Two Alabama high school classrooms at Scottsboro High and Chelsea High recently had a 100% pass rate on students’ Advance Placement tests, a rare achievement.

AL.com also recently highlighted students at a Demopolis High School AP English Literature class who all earned a qualifying score on the AP exam – a score of 3, 4 or 5.

Scottsboro High School student Jackson Moore wanted to highlight his AP Calculus teacher, Cindy Wade, too.

“Over the course of the year,” Jackson Moore wrote, “Mrs. Wade went above and beyond the required duties of a teacher, even offering extra classes on the Saturdays and Sundays leading up to the exam. All her hard work, as well as the hard work of myself and my fellow classmates paid off with our class earning a 100% pass rate.” The statewide pass rate for AP Calculus BC exam for the class of 2022 was 69%.

This is Wade’s seventh year teaching AP Calculus, but it’s the first time all of Wade’s students earned a qualifying score.

Wade couldn’t say enough good things about her 15 students. “It was an exceptional class,” she said. “Their work ethic. They worked hard.”

Her overall teaching career has spanned more than 30 years, but taking on AP Calculus recently was a change of pace.

“It was kind of intimidating having to sit and study,” Wade said, “but I was so glad they asked me because it has been like a rejuvenation for me.”

When AP scores were released on July 5, she said, she rolled over at 6 a.m. to find a text from one of her students telling her he had passed the test. She thought about checking the class’s scores, but family was visiting and she had to get breakfast started.

Wade finally stopped to check her scores and wasn’t sure she was seeing what she was seeing. “I just had to take a second look,” she said. “My sister was there. I said, ‘come look at this.’”

Wade said she has looked at AP pass rates for her students in years past, but she hasn’t focused on that as a goal. She tells her students not to worry about the score. “I tell them if nothing else, I want you to have this rigor for college,” she said.

Like Wade, Chelsea High School teacher Shannon Acton had high praise for the 24 students in her AP Chemistry class – all of whom earned a qualifying score on their AP exam. The statewide pass rate for the AP Chemistry exam for the class of 2022 was 30%.

“With having a high pass rate,” she said, “it meant they had a lot of work along the way to prepare them and they took all that work in stride and they did it. They worked really hard. They were great about asking questions. So I want to compliment the work ethic of those kids.”

Acton just finished her fifth year of teaching; she currently teachers honors and AP chemistry. She said pass rates in previous years have been increasing, but she wasn’t counting on 100% because she had 24 students in one classroom, more than the norm.

“The biggest challenge was making sure I find time to give good feedback to them because we do a lot of practice and a lot of review,” she said. Like Wade, Acton’s students had plenty of other responsibilities. “I had some that were in show choir, some that play baseball, some on the dance team, some that play basketball.”

The night before scores were released, a Facebook group for AP Chemistry teachers said they planned to stay up till midnight to see if the scores were posted, Acton said. “I was like, I’m not staying up till midnight,” she said. “But I’m a very anxious person, so my anxiety and worrying woke me up at 5 a.m. that morning.”

“I was in my bed opening my phone immediately to check the scores. And I started tearing up, I cried, and I woke up my husband and was like, ‘You won’t believe what happened.’”

“I messaged all my kids immediately and was like ‘We had a 100% pass rate, this is the craziest thing that’s ever happened. I’m so proud of you guys.’”

Acton said her class was able to spend the week before the May AP exam reviewing the material because they completed the course material a week early. “This is my first year where I got through all of the content with enough time to also review so I think that helped a lot.”