Advanced Placement (AP)

Advanced Placement is a for-profit program sponsored by The College Board. Through this program, high school students take high school courses and potentially earn high school and college credit.

Houghton Academy offers AP courses in United States History and in English Literature and Composition. Additionally, and we think better in many ways, our students have the opportunity to take college classes and earn both high school and college credit. See College Course Opportunities

Here’s how the AP program works:

A high school submits a proposed course curriculum to The College Board for approval.
If the curriculum/instructor qualify, The College Board designates the class as “AP.”
At the end of the course, students register for and pay to take an “AP Test.”
Tests are scored on a 5 point scale.
Individual colleges agree to offer college credit for test “passing” test scores; some colleges offer credit for an AP test score of 3 while others require a 4 or a 5.
Students may take an AP test without taking the corresponding, approved AP course; colleges award credit solely on the basis of the score earned on the AP test.

In recent years, our students’ awareness of The College Board AP Program has grown considerably, and our students have taken numerous AP tests. Many students have taken AP tests for which they did not take the corresponding, approved AP course. Eighty percent of our students who have taken any AP test have earned a 3, 4, or 5. From this we conclude that

We have lots of smart kids here
The level of our normal, routine instruction is comparable to “approved” AP-level instruction