The A+ College Ready program is working, according to an article published this week in The Birmingham News. A Laying the Foundation affiliate, A+ College Ready is a nonprofit organization that strives to increase the number of college-ready students in Alabama by providing teacher training, student study sessions, and monetary incentives to teachers and students for passing the end-of-the-year AP exam.

Here are some key points highlighted in Kim Chandler’s article:

• Alabama schools that use A+ College Ready have experienced a 108 percent increase in passing scores on AP math, science, and English tests since implementing the program.

• Forty-three high schools in 17 districts currently participate in the program.

• The first step to success in AP is enrolling in the course, says AP Calculus teacher Matt Massey. A+ College Ready emphasizes recruitment of students into college-prep courses.

For a state that “has the second-lowest national standardized scores for 4^th and 8^th grade math and is in the bottom 10 states for 4^th and 8^th grade reading” (from Business Insider), the A+ College Ready impact is particularly commendable.

The only other thing we would have liked mentioned in the article is that college-readiness and AP success start with a solid foundation in Pre-AP classes—a foundation that comes from effective training and resources for Pre-AP teachers.

Based on the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores, 32 percent of the students in the Class of 2011 were proficient in math and 31 percent were proficient in reading. The Harvard study, Globally Challenged: Are US Students Ready to Compete?, released August 17, used these scores  to create an international ranking of proficiency scores by equating the U.S.-based NAEP scores with the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) exam scores.  

By applying the equivalency standard, the researchers ranked the U.S. 32nd out of the 65 nations participating in the PISA exam for math proficiency and 17th out of 65 nations for reading proficiency.

Knowing where the U.S. ranks internationally gives us a benchmark to know how well we are preparing our students to remain competitive and the ability of the U.S. to “remain the economic and technological leader of the global marketplace,” say the Harvard researchers.

In the webinar broadcast on August 17, the study’s lead author, Dr. Paul Peterson, acknowledged another study (Phillips, 2009) created international comparisons that gave the U.S. a more favorable ranking. Peterson defends the Harvard study’s methodology by pointing out that the rankings in Phillip’s study do not include high performing countries – this allows the U.S. to shine in comparison.

While it is worthwhile to look outside our borders to check our progress, it is better to not take the exact rankings to heart. The NAEP and PISA are separate exams taken by separate samples of students in different years. While it is possible to create a reasonably reliable equivalent to compare the two tests and create a ranking, there is room for error.  

Additionally, international comparisons do not always account for the different educational systems’ structures across countries. Popular critiques of international comparisons point out that other countries may only test the portion of their students that are on a track for college. The sample for the U.S., on the other hand, does not differentiate by students that are college bound or not.

Even though it is clear the rankings are only an estimate, it is useful to have some idea of how the U.S. performs relative to other nations. While this study makes a quantitative comparison, it may also be valuable to have qualitative comparisons as well. It is one thing to state the majority of students in Korea and Finland are proficient in math, but it may be more useful to know why.

Sarah Jensen is the LTF Educational Research Analyst