Competing against 174,000 other Advanced Spanish students across the United States and its territories, 6 teens from the PHS “Program of Excellence” represented our community in the most incredible way academically possible. One senior, one junior, and four sophomores, graded as a class, returned a perfect score report, posting marks above Texas and Global averages on all 35 sub-categories of the difficult National Advanced Placement (AP) Spanish Language and Culture Exam. The odds of an entire class scoring this consistently carries a probability of 34 billion-to-one and is a once in a lifetime accomplishment for any program. Amazingly, the PHS Spanish 4 AP class has done this twice in the past four years! A perfect AP score report by a class could easily be compared to winning a State Team Championship in high school sports.
AP exams are scored 5 to 1, with 5 being the top score possible. These six students scored nothing but 4’s and 5’s, earning three free college Spanish classes for a 4 and four free college Spanish classes for a 5. The AP Exams require these high school students to be able to work at the level of a college sophomore in areas of reading and vocabulary, writing an essay and a formal e-mail, comparing and contrasting Hispanic cultures, and they are also responsible for understanding every Spanish accent on the planet.
Congratulations to these six students from the Spanish 4 AP Class at Pampa High School. What an incredible performance on the Spanish AP exam and thank you for the way you have represented our school! Additionally, four other members of this class chose to take the College Level Examination Program (CLEP) Exam earlier on March 26th at WTAMU in Canyon. These four students hammered the Spanish CLEP test and earned eight college classes between the four of them. These ten students have proven to be an exceptional group among the many outstanding groups who have made the Pampa High School “Program of Excellence” the standard for language programs in this part of the United States for more than a decade.
By Michael Cole, Spanish Department Head