AP
Empowering Students and Teachers with Pre-AP
In the 2020-21 school year, the Pre-AP Program is expanding nationally – and we couldn’t be more excited for the chance to show more students how much they can grow.
In the 2020-21 school year, the Pre-AP Program is expanding nationally – and we couldn’t be more excited for the chance to show more students how much they can grow.
During the College Board National Forum on Thursday, November 7, Amanda Vitello, senior director of program management for Pre-AP/SpringBoard led a panel session featuring:
- Ayana Lucas – District Coordinator, Hillsborough County Public Schools, Tampa, FL
- Sinneh Koroma – Dean/Pre-AP Coordinator, United South High School, Laredo, TX
- Tina Drake – Principal, Wellington High School, Wellington, OH
Here are three ways your school and students can benefit from implementing Pre-AP.
Multiple Subjects, Shared Skills
The Pre-AP Program launched in the 2018-19 school year with eight courses:
- Pre-AP Algebra 1
- Pre-AP Biology
- Pre-AP English 1
- Pre-AP World History and Geography
- Pre-AP Arts: Dance, Music, Theatre, and Visual Arts.
In the upcoming school year, Pre-AP will also offer courses in Pre-AP English 2, Pre-AP Geometry with Statistics, and Pre-AP Chemistry.
All courses share a foundation of instructional principals to ensure that every student can build cross-disciplinary critical thinking skills. Sinneh Koromoa noted how Pre-AP's culture of all-student access helped build these competencies:
"We apply the same approach to all our students. No matter where you've been, we're going to open our courses to you. If a student is willing and ready to work, the possibilities are there for our teachers to work with them...the students are passing EOC at a level they had not before."
Instructional, Planning, and Assessment Resources
Each Pre-AP course has a framework that acts as a blueprint to help teachers provide targeted instruction that best suits their students’ specific needs. They feature model lessons that illustrate effective teaching strategies. Teachers also have access to digital quizzes to inform instruction, and performance tasks designed to measure skills and content developed and built over the course of a unit. Ayana Lucas described how these tools helped teachers meet all their students where they are:
"We were able to see the flexibility in using the frameworks—as well as the support from College Board—to help us speak to all learners so teachers can be creative and innovative with their lessons."
Dynamic Professional Learning Opportunities
All Pre-AP teachers attend professional learning workshops in-person or online through the College Board. Participants can explore and engage with Pre-AP shared instructional principles, course framework, content areas of focus, and sample model lessons. They also have the chance to work with their peers to plan and build their own course materials. Tina Drake outlined how this peer-to-peer growth changed how her teachers worked together:
"Before we did Pre-AP, [my teachers] didn't collaborate a lot. After they joined the cohort, they began meeting regularly. Even though they didn't teach the same content, they were able to help one another instructionally. I don't think that would have happened prior to Pre-AP."
For more information on how to participate in Pre-AP in 2020-21, visit: https://pre-ap.collegeboard.org