As one of the nation’s fastest-growing charter networks, IDEA Public Schools serves nearly 87,000 students across Texas, Florida, and Ohio. IDEA is an “AP for All” district, which means that all students are required to take AP courses and exams. While this model expands access to college-level opportunities to all students, it also amplifies variation in readiness.
With students entering at different levels of writing fluency, reading comprehension, and confidence, AP teachers needed a way to provide fast, high-quality, rubric-aligned feedback at scale. Class Companion by Panorama Education became the tool that helped them dramatically increase the AP exam pass rate while empowering teachers to provide differentiated instruction and maintain manageable workloads.
Challenges
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AP classrooms included students with a range of skill levels, especially in reading and writing.
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While IDEA has always emphasized rigorous data tracking, the intensive reading
load and multi-draft writing demands in AP courses made timely formative tracking
more challenging. -
Slow feedback cycles limited students’ ability to revise their writing and build confidence.
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Teachers wanted a faster way to deliver consistent, rubric-aligned feedback to all learners
Solution
Results
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Across more than 20 campuses, schools with higher Class Companion usage saw larger increases in the number of students earning passing AP scores (3+), with a strong correlation (r = 0.88).
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Over a two-year period, Class Companion helped some teachers quadruple the number of students earning passing AP scores.
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AP Language: grew from 7 students in 2023 to 31 in 2025
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AP U.S. History: grew from 4 students in 2023 to 22 in 2025
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At IDEA Brownsville, high Class Companion usage (1,000+ AI tutoring hours) helped grow AP Literature passing scores from 4 students in 2024 to 24 students in 2025.
Challenges
IDEA Public Schools operates from the belief that rigorous coursework should be accessible to every student. The district’s “AP for All” commitment ensures that every student takes AP courses and exams. This creates AP classrooms with a wide range of readiness levels—including ELL students and students with special education needs—and requires tools that can deliver differentiated support at scale.
IDEA’s commitment to data-driven instruction remained constant. In AP English, however,
the sheer volume of reading and multi-paragraph writing created a practical challenge:
delivering same-day, objective-aligned feedback at scale. “I was feeling really
overwhelmed,” AP Language teacher Julissa Bohannon recalled. “As an English teacher, I
was going to have to read paragraphs or essays and turn feedback around the same day.”
AP English teacher Karen Longoria felt the same strain. “Feedback was slowing us down,” she explained. “By the time students received feedback on what they wrote, most of the time we’d moved on to a new skill. That delay was so difficult for me—especially for students who needed differentiated instruction. I felt like I never got to close those gaps.”
IDEA needed a way to scale the kind of individualized, high-quality writing feedback that AP coursework demands—without overwhelming teachers or slowing instruction.
Solution
Class Companion first arrived at IDEA not through a formal rollout, but through teacher curiosity and word-of-mouth success. The platform entered the district through an early adopter: AP Government teacher Mark Anzaldua who discovered Class Companion and began using it to support writing practice. He shared it with AP U.S. History (APUSH) teacher Dominique Lopez, who quickly saw its value. She then introduced it to Bohannon, whose enthusiasm accelerated adoption.
“I like to play around with new tech,” Bohannon said. “So I started embedding my own rubrics. Once I got the hang of uploading the rubrics and making sure the wording was right, I really loved it.” Class Companion helped her meet the district’s daily data-tracking expectations while strengthening instruction. “I could track data in real time and then give students feedback, and immediately they were able to fix it and improve their score.”
For Longoria, Class Companion solved a long-standing instructional dilemma: “AI allows me to move beyond a one-size-fits-all feedback system.” With 120 AP students, she needed a way to give meaningful feedback without sacrificing depth or burning out. “Like many teachers who focus on writing, I was looking for a way to make feedback faster without losing the quality—especially in AP English Language,” she explained. “I wanted something that didn’t replace my teaching but a tool to amplify my teaching.”
Once AP English Curriculum Manager Marisol Ayala was looped in, she compared IDEA’s College Board-calibrated teacher scores with Class Companion’s AI scoring. As a former College Board reader, Ayala understands AP scoring deeply. She collaborated closely with Avery Pan, Class Companion’s former CEO, to refine the platform’s AP English scoring. This work helped shape the product’s AP English offerings and ensured IDEA teachers received feedback aligned to College Board expectations.
Results
As Ayala analyzed AP performance across teachers and campuses, the impact of Class Companion became unmistakable. The data revealed a clear pattern: teachers and campuses that used Class Companion more consistently saw the largest AP gains.
Teacher-Level AP Score Growth
- AP U.S. History (Lopez): The number of students earning AP scores of 3+ increased from 4 to 21 after just one year of using Class Companion.
- AP English Language (Bohannon): 3+ scores more than quadrupled over just two years.
- 2023 (baseline): 7 students
- 2024 (year 1): 17 students
- 2025 (year 2): 31 students
- AP Government (Anzaldua): Scores rose steadily year over year (9 → 12 → 15).
IDEA also saw gains in the number of students who scored 2+ on the AP exam, a key benchmark the district uses to determine college-readiness. Ayala highlighted this movement: “2+ is where we saw the biggest closing of gaps.”
High-Usage Campuses Saw the Largest Gains
Across the network, the strongest growth appeared on campuses with the most Class Companion activity:
- Campuses with 500+ hours of Class Companion AI tutoring in AP English Language saw significant increases in both 2+ and 3+ scores.
- AP Literature high-engagement campuses demonstrated dramatic growth. For example, Brownsville College Prep’s 3+ scores rose from 4 to 24, and 2+ scores from 6 to 49.
- “Rising campuses”—those offering AP Language for the first time—showed substantial gains as students built confidence and skill quickly.
These patterns reflected a powerful districtwide trend: more practice led to more growth.
Ayala recalled when the impact became clear: a few district leaders began reaching out,
curious about the noticeable increase in AP English scores. Even in a year when AP
Language experienced College Board score recalibrations, the growth trends exceeded
historical performance patterns. The common denominator: teachers who maximized
Class Companion saw accelerated improvement.
Improved Student Confidence and Ownership
The shift wasn’t only in scores—student confidence and engagement grew as well. “I have seen a growth in their confidence and independence,” Longoria said. “My students are more willing to take ownership of their writing.”
Bohannon echoed this transformation. “Students who never felt like they could become good writers are now seeing their scores day-to-day and seeing their own growth.” For many students, the immediate feedback turned writing from something intimidating into something approachable and encouraging.
Building a Culture of Revision
The platform’s immediate rubric-aligned feedback changed classroom culture around revision. Rather than treating writing as a one-and-done task, students began revisiting their work more intentionally. “Revision used to feel like pulling teeth,” Bohannon said. “But now with immediate feedback, students get straight to revision.”
Class Companion also strengthened AP differentiation. “Immediate feedback helps me support students with special learning needs and ELL students,” Bohannon said. It also opened space for meaningful student-teacher conversations. “Students take time to read the feedback and ask questions about what it means,” she explained.
Today, Class Companion by Panorama Education is helping IDEA deliver on its AP for All commitment by making rigorous, personalized writing instruction possible at scale. Teachers remain firmly in control of instruction, using the platform to extend—not replace—their expertise. Students write more, revise more, and learn more, regardless of where they start. IDEA’s success shows that giving timely, high-quality feedback can help every student rise to AP-level expectations.
