Donald H' Dutkowsky

1

• Donald H. Dutkowsky
• Professor of Economics
• Syracuse University
• Phone Number 315-443-1918
• dondutk_at_maxwell.syr.edu
• Gerald S. Edmonds
• Director
• Syracuse University Project Advance
• (http//supa.syr.edu)
• Phone Number 315-443-2404
• gedmonds_at_syr.edu

2

• Should a High School Adopt
• Advanced Placement or a
• Concurrent Enrollment Program?
• An Expected Benefit Approach
• By
•  
• Donald H. Dutkowsky
• Jerry M. Evensky
• Gerald S. Edmonds
• Education Finance and Policy 3
• (Summer 2009), 263-77.
•  

3
Advanced Placement (AP) Versus Concurrent
Enrollment Programs (CEP)

• Both offer challenging college or college-level
  courses to high school students.
• Both are taught by a high school teacher who has
  been trained by the program.
• Both offer the potential for the student to
  receive college recognition (credit, placement,
  advanced standing), decided upon by the college
  or university where he/she matriculates.
• Both have no annual cost to the high school for
  offering the course or exam, but students incur a
  charge.

4
Advanced Placement (AP) Versus Concurrent
Enrollment Programs (CEP)

• Eligibility for college credit.
  CEP course grade
  AP performance on AP exam
• Higher probability for receiving college credit
  and therefore tuition savings comes from CEP
  than AP.
• Cost for AP exam is lower than the tuition for
  the CEP course.

5
The Purpose of Our Study

• To provide an explicit, formal framework for
  evaluating the financial benefits and costs of
  CEP versus AP into a single equation.
• To determine conditions for when AP is favored
  and when CEP is favored, based upon the criterion
  of Expected Benefit.
• Purely a cost-benefit analysis, abstracts from
  relative quality issues (assumes CEP and AP
  courses have equal quality).

6
The Purpose of Our Study

• To provide a numerical simulation with realistic
  assumptions to estimate actual breakeven points
  for favoring CEP or AP, based upon Syracuse
  University Project Advance (SUPA).
• To provide an operational gauge for an individual
  high school to determine whether to choose a CEP
  or AP (or both) for a given subject.

7
Data on Granting College Credit CEP and AP

• We took random samples of institutions of higher
  education (source Carnegie Classification) to
  find out their policies for granting college
  credit for CEP courses and AP exam scores.
• 60 Research/ Doctoral Universities (out of
  282).
• 80 Masters Colleges and Universities (out
  of 665).
• 100 Baccalaureate Colleges (out of 766).

8
Table 1Number of Colleges and Universities
Accepting or Rejecting CEP and AP for College
Credit

• --------------------------------------------------
  --------------------------------------------------
  -----------------------
• CEP Courses
  AP Exam
• 
  -----------------------------------------------
  ----------------------------------------------
• Classification Accept Reject No
  Information Accept Reject No Information
• --------------------------------------------------
  --------------------------------------------------
  -------------------------------------------
• Doctoral 37
  1 22 52 1
  7
•  
• Masters 31
  0 49 75 0
  5
•  
• Baccalaureate 30 1
  69 81 0 19
•  
• Overall 98 2 140
  208 1 31
• --------------------------------------------------
  --------------------------------------------------
  -----------------------
• Notes. The data are compiled from information
  provided by the individual websites of the
  colleges and universities in the sample. For CEP
  we also use records of SUPA, based upon student
  surveys regarding acceptance or rejection of
  their course for college credit.

9
Table 2Number of Colleges and Universities
Granting
College Credit for AP Exam Performance(Minimum
Acceptable Scores of 3, 4, and 5)

• --------------------------------------------------
  --------------------------------------------------
  ----------------------------------------
• Classification/Course Calculus AB
  Macroeconomics English
  Literature
• --------------------------------------------------
  --------------------------------------------------
  ----------------------------------------
• Doctoral (37, 15, 1)
  (28, 19, 2)
  (26, 24, 2)
•  
• Masters (55, 7, 0)
  (49, 10, 0)
  (51, 11, 0)
•  
• Baccalaureate (51, 22, 1)
  (42, 26, 1)
  (44, 25, 3)
•  
• Overall (143, 44, 2)
  (119, 55, 3)
  (121, 60, 5)
•  
• National Percentage of
• Students Receiving
• Minimum Score, 2007 (58, 39, 20)
  (54, 37, 13) (61,
  28, 7)
• --------------------------------------------------
  --------------------------------------------------
  -----------------------------------------
• Notes. Data on the colleges and universities
  policies toward granting credit based upon the AP
  exam score come from their individual websites.
  Percentages in the last row are computed from
  data on national distributions of AP scores
  provided in the website http//www.collegeboard.co
  m/student/testing/ap/exgrd_sum/2007.html.

10
Advanced Placement (AP) Versus Concurrent
Enrollment Programs (CEP)

• Eligibility for college credit
• CEP course grade
• AP performance on AP exam.
• Higher probability for receiving college credit
  and therefore tuition savings comes from CEP
  than AP.
• Cost for AP exam is lower than the tuition for
  the CEP course.

11
The Role of NACEP

• The National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment
  Partnerships (NACEP) formed to establish
  uniform quality standards for member CEP.
• High school courses must be the same as those
  taught at the sponsoring institution.
• Actively involving college faculty to ensure
  content coverage and teaching quality.
• Faculty site visits when course is offered.
• Continued professional development for high
  school teachers.
• Ultimate goal signal to receiving college or
  university of course quality for routine
  determination of college credit.

12
The Formal Framework A Primer on
Expected Value

• Example Suppose I offer a game that costs 2.00.
  The game consists of you rolling a fair die
  once. If it comes up a 4, you win 10.00 (not
  counting your admission fee). If it comes up any
  other value, you lose.
• Expected Winning
  
• (10.00 - 2.00)(1/6) (-2.00)(5/6)
  -0.33.

13
Application to Expected Benefit The Problem
to Examine

• Consider a typical college-bound student in a
  given high school who is interested in taking
  such a class. Should this high school fulfill
  this need by offering a AP or a CEP course?

14
Application to Expected Benefit The
Quantitative Framework

• Define the following variables.
• PCEP probability that student would
  receive college credit for the CEP
  course.
• PAP probability that student would
  receive college credit for the AP course.
• T cost of corresponding course for
  full-time students at the college or
  university where he/she matriculates.
• TCEP cost of CEP course.
• TAP cost of AP exam.
• r interest rate of one-year financial
  instrument.
• T/(1 r) present value of next years
  tuition.

15
Expected Benefits CEP and AP

• Expected Benefit (CEP Course)
• T/(1 r) TCEPPCEP -TCEP1
  PCEP.
• Expected Benefit (AP Course)
• T/(1 r) TAPPAP -TAP1 PAP.
• Efficient Choice for High School Program with
  the Higher Expected Benefit.

16
The Breakeven Condition

• We derive the condition where
• Expected Benefit (CEP Course)
• Expected Benefit (AP Course).
• Substituting for the Expected Benefits and doing
  some algebraic rearrangement gives us the
  following breakeven equation.

17
The Breakeven Equation

• T (1 r)(TCEP TAP)/(PCEP PAP)
• If T gt right-hand-side of equation, then CEP is
  favored.
• If T lt right-hand-side of equation, then AP is
  favored.

18
A Simulation Exercise (Based upon
SUPA)

• Work with the following numerical values.
• PCEP 0.88
• TCEP 330 (based upon 3 credit hour course)
• 660 (based upon 6 credit hour course)
• TAP 83
• r 0.03

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Figure 1 Breakeven Points Between AP and CEP

•  
•  

20
Table 3Simulated Breakeven Points for CEP versus
AP (SUPA), Based Upon Probability of Student
Obtaining Credit From AP Exam Score

• --------------------------------------------------
  --------------------------------------------------
  ----------------------
• 
  Breakeven Points ()
  
  
  
  
• 
  ------------------------------------------
  -------------------
• PAP 3 Credit Course
  6 Credit Course
• --------------------------------------------------
  --------------------------------------------------
  ----------------------
• 0.20 374 874
• 0.25 404 943
• 0.30 439 1025
• 0.35 480 1121
• 0.40 530 1238
• 0.45 592 1382
• 0.50 670 1564
• 0.55 771 1801
• 0.60 909 2123
• 0.65 1106 2584
• 0.70 1414 3302
• 0.75 1957 4572
• 0.80 3180 7428
• --------------------------------------------------
  --------------------------------------------------
  ----------------------

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Table 4Tuition Costs, Academic Year 2007-08

• --------------------------------------------------
  --------------------------------------------------
  ------
• College or University
  3 Credit Course 6 Credit Course
• --------------------------------------------------
  --------------------------------------------------
  ------
• Onondaga Community College 328
  656
•  
• SUNY Binghamton
• In-State Residents 435 870
•  
• SUNY Binghamton
• Out-of-State Residents 1061 2122
•  
• Le Moyne College 2428 4896
•  
• Syracuse University 3047 6094
• --------------------------------------------------
  --------------------------------------------------
  ------
• Notes. Tuition costs come from the schools
  websites. Data in the Table are computed based
  upon annual tuition and a class schedule of 30
  credit hours for the academic year. Tuition costs
  for Le Moyne College pertain to the 2008-09
  academic year.

22
Conclusions From Study

• The study puts forth an explicit means of
  weighing the financial benefits and costs to a
  CEP versus AP for students within a given high
  school.
• High school personnel can use this framework to
  decide which is the more effective program for
  offering college or college-level courses, given
  the characteristics of their college-bound
  students.

23
Main Results From Study

• CEP is favored for high schools where their
  college-bound students perform on the AP exam at
  or below national norms or attend private
  colleges and universities.
• AP is favored for high schools where their
  college-bound students perform on the AP exam
  above national norms or incur relatively
  inexpensive costs for attending college.

