Over the last 10 years, the College Board’s Advanced Placement expansion efforts have nearly doubled the number of students who have been given access to the opportunities AP repeatedly proves to offer, including greater college preparedness and potential cost and time-savings through credit-granting policies. We are especially proud that low-income students have made up a significant part of that growth.
However, we still have a long way to go. The PSAT is currently the best indicator of a student’s potential to succeed in certain AP courses. But last year alone there were nearly 300,000 students with this potential who didn’t take an AP course for which they were qualified.
The gap between earning the opportunity and seizing it is most pronounced among traditionally underserved minority populations. For example, only 3 out of 10 African-American students with high potential for success in AP science course work take an AP science course.
One essential approach is to continue to bring AP into schools with these academically prepared and motivated students, particularly those with large minority and low-income student populations. To that end, we have developed partnerships with the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation to launch 150 new AP courses reaching more than 9,000 low-income students in the next three years, and with Google and DonorsChoose.org to create 500 new AP STEM courses in public schools and enable more women and minorities to excel in science and math. The latter project enabled 10,000 students who did not previously have access to AP courses to take AP exams this past May.
But ironically, our greatest challenge may be to get more qualified students into AP classes in schools where AP already exists. A shocking two-thirds of students with AP potential who do not take AP classes attend schools that do in fact offer AP in their curriculum.
The reasons are complex and manifold, but one thing is clear. According to public opinion research, the most powerful factor that turns a potential AP student into a registered AP student is the spirited encouragement and enthusiastic support of a teacher, counselor, or school administrator. In other words, adults who work in schools have enormous influence and can, by reaching out to a student with AP potential and encouraging her or him to take AP classes, quite literally change the education trajectory of that student. In schools with high percentages of underrepresented students, the cumulative impact can be incalculable. That’s why we started “All In.”
All In is a College Board campaign that aims to unite educators, administrators, communities, and students themselves in an effort to ensure that every African-American, Latino, and Native American student with AP potential enrolls in at least one AP class and that every ounce of talent is given the chance to blossom instead of wither.
