Westview’s Advanced Placement (AP)

About AP | Courses | Exam Schedule | Results  | Summer Assignments

The Advanced Placement Program sponsored by the College Board, who also administers the SAT I and SAT II Exams, allows students to receive college credit for courses taken in high school. Click here for a more detailed review of the AP Program.

Currently, Westview offers Advanced Placement Courses in

Westview's teaching/learning philosophy is built on the reality that students learn at different rates. Our assessment and grading practices reflect this reality. Students must pass course standards before receiving a passing grade of “C” or higher. 

AP courses at Westview are combined with the appropriate prerequisite course and together form a year-long (two terms/four quarters) AP experience. For example, AP Calculus AB is combined with Honors Pre-Calculus and AP English Literature is combined with British Literature. The AP curriculum is spread throughout the entire year. In most courses AP curriculum begins in August. Students receive a total of 20 credits for the year-long (two terms/four quarters) experience – 10 credits for the appropriate honors course and 10 credits for the AP course. 

AP course content at Westview is more comprehensive than just the AP Exam. Teachers enrich the AP experience with content beyond the AP course outline.  

AP Exams are nationally recognized by all major universities and are a valid, objective, and accurate measure of student performance in an AP course. The College Board states that students receiving a score of 5 are extremely well qualified, 4 – well qualified, 3 – qualified, 2 – possibly qualified, 1 – no recommendation regarding qualification. The University of Texas and Kansas State University use the AP Exam results to assign a letter grade and course units for their incoming freshmen students. Click here to find colleges with AP credit policy information.

AP teachers at Westview may include the AP Exam score in final grade calculation. Teachers will describe in his or her course syllabus the policy regarding the impact a student’s AP exam score on the student’s final grade and which quarter’s grades may be impacted. Students must have passed all course standards to qualify for including the AP exam score in final grade calculation.

The 4-by-4 schedule presents some special challenges when it comes to Advanced Placement classes. In the 4-by-4 system, students take a year long class that is completed in eighteen weeks. If the Advanced Placement courses are taught without some adjustment to that schedule, students taking AP courses in the fall would complete the curriculum at the end of January and there would be a gap of about three months before the test. If Westview only offered AP courses in the spring, students would only be in the AP course for approximately 12 weeks before the exam in early May. To address this issue, Westview has created linked courses for Advanced Placement. Courses such as Honors Biology, AP Biology; Honors Chemistry, AP Chemistry; JAVA Programming, and AP Computer Science are linked to give students the entire year to work on the combined curriculum of Honors and AP.