Strategies for Increasing Advanced Placement Participation for Underrepresented Students: Barriers, Practices, and Positive Outcomes

Abstract

Some school leaders have viewed programs such as Advanced Placement (AP) as an attractive option to resolve the ongoing achievement gap problem. However, the ongoing debate in the field about maintaining the ostensible purity of the AP program versus diluting it with program expansion has hindered the full utilization of AP classes to close the achievement gap among student populations. School staff must stop buying into the notion that AP is only for the top students. The paradigm shift to opening up greater access to AP courses can only occur if school leaders support the active expansion of the AP program by creating the needed infrastructure to prepare students for AP rigor. In addition to presenting the authors’ reasons, the barriers they faced, the best practices that they have developed, and the schoolwide increased student achievement based on state measures, the authors present how AP expansion provides equitable and challenging educational opportunities for all students.