This am, the Washington Post ran a puff piece about AP tests in MoCo and Fairfax.
But - was Jerry just being a good advocate or was he putting down his Fairfax counterparts?
Below is the take from WTOP.
The real question is why does this matter? A "passing" score on the AP test is 3 - but that doesn't necessarily translate into college credits or mastery of the material. Students can take AP exams without even taking the course. Many schools give credit for only some courses - for example, local school Johns Hopkins doesn't award any credit for English or History AP exams. Other schools only award credit for scores of 4 or 5.
So why is this even a contest? Beats me.
WTOP - Weast: Memo was not criticizing Fairfax schools
December 5, 2010
WASHINGTON - There's a bit of a stir over a memo sent out by Montgomery County's school superintendent that could be creating some ripples across the Potomac.
In the memo, Superintendent Jerry Weast is praising his school district for having more African-American and Hispanic students who passed the AP exams than the total number of students who took the tests in Fairfax County.
Weast says he was not criticizing Fairfax County.
"What I was trying to point out is the fact that we are doing so well with the African-American population," he tells WTOP.
He says that they were comparing to the two districts.
"We do a lot of benchmarking and Fairfax County is one of the best systems in the country to benchmark against."
Paul Regnier, a spokesman for Fairfax County Public Schools, says they don't want to get involved in such comparisons, but did note that the system has made significant progress in closing the gap among minority students taking AP exams.
Fairfax County has a larger school district, but Montgomery County has a larger minority population. The two school systems were compared in Comparing Counties: Fairfax vs. Montgomery series.
WTOP's Hank Silverberg contributed to this report. Follow him on Twitter.
(Copyright 2010 by WTOP. All Rights Reserved.)
