Howard High School held a program to hand out checks to Advance Placement students. Howard is one of just 28 schools in the country -- and the only high school in Georgia -- included in a grant designed to increase participation in AP classes. As part of that grant, students get $100 each for every AP English, math or science class for which they get a passing score of 3, 4 or 5. Teachers of AP classes earn $100 for each of their students who gets a passing score. In a morning ceremony, community leaders learned the grant helped boost participation by 173 percent and increased qualifying scores by 156 percent. WOODY MARSHALL — wmarshall@macon.com Buy Photo