The Pampa High School Spanish program has moved within reach of a seemingly unreachable goal… to earn an average of 200 college credit hours per year for ten consecutive years. On April 17, 2024, 18 Spanish 3 students from the freshmen, sophomore, junior, and senior classes at Pampa High School traveled to West Texas A&M University to take the National Spanish CLEP exam. These Harvesters teamed up to earn 112 college credit hours and bring the 10-year program total to 1,955 Spanish college credit hours earned since the Pampa Independent School District made the decision to re-emphasize AP and National testing in academic year 2015. This brings the PHS Spanish program within easy reach of the once unthinkable goal of 2000 college credit hours, or the equivalent of passing 500, 4 hour college Spanish classes.
Breaking 2,000 college credit hours would require the program to duplicate the cumulative efforts of all Pampa High School Spanish programs of the previous forty school years, each year, for ten straight years. However, because of the performances of our incredible students over the last ten years, less than 50 hours are needed to break the magical 2,000-hour mark, which will solidify Pampa as the only academic program to ever achieve such a massive decade of success in this part of the world. The Spanish 4 Advanced Placement group will test on May 16th and has their sights set on performing well on the National Advanced Placement (AP) Spanish Language and Culture Exam. There will be 10 Spanish 4 students taking this year’s exam, making it a safe bet the 2,000 college credit hour mark will fall after the May 16th test is finally graded. The Spanish 4 AP class is full of top talent and each individual Spanish 4 student annually averages approximately 11 hours of college credit earned on the difficult National AP Exam.
Why are the number of College Credit Hours important for our students? These hours allow our students to receive college credit free of charge and they are able to skip introductory classes when entering a college or university! At a conservative $250 per semester hour, 2,000 college credit hours equates to $500,000 in college scholarship money earned since 2015 to pay for higher education costs. More updates in the future will be posted concerning this “Decade of Academic Dominance” displayed by Pampa High School’s amazing Spanish students!