By Dashiell Young-Saver (AP Stats teacher, founder of Skew The Script)
“Don’t expect them to pass.”
These were the words of advice shared with me by a former teacher at my first school. I had just told him that the school brought back its AP Statistics class and that I was teaching it.
Often, it seemed like the world had already written a script about students in Title I schools on the southside of San Antonio. According to that script, they weren’t going to pass an AP Exam in math. Or, more precisely, their scores would look like this:
According to that script, the distribution of scores would be right skew — many low scores on the left, and only a few high scores on the right. So, this inspired a new “class logo” that I started putting in the upper right corner of our handouts:
The left skew logo showed the goal: to achieve more high scores. And the phrase that accompanied it, “skew the script,” became our classroom motto. Students stepped up to the challenge. They worked incredibly hard and performed above the “scripted” expectation.
When the pandemic happened, I created a website to share our class materials online. Of course, a name and a logo for the website immediately came to mind. I cleaned things up in the Microsoft Word doc I had for the logo, making the curve thicker and giving it a nicer shade of blue. Then, the logo premiered on the newly registered domain: skewthescript.org.
Now, six years after the website’s launch, we’ve grown tremendously. As our logo started getting used in more materials and more places, we realized that it was time to get some professional help with developing a refreshed and cleaner look. Of course, the left skew curve would remain the focal point. But we wanted to see what else was possible. Well, the results are in, and we’re excited about it. Take a look!
We’re excited about the new look, and we’re going to start incorporating the updated logo across our website, curricula, and other materials shared with the community. The new logo and colors will also appear throughout our forthcoming revised AP Statistics curriculum (for the new CED) and brand new High School Statistics curriculum (for on-level courses). Both courses will have their initial releases in June.
It’s a new look, but rest assured that it’s the same story, approach, and team. We’re excited to keep bringing you free, genuinely relevant math content — now with a slightly more aesthetic touch.
Let’s skew it!