given at its inception.
Yesterday at the Jewish Federation of Greater Metrowest in Whippany, more than 100 people – including at least a dozen survivors of the Holocaust, as well as original members of the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education – marked the 20th anniversary of the state Legislature’s unanimous 1994 vote to make New Jersey the second state in the nation to mandate that every public school student learn about the Holocaust and other historic acts of genocide.
RELATED LINKS
NJ Commission on Holocaust Education
But even amid the celebration, the talk was as much about how the law could have easily not come to pass if not for some critical voices and the good timing of public sentiment.
Margit Feldman, a former commission member and a Holocaust survivor, remembered the commission meeting held at Stockton State College when members were still not certain whether to push for the legislation.
“I got very emotional, and with tears in my eyes, I said, ‘If not now, when?” she said yesterday.
Others recalled that Holocaust survivors on the committee pushed hardest, while educators on the panel were hesitant to add another mandate to various other requirements already placed on public schools.
“Our survivors made it clear that it must happen in their lifetime, it must happen now,” said Jeffrey Maas, vice chairman of the commission at the time.
Not just the moral point was debated, he and others said.
“What would be the curriculum, how would we train teachers, would there be need to be a certification?” said Paul Winkler, the commission’s longtime executive director who still serves in the post.
Politics also intervened. In the first iteration, the bill listed more than 30 different historic acts of genocide that would be included in the curriculum, which spurred political posturing and battles over what was listed or what was not.
The specific inclusion of the Armenian genocide even brought a letter of protest by the Turkish government. A push by then-Assembly Speaker Garabed "Chuck" Haytaian, who recalled a great-great uncle killed in the Armenian genocide, help keep the bill alive and gave it even more momentum.
Released in 1993, the Academy Award-winning film “Schindler’s List” had a profound effect on popular opinion, as did the media coverage that same year of an inflammatory speech given at Kean University by Khalid Muhammad, an aide to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
The Holocaust education bill, which was signed into law by then-Gov. Christie Whitman, was co-sponsored by a young senator who would go on to become governor.
He recalled yesterday the idea of a mandate initially made even some supporters uneasy.
“Everyone wanted to be true to the sense of democratic spirit,” said former Gov. Jim McGreevey, among a half-dozen people who spoke during yesterday’s ceremony. “But it was also my own sense of Irish frustration that if we don’t advocate for it, who will?”
New Jersey now stands as one of just five states where every school must include instruction about the Holocaust and other genocide in their curriculum.
But nobody yesterday was claiming total victory.
Some questioned whether such a law could pass now, when partisanship is so acute at all levels of government.
Winkler, who leads the commission’s staff of two people inside the state Department of Education, said, “We can’t sit back and feel good that we passed this law.”
He said the commission and groups like the Jewish Federation continue to organize meetings between the fast-declining number of Holocaust survivors and New Jersey young people, including upcoming events at Raritan Community College and Brookdale County College, which thousands of schoolchildren are expected to attend.
“Students don’t just learn with their heads, but also with their hearts and their hands to do something with it,” Winkler said.
