MONEY TIME: New school programs pays students to succeed

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April 13, 2012

MONEY TIME: New school programs pays students to succeed

JHS one of nine schools involved in Advanced Placement initiative

By MAUREEN HAYDEN CNHI Statehouse bureau The News and Tribune Fri Apr 13, 2012, 04:57 PM EDT

INDIANAPOLIS — It’s a provocative idea: Paying high school students to earn good grades.

But some Indiana educators think it may be the key to getting more students through college and into well-paying jobs that depend on science and math skills.

On Thursday, the Indiana Department of Education announced a new initiative, funded with $7 million in private dollars, that will be pioneered by nine high schools in the state. Jeffersonville High School is among them. Administrators there say they’re committed to the program’s goals of increasing the number of students who earn college credits by taking and passing the Advanced Placement math and science courses offered in high school.

A key piece of the program is the cash incentives. Students who score high enough on the AP exams to earn college credit are rewarded with $100 in cash. Teachers can earn an extra $100 for every one of their high-scoring students.

They’re targeting students who might not otherwise take an AP class with a recruiting message that says, in essence, “you can do this.”

“We want to break down the barriers that keep students from taking these courses,” said Ginger Whitis, assistant principal at Jeffersonville High. “There are too many students who’ve been unfairly labeled as not someone who’s ‘good’ at science and math.”

Jeffersonville High was selected for several reasons, Whitis said. The school already offers a large numbers of AP courses — 21 in all — and has a faculty committed to increasing access to those courses for students who may not initially have seen themselves as college-bound. That includes low-income and minority students who may be the first in their family to go to college. About half of Jeffersonville High’s students are eligible for the free or reduced lunch program, which is based on family income. About 30 percent of students are minorities.

The National Math and Science Initiative, a privately funded foundation, is giving Indiana a $7 million grant to fund the Advanced Placement Training and Incentive Program in Indiana, or AP-TIP IN. That money will be used to launch the program in nine high schools. The University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Educational Initiatives is a partner in the program and will be training teachers.

Much of the money will be spent training math and science teachers in techniques to engage students who might not otherwise be inclined to take college-level math and science courses.

“It changes the traditional role of the AP teacher,” Whitis said. “It’s no longer the teacher as a gatekeeper, deciding who should and shouldn’t take an AP class. It opens it up to students who may never have thought they could succeed.”

Travis Haire, assistant superintendent at Greater Clark County Schools, said the training program shifts the emphasis to where he said it needs to be.

“We don’t want teachers coming to us and saying, ‘this is what I taught.’” he said. “The question is, ‘what did the students learn?”

The other high schools taking part in AP-TIP IN are in St. Joseph, Grant and Marion counties.

In the first year alone, those schools expect to increase enrollment in their AP math and science courses by at least one-third. Jeffersonville High has set a goal of increasing the number of students who take the AP science and math classes and pass the AP tests by 75 percent.

— Maureen Hayden covers the Statehouse for the CNHI newspapers in Indiana. She can be reached at maureen.hayden@indianamediagroup.com