Six RBHS teachers involved in AP Exam Leadership Roles
Six teachers at Riverside Brookfield High School have been involved with the College Board AP Exams in various leadership roles, such as Readers, Table Readers, Question Leaders, and Co-Chairs of their department.
AP Exam Readers evaluate and score AP students’ free responses and provide scores that accurately reflect college-level achievement. Generally, the pool of educators scoring is half from high schools and half from colleges/universities. Being invited to be a reader is an honor, as thousands of educators apply across the country and not everyone is selected. If someone is a particularly strong reader, they have the opportunity to be invited back and possibly become a Table Leader. Table Leaders sit with a group of readers and train them to use the rubric accurately to score student work.
Daniel O’Rourke, AP English Language and Composition teacher at RBHS, has been involved in scoring the exams since 2004. He was promoted to a table reader in 2007, and this past year was a Question Leader for his exam. For his exam, question leaders get to select the essays that are used as benchmarks for the rubric to score the other essays. There are only 15 question leaders for the AP English Language and Composition Exam, which is the most popular AP Exam offered across the country, with over half a million students taking the exam in 2023.
“I’ve made good friends across the country over the years,” says O’Rourke. “It’s really good professional development and makes you a better teacher who is able to understand the expectations of the exam better.”
Here are the teachers who have participated in this program and their accolades:
- Dan Bonarigo: AP Computer Science Principles Reading since 2016. Reader, Table Leader, Early Table Leader, Question Leader, and currently one of the Co-Chairs of the AP Computer Science Principles Development Committee for the College Board.
- Sandy Czajka: APCS-A Reading since 2009. Reader, Table Leader, Question Leader, and Exam Leader. Served on the AP Development Committee for seven years as a member, College Board Advisor, and Co-Chair. Continues to help write questions and rubrics for the AP Exam.
- Melissa Gordon: AP Calculus reading for 6 years. Reader for 4 of those years and a table leader for 2. This past year, she was invited as a reader.
- Blair Jensen: Art and Design reader since 2016.
- Lindsay Mynaugh: Statistics reader since 2015.
- Dan O’Rourke: AP English Language and Composition reader since 2004. Reader, Table Leader, and Question Leader.
