Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate Seen in New Light

The Newsweek cover story on "The 100 Best High Schools in America" catapulted Advanced Placement (AP) courses and the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum into the national media spotlight. The magazine arrived at its ranking based solely on the "ratio of AP or IB tests taken by all students divided by the number of graduating seniors." Aside from the fact that it only considered one factor-this would be akin to the famous U.S. News and World Report college rankings becoming dependent solely on how many students take graduate admissions tests-the article was startling in its claim that "average" students are the greatest beneficiaries of AP and IB tests, both of which allow students to earn college credit after taking an advanced course in a subject and obtaining a certain score on a test. Newsweek actually excluded the most academically competitive schools from its rankings "because they have few, if any, of the average students who need a boost from AP or IB."

The Newsweek story offers evidence that AP and IB offerings are in the process of changing from exclusive programs reserved for honors students to near necessities for all students who aspire to competitive colleges and much-needed boosters for poor and minority students. Part of the reason for this change is the sheer number of students taking AP or IB courses. Newsweek reports that between 1998 and 2002, participation in AP tests increased 48 percent nationwide, and even more among minority (77%) and low-income (101%) students.

Another factor is the emerging fear that some high-school curricula do not prepare students adequately for college. A March 2003 report from Stanford University's Bridge Project, Betraying the College Dream: How Disconnected K-12 and Postsecondary Education Systems Undermine Student Aspirations, based on six years of research in California, Illinois, Georgia, Maryland, Oregon, and Texas found that these states' "K-12 and college systems currently move in separate orbits. This research clearly shows that it's the students who are being left behind," primarily those at "broad-access institutions." One of the co-authors of the report said that colleges and K-12 schools have been developing independently since the time when only a small percentage of secondary-school students went to college, but, now, 90% of high-school students say that they want to go to college, and 70% actually matriculate within two years of graduating high school. Colorado recently became the 38th state to adopt a mandatory precollegiate college curriculum for its high schools, but it will not take effect until 2008.

Betraying the College Dream found that California high schools require one fewer year each of mathematics and English than the state's public four-year colleges do. Encouraging more high-school students to take AP and IB classes, even if they do not score well enough on the tests to obtain college credit, could help fill this gap. Eyes on Education: A Proposal for East Side Union High Schools, an April 2002 report from Californians for Justice, found, after its staff interviewed over 1,000 East Side Union High School students, that over 45% had not even heard of the A-G requirements necessary for attendance at California State University and all University of California schools. An even higher percentage, 63.5%, did not know what the A-G requirements were. 44.4% had never had a counselor talk to them about what courses they, individually, need to take in order to be eligible for college. Eyes on Education calls on the schools, among other things, to hire more counselors and to guarantee that every student devises and follows a four-year plan to fulfill the pre-college requirements.

In March 2003 , the Education Trust released state-by-state summaries of Achievement, Attainment, and Opportunity gaps. Opportunity gaps included lack of access to higher-level courses for minority students: While, according to the report, almost two-thirds of white and Asian students nationwide are enrolled in Algebra II, only one-half or fewer of African-American, Latino, and Native-American students are.

AP and IB tests may be a way not only to prepare and get more students into college but also to challenge minority and low-income students for whom some schools have assumed that these challenges courses were inappropriate. The trend is towards raising the bar.

Prepared June 25, 2003