More high school students in Jefferson County are taking advanced-placement course work, and more are passing the exam that gives students the opportunity to earn credit or advanced standing at most of the nation’s colleges and universities.
D’Evelyn High School surpasses the competition, however.
The public school that enrolls based on a lottery for grades seven through 12 managed an impeccable 87 percent of students who scored a three or above in 2007 on the tests, which are graded with a minimum of one and a maximum of five. A score of three is considered passing and a strong indicator of college success.
D’Evelyn advanced-placement biology teacher Dr. Judy Schoonmaker attributed the students’ success to a strong support structure from parents and administration and to the students themselves.
As she led her class through a crime-scene investigation Feb. 21, she taught them how to figure out for themselves the best way to create a DNA fingerprint for five “suspects” and match the correct DNA fingerprint to the “criminal.”
Schoonmaker did not tell the students how to do the lab, but made them analyze different applications of biology as she gently prodded them to the correct answer.
Her methods makes the students think analytically, which is essential for the open-ended questions on the AP test. Such exercises also set the stage for future lab work in college, she added.
“This particular crew is really good at absorbing information and coming in and saying, ‘I didn’t understand this. Help us here,’” Schoonmaker said. “Learning to think like a scientist is a whole approach to life. It’s not unique to science, and not everybody gets that.”
Her students are beginning to understand, and that is largely because Doc, as the students call her, regularly leads them through different labs.
Although she bases her curriculum entirely on the recommended advanced-placement curriculum and textbook, she changes the experiments every year to keep the coursework fresh for herself and thus exciting for her students.
Typically 50 percent of her students score a five on the biology test, with most of the remainder scoring threes or fours, she said.
Those high scores mean more than a pat on the back for students. At many college institutions in the United States, they also can determine placement in programs and count for college credit.
“These are amazing kids. They’re self-motivated, and 99 percent of them are prepared 99 percent of the time,” Schoonmaker said.
“I’ll take any student who is willing to work. There are a couple kids who just don’t get it yet, but they’re the ones I like having.
“It’s fun to watch them get turned on and excited by biology, and they go through college and it clicks for them. They just needed the second time around.”
Terry Elliott, assistant principal of curriculum instruction at D’Evelyn, said that even the teachers who are not directly involved in the school’s advanced-placement program feed into its success.
Before a student even enters the school in seventh grade, he or she has been given a summer reading list and is expected to have read the books before the start of the school year.
Elliott said the school maintains primary materials for the classroom as the top priority, and it encourages parents to create good academic environments for students.
A rigorous work ethic is imperative at the school, and each class feeds into the high expectations for each student.
“We want kids to succeed. We don’t want them to experience failure,” Elliott said. “By the time they get to advanced placement, the AP team is not the first team to have haad high expectations and rigor in the classroom.”
That also explains how the school is able to consistently produce some of the highest overall advanced-placement success rates.
Its 2007 total of 87 percent of students scoring a three or above easily surpassed the state average of 19.2 percent for public schools. About 59 percent of Jefferson County students who took the test scored a three or above in the same year.
For Schoonmaker, her students’ excellence is no surprise.
“One thing I do on my tests in the classroom is make them impossibly hard, and then I let the students do test corrections for half credit,” she said. “The students say the easiest test of the year is the AP test.”
Lakewood Community Editor Jennifer Gilbert can be reached at (303) 279-5541, ext. 263.