Mahwah High School Adds 20th AP Class

Mahwah High School is adding more Advanced Placement classes to its offerings, and they are additions that district officials say are in line with student performance and interest in higher-level courses.

This fall, MHS added Advanced Placement Government and Politics to its course line-up, brining its total number of AP offerings to 20. AP courses are college-level classes offered in high school.

The school’s AP program is growing partly because of students’ performance on the end-of-year AP exams, High School Guidance Director Dominick Gliatta said.

“We’ve had great success with scores in our AP classes, so adding another was an easy decision,” Gliatta said. “We polled students to see which class of a few different AP options they were interested in.”

According to Gliatta, and the school’s 2013-14 District Profile, student performance on AP exams – which can often earn students college credit – is going up.

Last school year, 187 Mahwah students took 332 Advanced Placement exams in 18 academic subjects. 91.4% of students scored a 3 or higher on the tests, which are scored out of 5.

The percentages of high scores, “have been going up over the past few years,” Gliatta added. “We’ve got courses like Biology and English where 100% of students who take the AP exam score 3 or better.”

Gliatta called the exams a “good measuring stick” for college readiness.

“The most outstanding thing, I think, is no matter how the state is changing standards, our kids are still learning. They are stepping up, they want to do it, and they are doing well.”

This school year also saw the addition of Multivariable Calculus, a college course that is one step beyond all of the AP’s offerings in mathematics, Gliatta said.

“We have students who completed the highest level [math] AP course during their Junior year. So, this year we created a course that is actually one step beyond that.”

District officials recently said they were “proud” of the expansions to the school's advanced curriculum.

When announcing the 20th AP class, Board of Education President Tricia Shada said she was “extremely proud of Mahwah’s students,” and said that the class bumps Mahwah into one of the top spots in Bergen County in terms of number of AP offerings.

As for future additions to the AP program, Gliatta said the district does not have a set timeline to add more courses, and they will likely correlate to future needs and interests. For example, once a newly-added Chinese language program has had time to develop in the district, an AP Chinese class may be added, he said.

“We want to challenge our students as much as possible,” Gliatta said. “I think the [addition of APs and kids’ performance on AP exams] really speaks to the quality of education students are receiving in Mahwah.”