The Board of Education heard the report from Director of Curriculum Veronica Ruzek concerning the results of the Cambridge Pre-U pilot program. While the program has many merits, it also proved to have key problems with communication with the vending company's administration.
Two years ago, the Farmington High School adopted program developed by Cambridge University. 31 sophomore students were selected in a lottery to take the inaugural course, and 26 followed up with the second course in their junior year. The courses offered were called Global Perspectives, and Independent Research, and students conducted the courses in lieu of English and History courses in their schedules.
The Cambridge Pre-U are the UK functional equivalents to AP courses, with colleges and universities rewarding the successful completion with college credit. The company offered the program to Farmington schools at a reduced rate according to Ruzek, because it was attempting to establish a foothold in the New England region of the country, noting it has gained traction in other places such as Florida.
"We learned a lot of lessons through this pilot program. We learned to navigate this very difficult system...we had to learn every little step of it, but we were good at it," Ruzek said.
The merits of the program included a strong focus on critical reading and writing skills, a rubric scoring system based on the independence of the student, and a strong collaborative relationship between instructor and student. The Cambridge Pre-U offers an outside scoring system for assessments so teacher and student worked in alliance preparing for the outside judging panel.
Students in Farmington scored extremely well in the course. 85% of students scored in the A and B range, and 57% scored in the A range on the international benchmark.
The main concerns of administrators about the Cambridge Pre-U centered around the logistics of the program and the trade off between skill based learning versus content area knowledge.
"The logistics with [Cambridge] were really difficult right now, they are not really settled here in the United States to be supporting us the way we would like," she said.
Ruzek called the pilot program a success even if they do not continue with it because it offered new perspectives on course and instructional design that could be implemented over the broader curriculum. No decision was made at the meeting about continuing with the Cambridge Pre-U.
