AP Environmental Science, a class popular among Reynolds students, is among the courses that now offer students the ability to opt out of end-of-year testing, albeit with a $40 fee.
Lochlan Downard
Staff writer
Even this early in the school year, countless Reynolds students are already looking ahead to AP exams, figuring out how to best prepare for the final tests that justify a year of study in classes. The director of Student Services here at Reynolds, Nicole Beale, knows that a variety of situations can force students to forgo the AP exams, despite their importance. Now, a new $40 fee for skipping the tests has been put in to underscore that importance.
“I wouldn’t want to drop someone’s grade,” Beale said. “I’m fearful that students are going to decide that they can’t be successful on exam.”
She sees giving students the ability to withdraw from testing as validating those fears.
“I don’t personally like the opt-out option,” she said. “I don’t think you ought to be allowed to opt out of it. I think we always had protections in place [for absences].”
As director, she has seen countless students who underestimated themselves and ultimately scored well on their exams.
“I can think of a student last year who probably would have bet money that she wasn’t going to pass AP Chem, and she got a 3,” Beale said. “Another male student probably would have bet money that he had no business taking stats, and he got a 4. We are lucky in this district that we have pretty good AP teachers with high pass rates.”
The new $40 fee for forgoing a test is a new form of encouragement, pushing students to realize the potential of AP classes as preparation for college.
“What we were doing, penalizing a grade, maybe that wasn’t the right approach,” she said. “I would like the expectation still to be that if kids sign up for an AP class, they take the exam, and that the AP classes should be primarily about college credit rather than GPA boosting.”
Above all else, the $40 fee underlines the goal of AP classes here in Forsyth County, which is to prepare students for their future endeavors.
“I think that kids should try and take the hardest classes . . . so that they can get prepared for college,” she said.
With new measures to encourage test-taking, Forsyth County is trying to position its students for future success, not just in high school but in college and beyond.