MCPS Class of 2012 Outperformed Peers on AP Tests

News about the county's high-performing high-school students just doesn't stop.

According to a Montgomery County Public Schools' statement, 52.3 percent of the county's public school students graduating from high school in 2012 earned a college-ready score (a score of 3 or higher) on at least one Advanced Placement exam. That's an increase of nearly 3 percentage points from 2011.

Nationally, only 19.5 percent of graduating seniors earned at least one college-ready AP score. Across the state, 29.6 percent of graduating seniors in 2012 earned at least one college-ready AP score. No state had a higher percentage of students earning at least one AP score of 3 or higher, the College Board’s AP Report to the Nation reported on Feb. 20.

Here's how the numbers break down:

• More than two-thirds of 2012 MCPS graduates (67.3 percent—a district record) took at least one AP exam in high school. Statewide, that percentage was 48.2 percent, while nationwide it was 32.4 percent.
• Students from all racial and ethnic subgroups in the the county's class of 2012 showed improvement in AP performance. According to MCPS, the percentage of Hispanic students earning a college-ready score on at least one AP exam was 38.1 percent, up nearly 1 percentage point from 2011. For African American MCPS graduates, the percentage was 23.3 percent, up 1 percentage point from 2011.
• The high schools with the greatest percentage of 2012 graduates earning a score of 3 or higher on at least one exam were Winston Churchill (82 percent), Thomas S. Wootton (81.5 percent), Walt Whitman (80.8 percent), Poolesville (78 percent) and Walter Johnson (71.7 percent).

Read more about the county school system's AP statistics in the MCPS Report on AP Participation and Performance. Read more about Advanced Placement exam statistics in the College Board's AP Report to the Nation.

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How important do you think AP classes and exams are to a high school student's education?