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Texas Students and Teachers Get Cash for Passing AP Exams
DALLAS -- Some Texas high school students receive valuable motivation to take a college-level exam: a $100 bonus for passing.
Throwing in a $150 teacher bonus for each passing student raises the stakes even more.
The cash incentive program is touted for motivating upperclass students in stagnant Dallas public schools to do what it takes to prepare for college. The gateway is the Advanced Placement exam.
While success of the program lures more donors and test-takers, other states haven't embraced the idea and some education experts questions its usefulness.
"That money would be better spent on improving the education for poorly performing schools," said Bob Schaeffer, public education director for Fair Tests, a Cambridge, Mass., group that monitors standardized testing and advocates for better assessment. "It's a curious direction in the educational system to throw more resources at those who don't need extra help."
The incentive program began in Dallas in 1995 when Peter O'Donnell, a Texas philanthropist, started a foundation to revive the Superconductor Supercollider project south of Dallas near Waxahachie.
Knowing the massive scientific project would require great scientific brains, O'Donnell set out to attract young thinkers through the Advanced Placement system, said Greg Fleisher, who was a Dallas school teacher when incentive program started.
O'Donnell also wanted to strengthen schools so engineers would move into the area with their families to work on the Supercollider. If student prodigies got a jump by taking college courses in high school, all the better.
Over the next five years, the number of students passing Advanced Placement exams in Dallas schools jumped from 130 to 754, according to Fleisher, now president of Advanced Placement Strategies, a nonprofit group that manages the Dallas initiative. The passing rate among minority students is 10 times higher than the national average for juniors and seniors, Fleisher said.
The Dallas program was so successful that more benefactors came forward and it spread to 46 high schools in 15 Texas districts, including 28 Dallas public high schools.
In 2000, Texas Instruments committed $2.1 million over five years, while the Dallas school district contributed $6.1 million to pay for training teachers, tutoring time and reducing the costs of tests.
Texas students can take any one of 35 placement exams in 19 disciplines, including art history and biology, foreign languages, economics, calculus -- even psychology and music theory.
Students opt to take the tests. Most do to earn college credits while in high school. They may take prep classes from specially trained teachers before the exam, which is administered by the College Board of New York.
High schools aren't required to offer the placement exams, but most in Texas do. The state pays $30 toward the cost of the tests, which can be as high as $100.
With cash incentives, scores of students not only take the exam, but pass it and move onto college. Some pass enough exams to skip their freshman year.
When Todd Coleman stepped off the graduation stage in 1996 at David W. Carter High School in Dallas, he was $500 richer and ready to attend college.
With the Advanced Placement credits he earned in high school, he entered college as a sophomore. The five placement exams he passed in high school took care of his freshman requirements.
Now Coleman, 26, is studying for a doctorate degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"It costs a lot of money to take the exam and the fact alone that I would get reimbursed motivated me to take it because I didn't have anything to lose," Coleman said.
Bob Daniel, Tascosa High School principal in Amarillo, calls the program nothing short of "incredible."
"We've had about a 300 percent increase in the number of tests taken over the last three years and a 190 percent increase in the number of tests passed," Daniel said. "We are hearing back from our kids as they come back from college, saying they are much better prepared."
Jennifer Taylor, a Tascosa High senior, collected $300 for passing three of the exams. She described her anonymous donor as a "rich uncle you never see."
"I don't think it sends a negative message at all," Taylor said of receiving cash for passing the tests. "I think it encourages people to work harder."
But some do detect a negative message.
Eva Ostrum, a Manhattan-based educational consultant, said she once worked with a troubled high school student who became interested in Russian history. His turnaround to academics gave him the courage to take an advanced placement exam. Unfortunately, he didn't pass.
"It would've been devastating to him if he knew other kids were getting money," Ostrum said. "And I wonder if he would've had the confidence to take the class if monetary rewards were given."
Schaeffer, with Fair Tests, didn't know of any other school systems with incentive programs like the one in Dallas.
California pays for the cost of Advanced Placement tests for disadvantaged students -- but that's it. Florida gives limited cash incentives for students and teachers whose Advanced Placement programs succeed in poorly performing schools.
The public school system in Nashville, Tenn., recently considered cash incentives, and looked to Dallas as a model, but ultimately decided the district had more pressing needs, spokesman Craig Owensby said.
Daniel, the Tascosa principal, said he credits the program with helping to transform his school from one that performed mediocre on tests to one that excels.
"There was some discussion about whether we're paying kids to do what they already should be doing," Daniel said. "But as we talked to some people in the O'Donnell Foundation, it is truly some extra money for a lot of extra work. It is an incentive for our students and our teachers to go the extra mile and do what is necessary to pass those AP exams."
— Associated Press
Texas students, teachers get cash for passing exams
Houston Chronicle
2003-12-15
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/metropolitan/2296274
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