Washington Monthly - September/October 2021 - 33

the AP classes she wanted. " I'm very persistent, "
she said.
Pressley also discovered that Colgan, where fewer
than one in five students receives free or reduced-price
lunch and a majority are white or Asian, offers a wealth
of AP classes unavailable at her base school. " There are so
many classes that I wish I could have taken, like AP Computer
Science, " she said. " That was never an option to me.
I didn't even know the class existed until I heard one of
my Colgan friends talking about it. "
Over the past 20 years, state and federal policy makers
have heavily subsidized AP's expansion, both to promote
greater college readiness and to catalyze educational
equity. " Our hope (is that AP) can serve as an anchor
for increasing rigor in our schools and reducing the
achievement gap, " then College Board President Gaston
Caperton said in 2006. Today, about 70 percent of all U.S.
public high schools offer at least one AP class, and the
number of students taking AP courses has more than tripled
since 2000. AP has benefited hundreds of thousands
of students who otherwise would have had no exposure
to the rigors of college-level work.
Yet these benefits have so far flowed disproportionately
to white students in affluent school districts. As a
broader mechanism for equity, AP has fallen short, unable
to overcome the powerful structural forces that disadvantage
far too many students.
The program has left behind Black students in particular.
In 2019, Black students made up 15 percent of
all public school students, but they took just 6.3 percent
of all AP exams. For every Black student who scored
a 5 on an AP exam (the highest possible score), 10 students
scored a 1 (the lowest possible). Among white students,
by contrast, 5s outnumbered 1s. Black students are
only about half as likely to pass an AP exam as all students
nationwide, and the difference in overall exam pass
rates between Black and white students has worsened
since 2003 (excluding the statistically strange pandemic
year 2020).
" AP was designed in the 1950s to be a program for
precocious high schoolers who were very privileged, " says
Kristin Klopfenstein, a nationally recognized expert on
Advanced Placement at the University of Denver. " AP is
serving exactly who it's designed to serve, which is mostly
upper-middle-class whites. "
As more colleges and universities go " test-optional "
with the SAT and ACT, AP could end up playing an outsized
role as admissions officers scramble for alternate
standards by which to judge applicants. According to a
2019 survey by the National Association for College Admission
Counseling, " grades in college prep courses " and
" strength of curriculum " are among the top three factors
considered by colleges in making admissions decisions.
For many students, access and success in AP-or the lack
thereof-could become even more determinative.
If the ultimate goal of K-12 education is to offer equitable
access to high-quality curricula leading to greater
college access and success, policy makers need to rethink
their approach to AP and look beyond it. Some schools,
for instance, are experimenting with ways to ensure that
more minority AP students are likely to succeed, such as
adding Spanish-language instruction and class materials
for AP courses at predominantly Latino schools. For some
students, models other than AP might be a better way to
experience college-level work. Dual or concurrent enrollment
at a partnering community college or local fouryear
college is gaining in popularity and so far seems to
have a better track record than AP at enrolling minority
and low-income students. In the 2017-18 school year, according
to the U.S. Department of Education, more than
80 percent of high schools offered dual enrollment, including
90 percent of schools in rural areas.
Over the past 20 years, state
and federal policy makers
have heavily subsidized AP's
expansion, both to promote
greater college readiness and
to catalyze educational equity.
Yet these benefits have so far
flowed disproportionately
to white students in
affluent school districts.
In the meantime, students like Chloe Pressley remain
the exception, not the rule. And instead of closing
educational divides, AP is widening them.
L
aunched in 1955, Advanced Placement was originally
intended " as an academic challenge to a small,
elite group of able students, " according to a 2001
report commissioned by the College Board. In 1970, just
55,442 students took AP courses.
Reformers who discovered AP soon embraced it as
a potentially pivotal tool for achieving educational equity.
Studies from the 1980s and '90s linked AP course
taking to superior college performance. In 1999, the Department
of Education released a highly influential report,
Answers in the Tool Box, which concluded that " Advanced
Placement course taking is . . . strongly correlated
with bachelor's degree completion. " With its standardized
curriculum, rigor, and apparent results, AP seemed
Washington Monthly 33
Washington Monthly - September/October 2021

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