Coral Academy of Science - Sandy Ridge is a state-sponsored public charter school that opened its doors in 2012. It is located in Henderson, NV, on the outskirts of Las Vegas, and serves students grades 7-12. Coral Academy of Science is a tuition-free, academically rigorous STEM-focused school that sends students to the Science Olympiad, the statewide Science Bowl, MathCounts tournaments, and LEGO robotics competitions. Students at Coral Academy of Science come from diverse backgrounds: 45% identify as White, 24% Asian, 15% Latino, and 5% African American.
Historically, the state of Nevada’s AP pass rate has hovered around 53%, which is lower than the global average (60%). In the last four years, however, the AP program at Coral Academy has outperformed the state average by nearly 30%. From 2014 to 2018, the percent of students who scored a 3 or higher on AP exams increased from 66% to 81%. In addition to increased pass rate, the size of Coral Academy’s AP program has also grown. In 2014, 49 Coral Academy students participated in the AP program, sitting for 93 exams that May. By 2018, there were 173 students in the program who took 362 exams. Humanities courses — like AP English Language, AP US History, and AP US Government and Politics — enjoyed the widest expansion at Coral Academy.
As a fairly new school working hard to establish itself, Coral Academy investigates resources carefully before choosing to invest. Given the wide range of teachers’ experience at Coral Academy — with 20-year veterans teaching alongside second-year teachers — administrators prefer resources that can be used across experience levels and that emphasize continued training and development. Of the teachers that participated in the Albert Data Study at Coral Academy, 100% received an Albert training. Additionally, the average teacher rated his or her familiarity with Albert an 8 out of 10 (with 10 being “expert-level”). This investment in teacher training meant that teachers easily implemented Albert in their classrooms, which translated to their students. The average teacher rated the engagement of students as 7.2 out of 10 (where 10 is loving Albert).
For this study, nearly 10,000 student guesses were analyzed from approximately 1200 different Albert assignments to better understand how Albert is used in AP classrooms. We collected four years’ worth of data — half from the two years before Albert was introduced, and half from the two years after teachers started using Albert. The data collected included test scores, the number of student guesses, active students, active teachers, and assignments created. The usage measures were used to determine “high usage” and “low usage” subjects on which we conducted further analysis. It was predicted that subjects with higher usage would have greater improvements in AP exam pass rates, and after analyzing the data this is seen to be true.
We broke the subjects studied on Albert into three categories: high usage, medium usage and low usage. High Albert usage means that the average student made over 50 guesses in that subject over the school year, while low usage means that the average student made fewer than 25 guesses in that subject over the school year. We focused our analysis only on subjects that fell into the high or low usage categories.
The baseline pass rate was similar for both groups –- 66% baseline pass rate for the high usage group and 69% for the low usage group. Among the high usage subjects, AP pass rates jumped to 81%, an increase of 15%. However, among low usage subjects, the pass rate only increased by 1% from 69% to 70%. The larger increase in pass rate seen in high usage subjects can be tied to greater exposure to Albert’s AP-style practice questions and high-quality question feedback.
The jump from 66% to 81% observed amongst high usage users demonstrates that engaging with 50 or more questions on Albert throughout the school year can significantly improve outcomes. However, low usage users answering fewer than 25 questions should not expect to see similar outcomes, as their pass rates increased by only 1%.
Coral Academy has worked hard to expand its AP program over the past few years to ensure students are successful in college and beyond. Its investment in Albert to work towards that goal appears to have paid off. In subjects where Albert was used frequently, the percentage of students who scored a 3 or higher on the AP exam improved by 15%. Continued analysis from Coral Academy and other participating schools will be used to confirm the relationship between frequent Albert use and improved AP exam scores.
