Heritage and Rockdale County High Schools Recognized

Heritage and Rockdale County high schools were named 2016 Advanced Placement (AP) Honor Schools by Georgia State School Superintendent Richard Woods, a distinction Rockdale County Public Schools high schools have achieved for more than six consecutive years.

“I am proud of our teachers, students and administrators and recognize the hard work and dedication it takes to consistently reach this level of excellence,” says Superintendent Richard Autry. “For many years they have achieved this level of recognition for their continued focus on rigorous Advanced Placement coursework. In addition to AP, many students choose Move On When Ready to obtain college credits while in high school. Opportunities for our students are boundless and clearly give our students an advantage whether choosing higher education, the military or the workforce after graduation.”

Both Heritage and Rockdale were recognized in the AP Access and Support and the AP STEM categories. Rockdale County High School was also recognized in the AP STEM Achievement and AP Humanities categories.

Advanced Placement classes and exams are administered by the College Board, which also administers the SAT. AP classes offer rigorous college-level learning opportunities to students in high school. Students who earn a 3, 4 or 5 on the AP exams may receive college credit. RCPS offers AP courses at every high school, including the Rockdale Career Academy and Virtual Campus. Examples of courses include: U.S. History, World History, Economics, Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Calculus, Statistics, American Literature, World Literature and Art.

Definitions of each category provided by the Georgia Department of Education are:

AP Access and Support Schools – Schools with at least 30 percent of their AP exams taken by students who identified themselves as African-American and/or Hispanic and 30 percent of all AP exams earning scores of 3 or higher.

AP STEM Schools – Schools with students testing in at least two AP math courses and two AP science courses (AP Calculus AB, AP Calculus BC, AP Statistics, AP Biology, AP Chemistry, AP Environmental Science, AP Physics B, AP Physics C, AP Computer Science).

AP STEM Achievement Schools – Schools with students testing in at least two AP math courses and two AP science courses and at least 40 percent of the exam scores on AP math and AP science exams earning scores of 3 or higher.

AP Humanities Schools – Schools with students testing in at least one English Language Arts course, two social sciences courses, one fine arts course and one world language course.