More high school students take advanced placement courses

Friday, October 7th 2005, 12:50 pm

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) _ More Oklahoma high school students than ever are taking Advanced Placement courses and they are scoring higher on course-related exams, the state Education Department says.

The College Board's Advanced Placement program shows more than 10,300 Oklahoma public school students took 17,240 AP exams during the 2004-05 school year -- a record number for the state.

That's about 1,000 more exams than students took a year ago. Department records show it's more than four times the number of exams taken almost a decade ago when the Advanced Placement Incentives Program began.

The number of exams with a grade of 3, 4 or 5 rose from 7,463 in 2003-04 to 7,836 last school year.

A score of 3 or better -- on a scale of 1 to 5 -- is significant because most universities provide college credit to those students. The state Legislature appropriates an incentive award of $100 to public schools for each exam score in the 3 to 5 range.