The Dallas Morning News
Metropolitan Section

"Setting a Solid Course"

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This article was written about Ana during high school after passing a number of O'Donnell sponsored Advanced Placement Exams.

 

The Dallas Morning News: Ariane Kadoch High school senior Ana Tinajero has the course load of a college student.  She hopes to attend MIT when she graduates.

High school students get incentives for passing college-level exams By Linda K. Wertheimer Staff Writer of The Dallas Morning News Saturday, January 8, 2000

Ana Tinajero hurried to learn English in elementary school so she could catch up to her peers.  Now, her peers have to worry about keeping up with her.      At 17, Ana is taking seven college-level courses as a senior in the Science and Engineering Magnet program at the Yvonne A. Ewell Townview Center.      Last school year, she took six such classes, known as Advanced Placement or AP courses, and passed nationally administered exams in five of them.      "It's unbelievable," said Brenda Bradford, Ana's calculus teacher.  "To take so many -- most young people, they just don't get it.  They don't really understand the value of taking those courses."      Ana got the message and something more: $400 for passing exams and full reimbursement for the $75 fees for each exam she passed.      She benefited from an incentive program in 11 Dallas high schools.  The program not only has helped Dallas students but sparked a similar program statewide.      The Dallas-based O'Donnell Foundation pays incentives to students who take the college-level exams and to high school teachers who complete training on how to better teach college material.      If students pass the exam for an O'Donnell-sponsored AP course, they get $100 plus reimbursement of the cost of the exam and the opportunity to get college credit.  Ana, for instance, took five O'Donnell-sponsored courses and passed exams in four, getting $100 for each one.      If students pass the course, but not the college-level exam, the program still covers half their $75 exam fee, and they still get high school credit. Motivating kids      "We are trying to broaden the pipeline to motivate kids who might not be motivated, to get more people on the college track and to prepare them for college," said Peter O'Donnell, president of the foundation created in 1956 by him and his wife, Edith.  They have made education their main focus.      The foundation began the incentive program a decade ago in nine school districts in Ellis and southern Dallas counties.  In those districts, students took 48 AP exams in 1990, the year before the incentives began.  In 1995, the last year of the foundation's commitment, the

number of exams taken rose to 1,099.      After the foundation fulfilled its five-year commitment to those districts and stopped paying the incentives, the number of students taking the AP exams began to fluctuate.  But the number has never dipped below 869, and Mr. O'Donnell said the foundation considers those results a success.      In those districts, other private donors stepped in to partially continue the incentives -- but not to the extent the foundation wanted, Mr. O'Donnell said.  He is hoping that when the foundation finishes its five-year commitment to Dallas this year, other donors will pick up the slack.      In Dallas, statistics show that the incentives have made an impact.  In 1994-95, the year before the program began at nine Dallas high schools, 139 students in those schools passed AP exams in math, science and English; last school year, 703 students passed.      Because of the success of the first O'Donnell initiative, the Texas Education Agency in 1994 began paying $30 of the AP exam cost for any student, said Evelyn Hiatt, the TEA's senior director of Advanced Academic Services.  The state also pays the entire exam cost for students in financial need, she said.      The percentage of Texas students taking the AP exams has grown from 6.8 percent of juniors and seniors in 1994-95 to 11 percent last school year, Ms. Hiatt said.      "Mr. O'Donnell really deserves a lot of credit," she said.  "He really has been an active advocate of this program every legislative session.  He's a believer in this."      When high schools offer college-level courses, the entire school district has to improve, Ms. Hiatt said.  Elementary and middle schools have to teach more difficult courses so students are prepared for tougher classes, she said.      The state does not offer cash incentives to students who pass the exams.  But beginning this year, TEA plans to reward campuses whose students do well on them.  Ms. Hiatt said the state will allot money based on the number of students receiving passing scores on the AP tests.  The TEA will require schools to use the money to improve their academic programs, she said.      Students receive countless benefits from the courses, Ms. Hiatt said.

"When you walk onto a college campus, you're going to be familiar with the kind of work that is expected of you," she said. Daunting workload      Ana was one of a handful of students honored at a recent banquet for students and teachers in the O'Donnell program.      Her college-level course load last year would have been daunting for a university freshman: calculus, computer science, chemistry, English, history and physics.  As a senior, she's taking second-year college courses in most of those subjects, as well as a statistics class.      "You probably couldn't stop this kid," Mr. O'Donnell said.      Ana said she could not have afforded to take so many AP tests without the foundation money. Her mother is a housekeeper; her father is a packager at a food company.      "Every once in a while, we have tough times," Ana said.      At one point, a relative suggested that Rosa, Ana's older sister, drop out of school to go to work to help the family, Ana said.      Ana's parents dismissed the idea.  Rosa graduated last year from another Townview magnet program -- after taking numerous AP courses -- and now is a freshman at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.      Her parents have urged their three children to stay in school.  The youngest, Raul, is a freshman in the science and engineering magnet program.      "They would show us what would happen if we didn't.  They took us to work with them," Ana said.  "I said, 'I want to get an education so I don't have to do this.' "      The incentive money will help pay for visits to college campuses, Ana said.  The tough courses also have brought other rewards: Colleges are wooing her, and she thinks she now has a better chance of being accepted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, her first choice. Whatever college she attends, she believes she will be more prepared.      And, there was another plus for the girl who didn't like being behind her peers even in kindergarten because she knew no English.      Taking tougher classes gives her points for her class ranking.  Ana said she wants to graduate at the top of her class.