Hewitt-Trussville outperforms national AP Test scores

By Chris Basinger, Staff Writer

TRUSSVILLE, Ala.–Trussville City Schools recently announced that the Advanced Placement (AP) Test scores at Hewitt-Trussville High School were higher than the national average, according to preliminary data.

AP classes are college-level classes, which can count for college credit, offered to high school students.

Tests are graded on a 1-5 scale with a passing score being a 3-5.

Of the 1,752 AP tests taken by 701 HTHS students, 1,327 received a passing score.

Hewitt-Trussville’s passing rate of 75.7% was above the national average passing rate for the same courses offered of 67%.

HTHS saw 11 of its AP courses increase their year-over-year pass rate and three courses have above a 4 average student score–Calculus BC (4.67), United States Government and Politics (4.29), and Precalculus (4.03).

Hewitt-Trussville High School Principal Aaron King attributed the school’s success to its talented teachers as well as training and incentives from A+ College Ready, an organization that partners with schools to help raise academic expectations for all students.

“The people that were hired here have not only the content knowledge but they have a love for kids and a heart for teaching and a lot of patience,” King said.

“We are a school that teachers want to work at so that means we’re able to attract the best and brightest teachers from across the state.”

Just last week, A+ College Ready held a four-day training at Hewitt-Trussville High School in which over 800 teachers attended.

This was the second training held at the school this summer and was for middle and high school teachers from across the state who instruct courses that lead up to AP classes.

“Our mission is really to create a broad and diverse pipeline of students that are well prepared for college, career, and the next steps whatever they choose once they leave,” said Tammy Dunn, the vice president for academic affairs with A+ College Ready.

She added, “We feel like that if we get kids really prepared in middle school and the first couple of years of high school, then when they do take advanced placement that’s gonna be a really easy lift for them.”

In addition to the trainings, middle and high schools in Alabama can also apply to be a part of the A+ College Ready grant, which HTHS is participating in.

Schools who participate receive professional development for all of their teachers and they provide funding for teachers to attend the AP summer institute for their course.

The grant also includes monetary incentives–$100 for students and $100 for teachers for each passing AP test score.

This year HTHS students received $132,700 and teachers received $132,700.

“It’s giving teachers an incentive, and really a reward, for recruiting students to take their course and then providing the support to learn the material and prepare that student for the AP test,” King said.

“And really it’s even better than that for our parents, you know, every qualifying score has the potential of earning college credit so that’s a course that the student wouldn’t have to take in college. And for, you know, like a English 101, English 102 that you can satisfy with AP Language and AP Literature, that’s about $700 per credit hour, those are usually three credit hour courses, so you can save a couple thousand dollars.”

Since joining the program, HTHS has more than doubled its student AP enrollment.

“It’s a hard class but it gives you every opportunity to be successful, and if you can get student success early on in their freshmen year then you can see more success later on,” King said.

***

Correction:

A previous version of this story was titled “‘On par with a state championship;’ Hewitt-Trussville outperforms state, national AP Test scores” and contained data that cited the Alabama AP passing rate as being 36% and the national passing rate as being 57.5%.

Those statistics were provided to The Tribune by Trussville City Schools in a press release which presented them as being from a “Preliminary AP Testing Data Report” provided by The College Board for the 2023-24 school year alongside the Hewitt-Trussville High School passing rates.

The Tribune has since learned that state and national passing rates included in the press release from TCS were from data reported in 2016.

According to HTHS Principal Aaron King, the school obtained the state and national passing rate data from a Google AI search result.

That search result referenced an article from BirminghamWatch, which cited the state passing rate of 36% and the national passing rate of 57.5% as being from 2016.

Since discovering this, King has apologized for the school inadvertently reporting the incorrect figures and The Tribune has worked with HTHS to find more up-to-date statistics in order to make a fair comparison.

According to an article from Higher Ed Dive, The College Board ended the practice of releasing AP test results by state in 2021.

However, The College Board continues to release national AP exam score distributions annually.

Using the new data, King determined that the national AP test passing rate for courses offered by HTHS in 2024 was 67%.

Hewitt-Trussville’s AP test passing rate for 2024 was 75.7%.

A copy of the data is included below: