Carol Fleming

"There was a need," Carol Fleming, coordinator for secondary advanced academic services for ECISD, said."Students had an interest in taking a foreign language other than the ones offered."Fleming said that students must be classified as gifted and talented in English in order to enroll in Japanese.

district, said Carol Fleming, ECISD's coordinator of secondary academic services.All of the AP Scholars are students at Odessa High School.The honor is "on a national scale" for students, Fleming said.It's something they can put on their resumes and university officials and employers will recognize, she said.

"We are aware of the areas that we need to improve, and we are working toward that end," said Carol Fleming, the coordinator of ECISD's advanced academic services department.Statewide, students received a passing score on 52 percent, or 85,545 of the 164,804 tests they took, according to data from the Texas Education Agency released this month.That number is down slightly from last year when Texas students passed about 53 percent, or about 1,730 of 3,288 tests administered, according to data from the College Board.In ECISD, however, all students who take an AP course are required to take the test for that course.Many other districts do not require their students to take the tests.ECISD also foots at least part of the bill for the test.The district pays about $50 of the $80 fee for each test, while the state pays the rest, Fleming said.The district receives $100 back, however, for each student who passes an AP exam regardless of the number of exams a student passes, she said.Based on those figures, that would mean ECISD spent $85,450 on AP exams last school year and brought in about $35,300.One reason for the lower scores may be that ECISD opened its AP courses to all students for the first time last year, Fleming said.In the past, ECISD has looked at grades and standardized test scores before allowing a student to enroll in AP courses.This year, the courses were open to any student who passed the prerequisite courses.The district will continue to offer those courses to all students, Fleming said.The courses are a benefit to students, she said, "because it's an opportunity, the door is not closed anymore."Broken down by campus, the students at Odessa High School performed better than those at Permian High School.Permian students passed about 6 percent of the time, or 57 of 917 exams.At OHS, students passed about 37 percent of the time, or 296 of 792 exams.Fleming and Permian Principal Brian Rosson attributed the gap in scores to the fact that Permian offered AP courses in English and social studies for the first time last school year.
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That could change, however, as the district looks at the possibility of offering more pre-AP programs at its junior highs, Fleming said.The district is also, she said, continuing to encourage teachers to attend additional training beyond the one week the College Board requires to teach AP courses."We have the students who can do it, we just have to be sure we prepare them," Fleming said.

The ECISD Junior High Academic Octathlon is a chance for ninth-graders to shine as academicians rather than athletes, Carol Fleming, the district's coordinator of advanced academic services said."(The event) focuses students' attention on academics," Fleming said."We have a lot of athletic focus, and this a very public academic event."ECISD has sponsored the Junior High Octathlon for more than 20 years, she said.Each student is competing in eight academic areas: mathematics, science, world geography, language and literature, fine arts, essay, speech, and super quiz.One team from each ECISD junior high - Bonham, Bowie, Crockett, Ector, Hood and Nimitz - is competing.Each team includes four A or honor students, four B or scholastic students, and four C or varsity students.The competing teams formed in January, mostly from classes in the Gifted and Talented and Advanced Academic programs, Fleming said.Since then, the students have studied on their own and as a team before and after school, quizzing each other and taking practice tests.

"We want to see all of our students be able to enter college prepared," Carol Fleming, coordinator of secondary Advanced Academic Services."It's all about equity and access."Advanced Placement courses are more academically rigorous than normal courses and prepare students to take Advanced Placement exams.If a student passes those exams with a 3, 4 or 5, he or she receives three hours of college credit.In the past, students had to score well on tests and make good grades to enter pre-AP classes, which prepare students for AP classes in high school.ECISD officials have decided to have open enrollment for junior high pre-AP programs - meaning any student can take them.There are no grade requirements, and few pre-AP courses have pre-requisite classes, both of which Fleming refers to as "gates.""The reality is that we don't know the abilities of some students until they try," Fleming said.For some current AP students, there is a catch, however."There are some pre-req for upper-level courses," she said."We don't want to throw our students into a situation that would be untenable for them."And while each junior high offers pre-AP courses, those who wish to go to the pre-AP magnets at Bowie and Ector must apply unless students live in those zones.The new, open enrollment rule doesn't affect the gifted-and-talented program rules at any of the junior highs, however."GT is a separate, state-mandated program," Fleming said."Kids who go to GT have to qualify," she said.