By Del Stover
8/24/04 -- Seeking to establish a more rigorous instructional program, more and more high schools are expanding their roster of Advanced Placement (AP) classes -- and encouraging more students to enroll in them.
At least 3,000 schools introduced AP classes to the curricula in the past decade, reports the College Board, which sponsors the nationwide program. Students who take these advanced courses can sometimes earn college credits for them.
Other schools have expanded their offerings in recent years, and since 2000, student enrollment in the program has grown by nearly 200,000. This year, more than 1 million students will take an AP class.
Changing attitudes
Much of this growth is fueled by changing attitudes among educators about the type of students who can benefit from the program, says Lee Jones, the College Board's vice president of K-12 education.
Once seen as the province of elite students, AP classes increasingly are viewed as a valuable experience for any college-bound student.
"The AP program helps to raise the bar and pull up the level of instruction . . . to raise expectations," Jones says. "Schools have had a lot of success in bringing [more] students into the program."
Educators also are coming to realize they've underestimated the number of students who can succeed in these classes, says Gregg Fleisher, president of Advanced Placement Strategies Inc., a Dallas-based nonprofit group dedicated to boosting student enrollment in AP classes.
The impact of this new thinking can be seen in the experience at one Amarillo, Texas, high school, which several years ago had only 70 students enrolled in AP. Two years later, after working to expand its program, the school had 569 students enrolled and 227 students passed a year-end AP exam.
"What kind of school would you want your own child to be in?" Fleisher asks. "Which is the more productive school as far as higher expectations for the academic rigor of students?"
Research supports the contention that students benefit from exposure to college-level coursework in high school.
One federal study found that 59 percent of those who took one AP course later graduated from college, compared to only 33 percent of students who didn't take an AP class. For students who took two or more AP exams, the college graduation rate was 76 percent.
This research is one reason the Guilford County, N.C., school system expanded its AP program and encouraged more students to sign up, says Ann Barr, the district's coordinator for advanced learners.
"The intent of all of this is to give students the best opportunity to be accepted to college, to be successful in college, and to finish college," she says.
AP classes have always been popular with students hoping to earn college credit before graduation. But some of the best advocates of the program are proving to be recent school graduates, says Ralph Plagman, principal of Washington High School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The school offers 24 AP courses.
"Students hear from kids coming back from college that they were better prepared" by their participation in AP classes, he says. "It just sells itself; it's just such a solid program."
Reaching out to minorities
Despite the program's popularity, school officials admit they face challenges in boosting minority participation in the program. That's particularly true with regard to African-American students.
Various reasons are cited for the lack of minority participation. Some blame teachers and counselors for assuming these students cannot handle the academic rigor of AP classes. Others note that minority students are more likely to attend schools with less-qualified teachers and a less-demanding curricula -- and thus could be less prepared academically to take advanced courses.
Some educators are working to turn this around. At Washington High School, counselors and teachers have received training to help them guide students to AP classes where they might be successful.
For example, Plagman says, AP courses vary in their academic difficulty, and while many students do not have the academic background or skills to pass an AP calculus course, many can thrive in an AP psychology or history class.
The school helps students succeed by offering some semester-long classes as a year-long course, allowing students more time to master the material, he says. A "pre-AP" class also is offered to help minority and low-income students improve the reading and writing skills they'll need to succeed in an advanced class.
In Texas, Advanced Placement Strategies is working to help participating schools bolster the training of AP teachers, set up tutoring and summer programs to prepare students for advanced coursework, and subsidize AP exam fees for disadvantaged students.
These efforts have paid off, Fleisher says. Since 1996, the number of passing scores on AP tests at 10 participating schools rose from 361 a year to 1,047. The number of passing scores among African-American and Hispanic students climbed from 29 to 462.
Laying the groundwork
While encouraging school leaders to expand their AP programs, educators also warn against moving too quickly. "You can't parachute AP into a school," Jones says.
For one thing, local school officials need to make sure their middle school and freshman high school curricula are up to snuff. A school system that fails to prepare students academically for advanced coursework is setting up students for failure in AP classes.
"Schools have to start a rigorous academic program in the middle schools to take advantage of AP," Jones says. Schools also need "to improve the preparation of teachers" to teach AP classes.
In Guilford County, which has tripled AP participation in recent years, officials toughened up the middle school curriculum and expanded participation in ninth and 10th-grade honors classes.
"We are focusing heavily now on what we call vertical teaming," Barr says. This means "getting teachers trained in each core discipline, and particularly focusing on the 6-12 curriculum, so that the level of rigor that is expected in AP classes is known down to the sixth-grade teacher."
The county offers a summer evening program for students that teaches the study, organizational, and time management skills needed to succeed in AP classes. The county also uses a College Board service that examines student PSAT scores and suggests AP classes that match students' academic strengths.
"We're working with students and trying to put in place those kind of support systems" that will encourage AP participation, Barr says.
Not all school systems, however, have the resources to provide that support. Smaller, rural schools are particularly challenged by a lack of trained staff or the resources to support an extensive offering of advanced classes. In Iowa, for example, state data shows that fewer than half the state's high schools offered AP classes in 2002-03, the most recent year data is available.
Distance learning
To meet this challenge, a number of distance-learning programs have cropped up across the nation.
The University of Iowa, with the help of federal funding, sponsors the Iowa Online AP Academy, which provides 15 AP classes to more than 1,000 students at 300 mostly rural schools.
The program offers a series of online lectures, coupled with homework assignments supervised by a "site coordinator" in the local high school, says Clar Baldus, the university's program administrator for gifted and rural schools.
Not all districts are pursuing the AP approach, however. Leaders of Iowa's Southeast Webster School District decided it made little sense to invest in AP classes when students can enroll in the local community college and earn dual credit with the high school.
"To me, that makes more sense that doing AP," says Superintendent Mike Jorgensen. "It's a lot simpler, that's for sure."