Today was my first day back on campus full-time after Summer vacation, and I found in my mailbox the 2013 Subject Score Roster for my two sections of AP Psychology. I had 51 students take the AP Psych test, and 48 passed. That’s a 94% pass rate. Reviewing last year’s reflection, I see that I had an 88% pass rate then. In terms of the number of individual scores for this year:
- 5: 20 students
- 4: 23 students
- 3: 5 students
- 2: 3 students
- 1: 0 students
That’s an average score of 4.17. Obviously, I’d like to see more of those 4s scoring a 5, but, on the other hand, I’m quite happy that no student received a 1. This past year was the first year on the Block Schedule, and our first year with iPads. I’m glad to see that my scores increased over the previous year — I was, truth be told, worried that students would score worse in this first year. I was worried that the fewer contact meetings would impede students’ abilities to retain information; that turned out not to be the case. And I was worried about the iPads being a distraction; and that turned out to not affect scores[1]. I think part of why our AP Psych classes were so successful in the face of two significant changes to the teaching and learning at SI was because Yosup and I did the work; we planned for the Block periods, and we planned for the iPads. We planned a lot. And I’m glad we did.
- For one of the students with a 2, I would point to the iPad as a contributing factor. I knew that he was looking at sports webpages and playing games throughout the class, and I allowed him to do it. Now, seeing that he got a 2 on th AP test, I feel bad about that. I should’ve stopped him, and forced his focus in class. Next year, I won’t allow students so much independence as to negatively impact their own learning. That’s a tough line to walk though because part of what I try to do in the class is teach students how to be independent learners, as if this was a college classroom. ↩