What We Do At Challenge Success, we believe that our society has become too focused on grades, test scores and performance, leaving little time and energy for our kids to become resilient, successful, meaningful contributors for the 21st century. So every day, we provide families and schools with the practical research- based tools they need to raise healthy, motivated kids. Success, 2013 after all, is measured not at the end of the semester, but over the course of a lifetime. The Advanced Placement The next generation will face global, economic, and social challenges Program: Living Up To Its that we cannot even imagine. What are the skills our children will need in Promise? this uncertain future? Above all else, they will need to be creative, collaborative, adaptable critical Overview thinkers. Our current hyper-focus on The College Board’s Advanced Placement (AP) program is grades, individual achievement and considered by many to be the gold standard for a top- rote answers gets in the way of notch high school education, and it is often heralded as a healthy emotional development and powerful tool for achieving educational equity, but is it? This a real love of learning, and it also paper, based on extensive review of the literature, will prevents students from acquiring the consider: exact skills that the new global Does taking AP classes make students more likely to economy demands. succeed in college? Founded by Madeline Levine, Jim Does taking AP classes boost a student’s chances of Lobdell, and Denise Pope at Stanford college admission? University, Challenge Success offers research-based courses, Does taking AP classes make college more conferences, and presentations for affordable? educators to develop school and classroom policies that encourage Does the AP program help to narrow achievement students to reach their individual gaps? potential, develop their talents and interests, and remain enthusiastic Does the AP program enrich students’ high school learners. We provide tools for parents experiences? to help children regain their balance, strengthen their sense of self, improve Are schools with an AP program better than those their physical health, and learn how without? to deal effectively with the inevitable challenges of life. For more We conclude by offering a series of recommendations for information, visit our website. educators and students aimed at making the Advanced Placement program a net positive. The College Board’s Advanced Placement (AP) program, aimed at making college-level courses available to high school students, is considered by many to be the gold standard for a Four Common top-notch high school education and is often heralded as a powerful tool for achieving educational equity. Since its Claims about inception in 1955, and particularly over the past two decades, the AP program has expanded rapidly. Currently, the AP the AP Program program offers 37 courses in a wide variety of subject areas including math, science, English, history, social sciences, art, and world languages. The College Board (2009) reported that from 2004 to 2009, the number of students taking AP courses rose by nearly 50%, reaching 1.6 million, and there is continued 1 momentum to add additional courses, revise current offerings, The AP program and reach more students in more schools. The College Board and other proponents claim that the AP program can help gives students students succeed in college, narrow the achievement gap, and several level the playing field for traditionally underserved high schools and students. advantages in terms of college Yet as it has grown, the AP program has become more controversial. Some worry that it has been oversold, distorted, and that real collateral damage is being wrought, straining 2 schools, rewarding rigid, superficial memorization, and discouraging true intellectual curiosity in students. The AP program What does the research show? Is there value to the AP helps to narrow program? Does the AP program do more harm or good? In this achievement paper, we examine four common claims about the AP experience. Our discussion is rooted both in the history of the AP gaps and in a careful review of over 20 research studies on the topic, including those presented by leading researchers in the 3 comprehensive volume resulting from a 2007 research conference on the AP program at Harvard University (Sadler, Sonnert, Tai, & Klopfenstein, 2010). We conclude with suggestions AP programs for educators, parents, and students. enrich students’ Claim #1: The AP program gives students several advantages in high school terms of college This claim is actually comprised of three separate points: experiences 1. Taking AP classes makes students more likely to succeed in college 4 There is an ongoing debate between those who claim a direct relationship between participation in AP courses in high school Schools with AP and academic success at the college level, and those who don’t believe there is a causal relationship. Champions of the AP programs are program claim that students who take AP courses tend to earn better than those better grades in college, work harder, take less time to graduate, and are generally more likely to succeed in college without AP than are students who do not take AP classes. programs In fact, several studies link high school AP experiences to college success and college completion (e.g., Morgan & Ramist, 1998; www.challengesuccess.org © 2013 Challenge Success 2 Morgan & Maneckshana, 2000). However, a ability and socioeconomic status by matching closer look at studies such as these reveals students in the AP and non-AP groups based some potential problems with the notion of on SAT scores as well as their eligibility for causality. Studies that simply establish that participation in the free or reduced lunch students who are involved with the AP program. Researchers measured college program in high school perform better in success in terms of first- and fourth-year college college do not necessarily provide proof that grade point averages and four-year the AP program caused the students to be graduation rates. Researchers found that successful in college. It should come as no students who took AP courses as well as AP surprise that the same motivated, hardworking, exams did better in college and had higher and advanced students who take AP classes in graduation rates than did students with no AP high school are still motivated, hardworking, experience, and better than students who took successful students when they get to the AP classes but didn’t take AP exams. The university. So how can we know if it was the AP students who took AP classes but not the program that caused these students to do exams also did better in college than did the better in college? students with no AP experience. Of particular note is that researchers in this study found that Several researchers have raised this point and not only did students who passed AP exams do have posed credible critiques of the research better in college than students with no AP that links AP experience to college success. For experience, researchers found that even example, students who take AP courses often students who earned a failing grade of 2 on are a self-selecting group, and it may be that the AP exam did better in college as well. their personal characteristics allow for better college performance, regardless of having AP In a different study (Dougherty, Mellor & Jian, program experience or passing AP exams 2006), researchers found that indeed students (Dougherty, Mellor, & Jian, 2006). Furthermore, taking AP courses and passing the exams enjoy students who have access to the AP program greater college success than non-AP students, typically attend better-resourced schools in but these researchers strongly cautioned that it communities of higher socioeconomic status, wasn’t possible to conclude that this proves and these students tend to perform better in causality. Even though they were able to college (Klopfenstein & Thomas, 2005). control for some variables, including students’ Moreover, AP courses tend to be taught by academic preparation in eighth grade and more advanced teachers (Paek, Braun, Ponte, demographic characteristics of the students, Trapani, & Powers, 2010). If AP students are the researchers stated that this was not more successful in college, it could be enough to conclude the observed difference attributable to any of these factors or a was due to the impact of the AP program combination thereof. Studies that don’t use alone. Rather, these researchers state, “We research design or analytic methods to control may be observing an overall effect of better for these many factors don’t necessarily prove student academic preparation. That is, high that AP participation predicts later college schools and school districts that do a better job success. of preparing students for college produce more students who take and pass AP exams In fact, because of these variables and the and also produce more students who later inherent challenges of designing effective graduate from college” (Dougherty & Mellor, studies to test the impact of the AP program, 2010, p. 221). Further, their conclusions with researchers are finding it extremely difficult to regard to students failing the AP exam conflict establish that AP participation alone has an with those from the aforementioned study. impact on college success. Recent research After controlling for demographic on the topic has been somewhat equivocal. characteristics, as determined by students’ For example, in one large study (Hargrove, eligibility for participation in the free or Godin & Dodd, 2008), researchers attempted reduced lunch program, and academic to control for the background variables of preparation in eighth grade, these researchers www.challengesuccess.org © 2013 Challenge Success 3 found that students (and particularly low- and eighth grade career expectations, income students and students of color) who students who took an exam in AP calculus failed an AP exam were no more likely to were more likely to earn degrees in physical graduate from college than were students science and engineering concentrations than who did not take an AP exam.