Some schools truly stand out when it comes to AP pass rates. The median pass rate (counting only 4s and 5s – not 3s) for LA schools is about 14%. But there are some schools that are far surpassing that.
The schools below have a pass rate above 25%.
On this list you have some usual suspects. You have the set of valley and westside affiliated charters or ex-affiliated charters – Palisades, Granada Hills, El Camino, Reseda, Taft and Cleveland. You also have the wall-to-wall magnets – LACES, SOCES, Downtown Business, and Bravo. Finally, you have schools that represent some of the schools that have selective/gifted magnets or schools for advanced studies – Marshall, North Hollywood, Hamilton and Harbor Teacher Prep.
I think that it is interesting to think about why these schools have such high pass rates. It definitely has a lot to do with excellent instruction at these schools. But it also has to do with the pipelines for these schools. Students who go to these schools are more likely to go to stronger elementary and middle schools, and are therefore more likely to be prepared for AP success.
There are, however, a couple of schools on this list that don’t have those advantages. These schools’ presence on the list, in my opinion, is a bit more impressive. Green Design high at Diego Rivera, located in South Los Angeles is one of those schools. So are Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez High in Aliso Village (that’s what google maps calls it) and Humanities Academy of Art and Technology at Esteban Torres in East LA. Two independent charter schools, Central City Value in East Hollywood and Animo Watts in Watts, also stand out.
These schools, without the pipeline, often don’t get the same kind of credit as the first set of schools. This data helps us see these successes and celebrate their achievement.
*Note On Other Schools: Unfortunately, this list is incomplete. The data released by the state does not include any schools with less than 14 test takers – so small schools will be left off this list. There are (at least) 43 schools that have no data. That is because the CDE does not release data for those schools, because could, possibly, result in identifying individual students.
It would be interesting to compare these schools AP pass rate data with their Smarter Balanced data.
One of the ways schools can raise their AP pass rate is to set barriers to enrolling in the class. Requiring a certain GPA or score on a standardized test for instance. Although this can raise the pass rate, it can also exclude some students who had a chance at passing the AP test.
You leave out the private and parochial schools. That would really give a complete picture so people can compare.