RICHMOND —
Beginning this year, entering freshmen at Madison Southern and Madison Central high schools will have the opportunity to participate in a rigorous Advanced Placement curriculum that has the potential to earn them nearly 30 college hours by the time they graduate, said David Gilliam, principal at Madison Southern.
“If this group of freshmen commit to taking the AP courses, we will commit to providing them,” Gilliam said.
Twenty students from Southern and 55 students from Central were accepted into the AP cohort. The selected students met certain benchmarks on standardized tests and completed an application process which began this summer.
Although several AP courses have always been offered at both schools, Gilliam and Madison Central Principal Elmer Thomas, put their heads together to come up with a plan to ensure the course-offering would be consistent every year.
A certain number of teachers need to be certified to teach AP courses and scheduling flexibility options had to be considered if enough students were interested in committing to the program, Gilliam said.
“We want to encourage our top-level students,” he said. “We realized one of the barriers for these students was the fluctuation of course offerings and the encouragement and support they need to continue through.”
An option for accommodating AP students’ loaded schedules could be to offer a health/physical education class during the summer to meet state requirements, while allowing students to maximize their AP schedule during the school year, Thomas said.
If a class could not be filled by students from one high school, another option would be to combine students from both schools who are interested in a certain subject, Gilliam said.
The program also has “on and off ramps,” he said, giving students an opportunity to leave the program if it gets too hard or to join if they did not previously qualify.
The district will incur no additional costs from the program, Gilliam said, because several teachers already are qualified to teach AP courses and students are to pay the $85 fee for each test. A discounted test fee is offered to students who qualify for free or reduced lunch.
Although a few teachers were required to gain AP certification, the cost was covered by a federal grant, he said.
Madison Central’s AP cohort will begin with a set of prescribed courses their freshman year but can branch out in focus areas once they become sophomores, Thomas said.
Thomas equates the process to “picking a major in college,” he said, where upon graduation, they will receive a diploma indicating an AP “degree” in either Science/ Math, Social Sciences, Arts/Humanities or General Studies.
The select group of students will move through high school together, taking many of the same courses, Thomas said, creating “a sort of academy within the school.”
Currently, the AP courses offered are Human Geography, World History, European History, English Language, Chemistry, Calculus, Statistics, Physics, English Literature, Spanish, French, Latin, U.S. History, Music Theory and in the future, Physics and Psychology, Thomas said.
“Because development of the program is in its early stages, both principals have been calling it “The AP Cohort,” Thomas said. “But we’ve challenged our students to come up with a name for it. We need to call them something — maybe get some T-shirts.”
Crystal Wylie can be reached at cwylie@richmondregister.com or 623-1669, ext. 6696.
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