Sol Muñoz carried home art supplies from Whitney Young Magnet High School, before her teachers went on strike, to work on projects for her Advanced Placement 3D art class.
But the 18-year-old senior didn’t expect the strike to last so long — 11 school days — and ran out of materials.
“I’m behind,” she told me Wednesday at the Harold Washington Library. “We should be finishing an art piece.”
Muñoz is one of many high achievers attending a Chicago public school who will be bombarded with make-up work in college-level Advanced Placement classes when she goes back to school.
To get college credit, high school students must pass AP exams they take in early to mid-May. In Muñoz’s case, her portfolio of projects must be turned in to the AP College Board on May 8.
CPS and the teachers union agreed Thursday to make up five school days, but extra days in June wouldn’t help AP students. Exams must be taken in May.
The College Board has an alternative test date for most courses, scheduled anywhere from five days to about two weeks after the initial test date, and CPS students or teachers might get to choose between two dates. A College Board spokeswoman told me in an email that the organization is working closely with CPS. The board worked with CPS on a new testing plan for the SAT and PSAT.
Either way, AP students are looking at a lot of cramming sessions and sleepless nights to catch up.
Free online learning programs, such as Khan Academy, have become invaluable for students during the strike, Alexander Kmicikewycz, who teaches AP statistics at Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep and has been part of the national Teach Plus leadership program, told me.
Kmicikewycz said he will keep encouraging his students to use online programs as they prepare for the May exams. “It’s forcing me to think more creatively,” he said of the strike. “How can I use technology-based program to be more efficient with my students?”
Three students I spoke with from Whitney Young, including Muñoz, said they have used web-based programs to study for their AP science classes during the strike.
“It’s better to have actual class time,” said Muñoz, who has three AP classes.
“A teacher to push you,” Joshua Paz, another senior, added.
Already, Chicago students like Muñoz and Paz get a lot less classroom time for high-stakes tests like the SAT and AP than their peers in suburban schools. Many suburban schools start in mid-August, some a full three weeks before Chicago’s post-Labor Day start.
“That’s a significant chunk of time when you’re in a course that moves at the same pace as a college course,” Lisa Bram, a recently retired AP chemistry teacher from High School District 214 in Arlington Heights, told me.
Gina Caneva, a former AP teacher for CPS and currently a librarian at East Leyden in Franklin Park, argued in a Chicago Sun-Times opinion piece in June that former Mayor Rahm Emanuel should have had schools start earlier in the summer when he extended the school year in his first term. She’s right. CPS should look to make the change.
Between the late start to the school year and the strike, city students are five weeks behind suburban students. Yet they can overcome that disadvantage, Roger Gale, who retired this year from teaching math at Waukegan High School, told me.
Five years ago, Waukegan teachers went on strike for a month. Gale said he didn’t notice a steep drop in AP test scores the following spring. His students didn’t seek a later test date.
“You have to change your teaching strategy,” he told me.
Gale, who taught AP Calculus BC and AP statistics, said he shortened quizzes from 30 minutes to five. He allotted two days of class time for material that typically required three days.
“All we did was concentrate on AP exam questions,” he said. “They were not able to get the full width of calculus material.”
High achievers will no doubt recover from the strike. But schools are opening up AP classes to more teens, including those who are good, but not necessarily great, students. Those students could have a tougher time rebounding from the strike.
Bram, the retired northwest suburban teacher, pointed out that students “who are really more challenged in the course, kids who need the support of a teacher to guide them because maybe it’s their first AP class, they’re going to struggle.”
Caneva told me she expects teachers will stay after school to tutor students or hold Saturday classes.
“Most teachers do it already,” she said. In CPS, “we already do so much with so little.”
Marlen Garcia is a member of the Sun-Times Editorial Board
