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Wheeling Park High School Advanced Placement students are showing their academic mettle against the rest of the country -- and they have the numbers to prove it.
At the last Ohio County Board of Education meeting, WPHS Principal Meredith Dailer updated the audience on the success of her school's AP students taking their respective tests. There were 217 students who took 259 exams across 26 AP courses offered at the high school. Seventy-four percent of those students passed and Dailer said that, in half the classes, the students were above the global average.
AP classes are among the most rigorous in high school. Passing an AP test rewards students with college credit they can use after they move on to their respective colleges and universities. In a number of those classes, students achieved a 100% passage rate or close to it in a wide array of subjects -- biology, calculus, music theory, physics, environmental science, chemistry and human geography.
In Jacob Galik's human geography class, all 20 students scored a 4 or 5 on the exam, the highest scores a student can achieve. Galik lauded his students for going the extra mile -- and getting to school extra early -- to prepare.
"When the kids want and need extra help, usually the best time is early in the morning," Galik said. "It takes a special kid to come to school before 7 a.m. for more help."
It also takes a special teacher to instruct these students. Becoming an AP teacher takes extra training, and more time to grapple with new material and structure lessons to teach that type of in-depth critical analysis.
So congratulations to Wheeling Park's AP students and teachers for a job well done in staking their claim to a place among the nation's best.