College Board: N.J. students faring well on Advanced Placement exams
New Jersey students' scores on Advanced Placement exams are among the highest in the country, while their Pennsylvania counterparts rank in the middle of the pack, according to new data from the College Board.
The College Board, which administers the popular exams, said this week that 23.6 percent of New Jersey students in the class of 2013 scored a three or higher on an AP test during their high school careers.
That's the 10th-highest percentage in the country, and above the national average of 20.1 percent of students.
The maximum score on the exams is a five, and scores of three or higher are considered passing. AP test subjects range from world history to calculus, and students who score above that mark can often earn college credit.
In Pennsylvania, meanwhile, 15.9 percent of 2013 graduates scored a three or higher an exam, putting the state in 28th place.
Maryland students were the top scorers, with 29.6 percent earning at least one passing mark.
In total, the College Board said, 607,505 students nationwide graduated high school in 2013 with at least one AP score of three or higher.
The number of AP test-takers has grown significantly over the past decade.
Across the country, just more than 1 million graduating students took AP tests last year, nearly double the 514,163 students who took the exams in 2003.
In New Jersey, 29,497 students who graduated in 2013 took at least one AP exam, up from 16,586 students in 2003. In Pennsylvania, 30,105 students took at least one test, an increase from the 11,421 who did so a decade earlier.
Both states have made progress on the exams over that time period. In 2003, just 14.8 percent of New Jersey high school graduates and 9.5 percent of Pennsylvania graduates scored a three or higher on an AP test.
A gap persists, though, in getting low-income and minority students to participate in the AP program.
For instance, 39.4 percent of Pennsylvania students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. But those students made up just 14.2 percent of the state's AP exam-takers, the College Board said.
And black students made up 15.3 percent of New Jersey's class of 2013, but just 6.3 percent of its AP test-takers.
The most popular exams aren't the ones with the highest passing rates.
U.S. History was the most popular exam for both Pennsylvania and New Jersey students, with more than 9,000 high schoolers in each state taking the test. Seventy-two percent of those test-takers in New Jersey and 63 percent in Pennsylvania scored a three or higher.
But on the Calculus BC exam, 88 percent of 3,178 test-takers in New Jersey and 87 percent of 2,785 exam-takers in Pennsylvania earned a passing grade. In the two states, that test, along with Studio Art: Drawing and Chinese Language and Culture -- each taken by just a few hundred students -- were the exams with the highest pass rates.