VIDALIA— Only 1-in-4 Concordia Parish students who took Advanced Placement classes last school year scored high enough to receive college credit, slightly less than the statewide results.

Superintendent Paul Nelson said he wasn’t thrilled with the results of the AP tests at Ferriday, Monterey and Vidalia high schools. Last school year was the first time the tests were administered in Concordia Parish schools.

Nearly 80 students took the AP tests in those schools, according to data released by LDE, and Nelson said only 21 students scored high enough to qualify for college credit.

“This was our first time to do AP in our schools, so we really didn’t know how it was going to work,” Nelson said. “We didn’t do as well as we would have liked, but we had students taking the tests for the first time and teachers teaching the material for the first time.”

The Louisiana Department of Education released AP exam results Thursday. Of the approximately 15,114 public high school students who took AP exams in 2014, 4,542 scored high enough to receive college credit.

Credits earned are transferable to nearly any college in the nation and all colleges in Louisiana.

Concordia Parish schools offered three different AP courses — physics, English language and composition and European history.

Students take the AP courses as part of their regular high-school curriculum and take a test at the end of the year to determine if they can receive college credits.

The AP classes are high-rigor and high-expectation classes that require more in-depth learning and are meant to mirror a college-level class, Nelson said.

The superintendent said more parish teachers have traveled to AP curriculum training sessions this summer and should be well equipped to teach the courses this school year.

“I think we’ll do better the next time around, because our teachers will have a better feel for the material and the classes,” Nelson said. “I feel good about where we’re heading.”

Nelson said the results also helped administrators realize changes needed to be made on certain grade levels to help the students be prepared to enter and succeed in those AP classes.

“We didn’t have anyone pass the physics exams, for instance,” Nelson said. “When we started doing some investigation, we realized most schools are doing their schedules differently to where they’re taking physics as juniors and AP physics as a senior and that tends to help them do better.”

Nelson said high school students will have the option of taking a different series of science classes starting in ninth grade to lead up to taking the AP physics class their senior year.

“We just really didn’t know what to expect with some of these classes,” Nelson said. “But we’re starting to figure out a lot after the first year.”