Lakewood Schools Offer Cash Rewards For Successful AP Test Scores

LAKEWOOD, NJ — Lakewood High School students who are taking Advanced Placement courses are being offered the chance to earn some cash, solely based on how they score on the AP exams for those courses.

The district rolled out the program to students on Tuesday at what the district described was a "gala breakfast" to introduce the Advanced Placement Initiative. The cash rewards are being funded by the law firm of Michael Inzelbuch, the attorney for the township's Board of Education.

"The purpose of this initiative is to ensure that Lakewood High School students currently enrolled in AP courses have the academic support necessary to be successful on the AP exams scheduled for May 2019," district Superintendent Laura Winters said in a news release.

"Our devoted teachers have committed extra hours after school, on the weekend, and/or over spring break to prepare our students for these academically challenging exams," the release said.

Advanced Placement exams are designed to test the students' mastery of the material, and are offered in a number of subjects, from mathematics courses to languages to English/language arts, and are scored on a scale of 1 to 5, with a 3 or better deemed proficient. Some colleges accept AP scores of 3 or better as credit for low-level course requirements.

The cash rewards to Lakewood students, which the district says are being funded by a local business, give students who score a 3 on the tests $100. A 4 is worth $200 and a 5 is worth $300.

How many students are included in the initiative is not known.

The College Board, the company that administers AP tests and the SAT, has annually issued an AP Honor Roll to recognize districts achieving good results on the AP exams.

The initiative in Lakewood comes as the district has requested a $16 million loan from the state to close a school budget gap and has received $14 million in additional state aid. Both pieces of funding have sparked frustration in several neighboring districts that are seeing significant reductions in aid from the state Department of Education.

Inzelbuch is paid $600,000 as the Lakewood school district's attorney.

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