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College Prep Courses Need Smaller Classes, Lindbergh Officials Say

Nearly one third of this year's seniors will take either classes geared toward earning college credit or advanced college placement.

A growing number of Lindbergh students are benefiting from the high school's honors program, and now school officials hope the school board will heed numerous recommendations to improve the program—including reducing class sizes.

Nearly one third of this year's seniors will take either classes geared towards earning college credit or advanced college placement as part of Lindbergh's Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) Honors Program, Lindbergh Assistant Superintendent of Personnel Services Rick Francis reported to the board of education Tuesday night during a meeting at the Lindbergh Early Childhood Education building.

Francis reported 31 percent of last year's seniors and 43 percent of all seniors in the past five years have participated in the program. Those percentages follow a trend of increasing participation in the program in the past five years. For example, 24 percent of seniors participated in the program in 2007.

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Overall, student participation has jumped from 306 students in 2007 to 473 students in 2011. During the same five-year period, the district's scores on the ACT, a college entrance exam, have consistently climbed from 23.2 to 24.2.

Lindbergh offers 23 AP and IB courses for students. The AP courses are designed to help Lindbergh graduates pass exams in order to be granted college credit or waive similar courses. Lindbergh students passed 254 such exams in the previous school year, Francis reports, with local students passing the exams significantly more often than state and national averages.

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Francis hopes to build on the program's gains through a series of recommendations given to the board for their consideration and funded through the district's curriculum and instruction department.

Key amongst the recommendations is reducing class sizes. Class sizes have been bolstered through the program’s increased enrollment and loss of instructors during past budget cuts. 

Francis recommends replacing full-time instructors cut during the budget process, developing programs with students attending technical schools and community colleges for half of the school day, and eliminate current courses with low enrollments and little impact on students’ post-Lindbergh plans.

Other recommendations include:
• expanding career counseling at both middle schools and the high school to ensure students academic choices are aligned with their career goals,
• develop a plan with administrators to recruit honors instructors with cultural diversity, and
• consider creating the IB career-related certificate—a program focused on  students developing a broad range of career-related skills.

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