School board beat

By Cathy Chen
<cchen@hilite.org>

At the school board meeting on Sept. 22, superintendent Barbara Underwood announced statistics from last school year’s AP testing, which revealed that over 250 more students took AP exams in 2008 than in 2007. In fact, the 964 students who took AP exams last spring make up the largest group from this school to ever take them. Underwood said she sees this as an increase in the academic standards that this school has. “I think the school really encourages students to take the most rigorous courses they can take, and we’re seeing that,” Underwood said.

The AP scores seemed to decrease last year (80.7 percent of tests had a score of 3 out of 5 or higher in 2008 as opposed to 85.7 percent in 2007), but Underwood said that with so many people taking the tests, fluctuations are expected.

School board member Andrew Klein mentioned during the meeting that according to a recent article in The New York Times, many colleges now place more emphasis on curriculum and achievements instead of SAT and ACT scores in admission choices. Klein said he hopes this will encourage more students to take higher level classes, such as AP courses.

“I know that we have a group of students at Carmel High School who are interested in going to top academic universities, and if the admissions process is more geared toward taking high level curriculum in high school, I think that would encourage more people to do that,” Klein said. “I would hope it would.”