About Laying the Foundation
Laying the Foundation®, Inc. (LTF) is a section 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation designed to serve educators by providing a comprehensive Pre-AP* training program including resource and planning guides, in-district training, summer institutes, conferences, and online resources for English, math, and science. The goal of the organization is to support teachers as they prepare students in grades six through eleven to excel in Advanced Placement* and other college-level courses.
The creation of the Laying the Foundation materials began in 2001 when Advanced Placement Strategies*, Inc., the founding organization of LTF, recognized the need for Pre-AP teacher training and rigorous Pre-AP materials to support the APS Incentive Programs in Texas. By the spring of 2002, the first draft LTF English guides were published and distributed at no cost to English teachers at College Board summer institutes in Arkansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. In the fall of 2002, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) awarded APS a grant to provide three years of LTF English teacher training in eight school districts across Texas, and the Laying the Foundation Training Program was born. Also in 2002, work began on the LTF mathematics guides and Laying the Foundation, Inc. became a non-profit company working through Advanced Placement Strategies. Creation of the science guides began in 2003. By 2004 draft copies of the science guides and updated English guides were published, and the first End-of-Course exam was administered to Pre-AP English students, grades 6-10, in the APS Incentive Programs and TEA grant districts.
2005 marked a turning point for Laying the Foundation, Inc., when the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation awarded Advanced Placement Strategies a multi-million dollar five-year grant to provide LTF training for all Pre-AP English, math, and science teachers, grades 6-11, in Austin, Houston, Pasadena and Ysleta Independent School Districts. As part of the grant, LTF began creating online resources, including LTF diagnostic activities and tests for teachers to use at their discretion to raise the level of expectation for students in Pre-AP classes. Another component of the MSDF grant provided for the creation of LTF End-of-Course Tests for English, math, and science. Working with Riverside Publishing Company and experienced AP and Pre-AP teachers, LTF created and scored high quality End-of-Course Assessments. In 2007, over 120,000 Texas students participated in the LTF End-of-Course testing. Due to of the success of its AP Incentive Programs, Advanced Placement Strategies became the model for the National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI), an initiative which seeks to create APS-like companies to replicate the success of APS in other states.
As Advanced Placement Strategies’ Incentive Programs have become more and more successful, APS has been inundated with requests to provide LTF training outside of the state of Texas. Although APS does not operate outside of the state of Texas, Laying the Foundation Inc. is expanding nationally. On January 1, 2008, Laying the Foundation, Inc. and Advanced Placement Strategies officially began operating independently, and LTF was launched as a national Pre-AP training company. While LTF and APS will always be sister companies and support the same goals, the goal of Laying the Foundation is to become a national Pre-AP training company to support the development of AP programs across the country.
