Schools

MCPS: AP Success Expands for Rockville's High Schools

Larger proportion of graduates took at least one AP exam, earned college-ready scores.

Graduates from three of the city’s high schools exceeded countywide averages in the percentage of students who took at least one advanced placement exam. Montgomery County Public schools released the data on Wednesday.

More than two-thirds of the county school system's graduating seniors (67.3 percent) took at least one AP test in 2012. More than half (52.3 percent) earned at least a 3, what is considered a college-ready score, Patch has reported.

Thomas S. Wootton High School was one of the county’s top-performing schools, with 81.5 percent of its graduates earning scores of at least 3. About 89.5 percent of Wootton graduates took at least one AP exam.

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The percentages for taking an AP exam were 74 percent at Richard Montgomery High School and 72.7 percent at Rockville High School.

At Magruder High School, 59.8 percent of graduates took at least one AP exam and less than half earned a college-ready score, according to MCPS figures.

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But at Magruder and at Rockville, there were increases in exam participation among African American and Hispanic students, groups that have broadly been less likely to take the test, according to the school system's data.

Here are the basic numbers (the full report is attached with this story):

Percentage of graduates who took at least one AP test

 

Number of graduates
(by year)

Number of graduates who took one or more AP tests
(by year)

% taking at least one AP test
(by year)

 

2011

2012

2011

2012

2011

2012

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Magruder

409

443

245

265

59.9

59.8

Richard Montgomery

471

497

338

368

71.8

74.0

Rockville

283

278

190

202

67.1

72.7

Wootton

599

583

529

522

88.3

89.5

MCPS

10,158

10,322

6,710

6,951

66.1

67.3

 

Percentage of graduates scoring 3 or higher

 

2011

2012

Magruder

48.4

48.3

Richard Montgomery

62.4

64.0

Rockville

39.2

46.8

Wootton

73.3

81.5

MCPS

49.6

52.3


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