Dive Brief:
- Even students who don't score high enough on AP tests to earn college credit benefit from the rigor and high expectations of being enrolled in AP-level courses, according to one University of Houston researcher.
- With fewer colleges potentially accepting AP scores in place of college credit, as noted by NPR, and schools and districts being inconsistent in their encouragement of students to take these classes, there is a need to reinforce the benefits of enrollment.
- Increasing more students to take the AP test has led to lower pass rates, presenting a challenge for struggling high schools trying to weigh how to allocate resources.
Dive Insight:
Ultimately, there should be no question of whether schools should be offering as many AP courses as they can support, regardless of educators' own beliefs around the population's ability to excel in these courses. Droves of research has proven that students of all backgrounds rise to the expectations of their teachers and principals. If there is an expectation of higher achievement, and if the proper supports are provided by the school to help students raise their level of learning, any student can succeed.
The focus, then, should be on providing the proper amounts of training for teachers to ensure they can adequately support students and are themselves embodying a growth mindset. But there must also be a concerted effort to hire subject-matter experts to teach these courses, rather than generalists or, worse, people who may have entered education without the requisite passion and motivation to improve student outcomes. A culture of student learning and success has to come from the top-down, and should be a visible priority from the district leadership all the way down to the classroom teacher.