Osseo schools set higher bar for students

Advanced Placement courses -- tougher, more work-intense courses intended to prepare students for college -- are booming in the Osseo School District.

Bolstered by a state grant of almost $1 million, Osseo and Maple Grove High Schools have been able to add several new AP subjects each to their course selections, as well as scores of new classes for both the new and existing AP courses.

Osseo High School, for instance, boosted its AP course offerings from five to 12, Principal Bob Perdaems said. New AP courses being offered include studio art, Spanish, French, psychology, government and politics, U.S. history, and microeconomics. The school had already been offering AP courses in calculus, statistics, art history, language and composition, and literature and composition.

Osseo district statistics bear out the boom in AP enrollment. They show 433 students at Osseo High enrolled in at least one AP course, compared with 286 last year. At Maple Grove, that figure has grown to 425 from last year's 216.

"I think this proves that when students are offered the opportunity to accept challenges and do rigorous course work they step up and meet the challenge," Perdaems said.

Students at both high schools decide on their own, without restrictions, whether to take on an AP course load.

The grant pays for hiring more teachers, and teacher training.

"Kids self-select, so there isn't an entrance requirement," Perdaems said. "We do try to counsel kids to make good decisions before they sign up for them."

There are no statistics yet on how the explosion of AP course opportunities will affect student performance. Neither are there statistics on how many minority and poor kids have been brought into the AP loop. But Beth Carpenter, Osseo schools talented and gifted program services coordinator, said visitors to the classes, especially at Osseo High, have noticed the changes.

"There are more students of color," she said.

Plunging into the challenge

Administrators are prepared for the possibility that, with more kids participating in AP courses, the scores on AP tests administered by the College Board in the spring might show a decline.

AP students takes tests that grade them on a 1-5 scale. Placement can determine whether students can opt out of certain college requirements, and possibly finish their college education in a shorter period. Often, colleges accept scores of 3 or above as sufficient to earn college credit in a particular course. Also, colleges often look at how many AP courses students are taking when making admissions decisions.

Maple Grove High has set up an after-school program designed to help those kids struggling with their new AP course load by teaching them such skills as how to structure their time, how to listen better, and how to take good notes, Loberg said.

The Osseo district's third high school, Park Center, is not participating in the program because it already has adopted another rigorous academic program -- International Baccalaureate.

Brooklyn Junior High School, Garden City Elementary and Woodland Elementary are using the grant money to adopt AP strategy measures designed to give kids opportunities for more challenging course work, and prepare them for taking the high school AP offerings.

"It's given them the notion that college is an option," said Giuseppe Mendolia, principal of Brooklyn Junior High, where 70 percent of the 1,100 students are members of racial minorities, and 51 percent are eligible for free and reduced lunch, an indicator of poverty.

"We're sad because the grant is only for one year, and our levy failed," Loberg said.