AP, IB exam accomplishments bring $3.8 million in bonuses

Arizona high school teachers and schools will get $3.8 million this year in state bonuses as reward for helping students pass Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate exams.

The state has divvied up the first round of bonuses under a program called the “college credit by examination incentive program.”

Proposed by Gov. Doug Ducey and signed into law in 2016, the program awards bonuses to teachers based on the number of students in their class who pass a qualifying exam for college credit.

Even though the program offers extra money per test to schools serving more low-income students, an analysis by The Arizona Republic indicates that the state’s wealthiest suburban district and charter schools are still pulling in the most cash.

Schools with mostly low-income students get $450 per passing student; all other schools get $300 per student. Teachers directly responsible for the passing scores get at least half of the money under state law. School principals must earmark the rest for teacher professional development or student support.

Dawn Wallace, who oversees the governor’s Office of Education, said the program’s aim is to encourage schools that offer limited or no AP courses to offer more. And in expanding course offerings statewide, the program will help build confidence in students who wouldn’t otherwise find themselves doing college-level work in an advanced course, she said.

“There are students who are going to

be challenged to be better because they’re given the opportunity to do so,” she said.

If they pass their AP tests, students can also receive college credit and avoid paying tuition on required general education courses.

Because this is the first year the funds are being dispensed, it’s too early to tell whether more schools are offering AP courses.

The program has faced critics who said the rewards-based program would exclude impoverished students who can’t afford a $94 AP exam fee and rural students whose schools can’t recruit enough teachers to offer AP classes.

“It’s the exact opposite of what you were trying to design if you were trying to close the achievement gap,” Dana Naimark, president of the Children’s Action Alliance, said.

The achievement gap refers to a disparity in student performance based on factors such as ethnicity or income level.

The program may also have an unintended consequence for teachers.

In some cases, a single teacher is collecting the windfall for what is often years of learning from many teachers. And as a result, teachers are now incentivized to fight for more lucrative jobs teaching top-tier students in top-tier schools.

“We know that our requests from teachers to teach AP courses and IB courses have increased,” Matt Strom, an assistant superintendent at the Chandler Unified School District, said.

Chandler dispensed funds to teachers for the first time this month.

About $2.9 million went to district and charter schools in Maricopa County and $673,200 went to district and charter schools in Pima County, the state’s two biggest counties.

That left a combined $235,650 for Arizona’s other 13 counties, according to an analysis by

In other words, 94 percent of the bonus money was doled out to schools in counties serving about 80 percent of the state’s high school students. Schools in four small counties received no money at all.

Schools in Chandler and BASIS charter schools were awarded much of the money. The schools with the largest awards were:

❚ Hamilton High School in Chandler, $213,000.

❚ University High School in Tucson, $161,700.

❚ BASIS Chandler, $154,800.

❚ Perry High School in Chandler, $153,900.

❚ BASIS Scottsdale, $147,300.

❚ BASIS Tucson North, $112,800.

❚ Pinnacle High School in the Paradise Valley Unified School District, $95,100.

❚ Chaparral High School in Scottsdale, $87,900.

❚ Basha High School in Chandler, $84,000.

❚ Mountain View High School in Mesa, $81,900. A handful of schools like Heritage Academy in Laveen and South Mountain High School in Phoenix got as little as $300 or $450 — meaning just one student’s test results qualified the school for a bonus.

No school with more than half of its students considered to be from low-income families received more than $40,000 in bonus money.

On the west edge of the state, La Paz County has two public high schools: Parker High School and Salome High School.

Neither offers AP classes, Jacque county superintendent, said.

It’s hard enough recruiting any teacher to a county with just one movie theater, one Safeway, one Walmart and one Food City, let alone a teacher willing to teach an AP class, which takes extra training, she said. Price, La Paz’s

“None of our communities have access to adequate amenities,” she said. “There are a lot of barriers to recruiting teachers to this area... (Like) health care: We have one hospital in the county.”

Officials at Parker High School typically struggle to fill 8-15 job openings a year, Price said. They often resort to filling those jobs with long-term substitutes, and the two La Paz high schools experience “constant turnover” in employees.

The schools partner with nearby Arizona Western College for dual-enrollment classes, which adds extra work on already-overloaded teachers, according to Price. Those classes offer rigor similar to AP classes, she said, but do not offer exams qualifying teachers for bonuses.