24
Deciding Between CEP and AP Other Factors

• Ability of courses to increase probability of
  acceptance into institutions of higher education.
• Role of such courses in increasing the likelihood
  of college success (Principals
  Partnership 2007, Klopfenstein and Thomas 2009).

25
Deciding Between CEP and AP Other Factors
(Continued)

• Fundamental educational benefits of the CEP
  course versus the AP course for students and
  teachers (Dutkowsky, Evensky, and Edmonds 2003,
  2006, 2008).
• Actual quality of courses (Dutkowsky, Evensky,
  and Edmonds 2006).

26

• Education Why They Are the Best
• By Jay Mathews Newsweek Web Exclusive
•  
• NEWSWEEK's list of America's best high schools,
  this year with a record 1,258 names, began as a
  tale of just two schools. They were Garfield High
  School, full of children of Hispanic immigrants
  in East Los Angeles, and Mamaroneck High School,
  a much smaller campus serving very affluent
  families in Westchester County, N.Y. I had
  written a book about Garfield, and the success of
  its teachers like Jaime Escalante in giving
  low-income students the encouragement and extra
  time they needed to master college-level Advanced
  Placement courses and tests. I was finishing a
  book about Mamaroneck, and was stunned to find it
  was barring from AP many middle-class students
  who were much better prepared for those classes
  than the impoverished students who were welcomed
  into AP at Garfield. That turns out to be the
  rule in most U.S. schoolsaverage students are
  considered not ready for, or not deserving of,
  AP, even though many studies show that they need
  the challenge and that success in AP can lead to
  success in college.
• Nearly everyone I met in New York thought
  Mamaroneck was a terrific school because its
  parents were rich and its state scores high, even
  though its building was in bad shape and its
  policy of reserving AP only for students with top
  grades made no sense. Nearly everyone I met in
  Los Angeles thought Garfield was a terrible
  school because its parents were poor and its
  state scores low, even though it was doing much
  more to prepare average and below-average
  students for college than any other school I
  knew. It was like rating restaurants not by the
  quality of their food, but by the bank accounts
  of their customers.
• I was covering Wall Street for The Washington
  Post at that time, and not liking the job much.
  My life was ruled by indexesthe Dow Jones, the
  Standard Poor's. I decided to create my own
  index to measure something I thought was more
  importantwhich schools were giving their
  students the most value. This would help me show
  why Garfield, in a neighborhood full of auto-body
  shops and fast-food joints, was at least as good
  a school as Mamaroneck, in a town of mansions and
  country clubs.
• Test scores, the usual way of rating schools,
  are in nearly every case a measure of parental
  wealth and education, not good teaching. Every
  study shows that if your parents fill their house
  with books, include you in conversations and take
  you to plays and museums, you tend to score well
  on standardized tests even if your school is not
  the best. So, with the help of some astute AP
  teachers, I developed a scale called the
  Challenge Index, which used each school's rate of
  participation in college-level tests like AP to
  indicate which schools were the most demanding
  and supportive of all students. I took the total
  number of AP tests (later adding International
  Baccalaureate and Cambridge tests) taken each
  year and divided by the number of graduating
  seniors, so that big schools would not have an
  advantage over small schools. AP, IB and
  Cambridge were important because they were
  challenging (students could get college credit
  for good scores) and incorruptible (outside
  experts wrote and graded the exams). Just taking
  the course and the test mattered more than the
  score because even struggling AP students learned
  a great deal.

27
The Ultimate Goals

• To work toward a truly free-market competitive
  environment for the choices of college or
  college-level courses within high schools.
• To have each choice strive to offer the highest
  quality of service to students and high school
  personnel for the price.

28
The Ultimate Goals (Continued)

• To eliminate market power, incomplete
  information, or other devices that distort
  free-market competition.
• To have as many eligible high school students as
  possible gain the benefits of these courses
  taught in the highest quality environment for a
  nation and world that needs the increased human
  capital.

29
Cited Research (Presentation)

• Dutkowsky, D. H., J. M. Evensky, and G. S.
  Edmonds. Improving economic literacy The role
  of Concurrent Enrollment Programs.
  http//ssrn.com/abstract476146, December 3,
  2003.
• Dutkowsky, D. H., J. M. Evensky, and G. S.
  Edmonds. Teaching college economics in the high
  schools The role of Concurrent Enrollment
  Programs. Journal of Economic Education 37 (Fall
  2006), 477-482.
• Dutkowsky, D. H., J. M. Evensky, and G. S.
  Edmonds. Spillover Effects From Concurrent
  Enrollment Programs in Increasing Economic
  Literacy in the Basic Economics Course An
  Econometric Analysis. Syracuse University
  working paper, 2008.
• Klopfenstein, K. and M.K. Thomas. The Link
  Between Advanced Placement Experience and Early
  College Success. Southern Economic Journal 75
  (January 2009), 873-91.
• The Principals Partnership. Research Brief AP
  Courses Versus Dual Enrollment,
  www.principalspartnership.com/apdualenrollment.pdf
  ,
• November 5, 2007.