Article

Extra motivation in rigorous courses
Sunday, December 23, 2007 • BY JONATHAN CASIANO • Star-Ledger Staff

If Rahway High School senior Mark Petraroia passes his Advanced Placement exams this year, he'll head off to college with credits in the bag and the freedom to bypass those loathsome freshman requirements.

But he'll also have a check for several hundred dollars, thanks to a new initiative aimed at increasing the number of Rahway students taking AP exams by offering cash rewards to successful testers.

Modeled after a similar program in Dallas, the Advanced Placement Incentive Program, or APIP, is a partnership between Rahway schools and the Marianthi Foundation, a local philanthropy founded by R. Roy Vagelos, a former Merck CEO and Rahway High School alumnus. APIP's goal is to change the perception that AP classes are for the elite, and motivate capable students to give the harder courses a try.

Rahway High is the first school in New Jersey to use the APIP program.

"What we're really trying to do is establish a culture of Advanced Placement," said Edward Yergalonis, Rahway's assistant school superintendent. "We're exposing kids to the most rigorous classes possible and raising the expectations bar for all of them, with the hope that we're preparing them to attend the best colleges in the country."

Rewards are distributed on a graduated scale, with the best test scores getting the most cash. Tests are graded on a 1-5 scale. A student who earns a 3 -- the lowest passing mark -- will receive $200, while a student who earns a 5 gets $400. For students like Petraroia, who has taken four AP courses over the past two years, the rewards could add up to over $1,000.

"Everybody likes getting money and getting money to go to school is even better," said Petraroia, 18.

The number of tests students take is based on the number of AP courses a school offers. Rahway, for example, offers six: calculus, American history, chemistry, biology, English language and English literature.

And the benefits aren't just for students. AP teachers will receive a $2,500 stipend and have access to additional training. In addition, for each student who passes the AP exam, their teacher will receive a cash reward earmarked for new classroom materials.

The program was pitched to Rahway last year, after Vagelos participated in a national study commissioned by the National Academies' Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy. The committee's report stated that American schools need to ramp up their math and science standards to keep students globally competitive, and identified AP courses as a good way to push high schoolers ahead of the curve.

Joining Vagelos on the study panel was Texas philanthropist Peter O'Donnell, whose foundation sponsors an incentive program that has increased the number of AP students in Dallas ten-fold. Vagelos thought the Dallas program would be a good fit for his blue-collar hometown.

"Dad's idea was, 'If it works out there, why wouldn't it work here?'" said Vagelos' son, Andrew Vagelos, director of the Marianthi Foundation.

And while the idea of paying students to achieve may not sit well with some academic purists, Andrew Vagelos said the cash rewards mirror the monetary incentives students will find in the workplace.

"All rhetoric aside, money talks, and if it's going to get kids to crack the books that's what we're looking to do," he said.

So far, the buzz is positive. More than 200 students and parents attended a "Team AP" kick-off rally last Saturday, and the high school is looking to add two new AP courses next year. Teachers also have started a pen-pal program to link AP high school students with middle schoolers thinking about "the AP path."

"A youngster has to start planning for their future in grades 6 or 7 to take the right classes and be ready for AP," Yergalonis said. "I'm telling them the most important team to be on is Team AP."

To students and teachers in APIP, the program is about more than just increasing the size of Rahway's AP program. To them, it's also about raising expectations for the entire school and preparing Rahway's working-class students to compete with their peers from more affluent districts, where AP classes are abundant and heavily pursued.

"There's a spirit here that's been generated over the last several months, a little switch in dynamics where the other kids are starting to wonder ... what's going on in those classrooms," said Jo-Ann Bertelo, who teaches AP Language and Composition.

And in an environment where athletes and class clowns tend to soak up the spotlight, AP students like Stefanie Mariduena say it's nice to get some credit for hitting the books.

"Before it was always sports, or the band. This is like the first time we're really being acknowledged for doing good in school," said Mariduena, a senior. "Kids who didn't know about AP before, now they want to know more and maybe in some way we can inspire them to want to succeed."

For AP students, school has cash

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