AP Courses, Wantagh vs Seaford and Courses Not Offered

[Chris_Wendt]

-Wantagh 2014 AP Courses.docx (15.19 KB)
The attached file (available upon log-in, or, email me at [e-mail]) indicates disparities between AP courses offered in Seaford and AP courses offered in Wantagh, and, AP courses not offered by either district.

See the Newsday article NY Slips in AP Test Rankings.

NY is one of several states that do not permit individual students to take online AP Courses. That could change. Shouldn't it?

Why should YOUR child's AP offerings be limited by the personal preferences of 5 school board members?

Why can't Wantagh & Seaford collaborate and jointly offer more AP courses to more students in both districts?  Why can't they both get together with Levittown and offer ALL the AP courses that exist?

Why should YOUR child's AP offerings be held back by poor budget planning...despite massive over-taxing and hoarding of millions of dollars of "reserve" funds by the school district? In other words, should the school board and administration be allowed to continue to protect teacher salaries at the expense of the AP courses they could offer YOUR kids?

End of rant.

Education...come on folks, let's get with it.

Chris Wendt

[greda]

You really are starting to lose it. How could you offer all AP courses when you don't even teach the subjects? I was at the Chaminade open house this weekend and even their offerings were limited. And I would think that not just the board determines what courses are offered for AP and/or college credits. And an article in the Post says that College Board test results show that "Of the 154,809 members of the state’s Class of 2014 who took the Scholastic Aptitude Test, only 60,611 students, or 39.2 percent, met the SAT’s benchmark for college and career readiness. And only 37.2 percent of New York’s public-school students met those goals." So even if your rant was fulfilled who would say that the kids would pass.

And your comment on hoarding of funds is pretty funny considering your past support of the board as well as the passing of budgets.

[Chris_Wendt]

Last I knew, Chaminade did not offer AP Courses, and, checking just now, I found none listed in their course catalogue.
But, compared to Wantagh, Chaminade operates at stratospheric academic levels with their own curriculum, which is free of state and federal meddling.

Greda, I have no idea who you are, and therefore your ad hominem comments are of little effect.

I hope most of all other readers can assess my rant from the perspective of the various parents of students with widely varying interests and talents whose needs, whose ambitions are stymied by limited AP course offerings across the teensy-weensy little school districts like Wantagh, Seaford, Plainedge, and Island Trees, to name four in our quadrant. It is my true hope that some board members may be inspired to coordinate better course offerings across district lines, among the four high schools, next year. It will further be my hope that (State Senator) Michael Venditto will push for cross-district collaboration for course offerings, as well as to allow NY students to be able to take AP courses online.

Interested parents should go to the College Board website and take a look at the AP Course descriptions NOT OFFERED at Wantagh or Seaford, but especially the Capstone Research and Seminar courses:

Link to Capstone AP Research course description

Link to Capstone AP Seminar course description

Regards,

Chris Wendt

[Chris_Wendt]

Additionally, it should bear investigating the AP Capstone Diploma Program, which is the umbrella under which AP Seminar and AP Research (Capstone) courses are offered.

Here is a link to the AP Capstone home page: Link to AP Capstone Home (The College Board)

Here is a link to the "How AP Capstone Works" page: Link to "How AP Capstone Works" (The College Board)

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Now here is another area where collaboration could work really well across school districts. There is a Team component to the Capstone program, and that would lend itself to bringing together student team members from several districts to investigate a project together. More importantly, if four districts (Wantagh, Seaford, Island Trees, and Plainedge) collaborated, they could field 4 teams, with each high school contributing one mentor to the multi-district project. We do this this sort of thing already with Model Congress, for example.

Yeah, I know, this is new, this is different, there is nothing in any of our contracts that "would allow" such a thing to happen among school districts. Okay, then lets get Wantagh, Seaford, Plainedge and Island Trees to submit a COSAR to have BOCES do all of the heavy lifting (meaning the coordination and logistics), and watch the cost skyrocket as a result. OR, how about Wantagh, Seaford, Plainedge, and Island Trees doing something similar to a (BOCES) COSAR but with Levittown as the coordinator, keeping BOCES out of it? That would have the added advantages of adding a fifth district with two (2) high schools to contribute both additional team members, and two (2) additional mentors for the (2) additional teams. That would be six teams from among six high schools across five districts. Levittown also has excellent facilities resources which could really help facilitate the Capstone teams meetings and research activities.

Thinking this through just a little further, we could actually establish a multi-district Research Magnet Program under the auspices of the College Board AP Capstone Diploma Program. May some Board of Ed people could think about this as a near future concept, like, for next year?

Futurescaping.

Chris Wendt

[greda]

Chris

As I said, I was at the open house on Saturday and they offer AP courses in conjunction with St. John's University

St. John’s University College Advantage Program
Cost: $500 for (6) Credits – 2 Semesters
Maximum of 12 credits in total for both semesters.
Spanish, French, German, Latin
English
Calculus I and Calculus II
Pre-Calculus
Physics
American History

And since a lot of colleges are starting to toughen standards in regards to AP courses, doing one in conjunction with a college pretty much ensures that they will be accepted.

[Chris_Wendt]

Okay, Greda, now I understand the confusion. "College-level" courses and AP© courses are vastly different things. I had covered this difference previously and at length, here.

Most basically, if you take a "college level" course from a particular college (St. Johns), you may earn credits from that college (St. Johns). Depending on what college, what course, and what your grade was, those credits may be transferable to some other college, but probably not to most other colleges. If you score 3, 4, or 5 on an AP© course, which testing and scoring is administered under the auspices of The College Board, then your options are much broader and potentially much brighter. Depending again on the course, your intended major, and to which college you apply, your AP© credit may:

• Help get you accepted
• Earn you full or partial credit for that course  or equivalent
• Result in your receiving "advance placement", meaning being able to take a 200-level college course instead of a 100-level course in that subject area
• If you have enough high AP© scores on subjects relative to your major, going in, then you may be able get your degree earlier.

You should look on the College Board AP© website and check into which colleges accept what AP© scores, for what AP© scores they grant credit, for what AP© scores they may grant advanced placement. Those ultimate decisions are strictly the province of the receiving college in every case.

Dartmouth, when I covered this earlier, would use high AP© scores for admission decisions, but would not grant either credit or advance placement, under their then stated policy that they believed "a Dartmouth education should come from Dartmouth". Dartmouth was (is?) part of a trend like that among top private colleges.

Again, Chaminade is a far different type of institution than Wantagh High. For instance, there are Chaminade Alumni Associations in several major cities, and, being a Chaminade alumnus provides entre to many business and professional opportunities all through later life. Chaminade has an endowment fund to which alumni have contributed very generously over the decades. Very generously.

I hope this is helpful to understanding the importance of AP© courses to the higher education potential of everyone's children.

Questions?

Regards,

Chris Wendt

[rakow07]

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