Franklin Community Schools will offer some of its most academically ambitious students the chance to earn an Advanced Placement Capstone diploma, becoming the first school district in Johnson County to do so.
The school board this week approved changes to its course offerings and will introduce the AP seminar class to juniors and seniors this fall. Juniors will have the chance to take the second of two AP Capstone courses, AP research, their senior year.
The AP Capstone diploma requires students to score at least a three out of five on six separate exams, including in AP seminar and AP research, which can be attached to a companion AP class. At Hamilton Southeastern High School, AP seminar has been used to delve deeper into topics covered in a separate AP language class, said Steve Ahaus, Franklin Community High School principal.
“We’re always looking for more opportunities for our students, things we can add to their experience to prepare them for college or a career. We’re always on the lookout for what other schools are doing or what other colleges are looking for and what opportunities we might be missing,” Ahaus said.
“The capstone program was a way to enhance our AP program. A lot of students take multiple AP courses and we’re trying to prepare them for college and their career.”
The AP seminar class will teach students how to analyze articles, studies and foundational literary and philosophical texts. Students will also listen to and view speeches, broadcasts, artistic works and performances, according to a course description from Franklin Community High School.
Students must take AP seminar as a prerequisite class for AP research, so it won’t be offered until the 2021-22 school year, and will most likely be exclusively for seniors, Ahaus said.
In AP research, students will continue building on the skills they learned in AP seminar, learning ethical research practices, analyzing information and demonstrating their work in a portfolio, ending the course with a 4,000- to 5,000-word paper, according to the course description.
The district won’t have to hire any additional educators to teach the classes, as there most likely won’t be more than one section for each. If the demand is high, however, nobody who qualifies to take the new AP courses will be turned down, Ahaus said.
The two courses will help students as they prepare to tackle intensive courses at post-secondary institutions, and will also demonstrate to those universities that the students who take them are challenging themselves, he said.
“It’s a combination of what you’re getting out of it and what that might mean for opportunities at the next level,” Ahaus said. “At the post-secondary level, generally, research is involved in some level of college work. That specific focus could be beneficial before going to college.”
