The Role of Advanced Placement in Talent Development

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Introduction As a field, gifted education has never fully embraced or endorsed Advanced Placement programs as a viable program option for secondary gifted learners. I believe that this position is untenable, given the role that Advanced Placement options play in responding to the needs of gifted learners within specific academic and arts areas and the high regard with which these programs are viewed by selective colleges. At my own institution, now rated sixth in the country among public institutions, no student is likely to be admitted without evidence of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, or dual-enrollment coursework. This standard is now fairly typical of the top 300 selective colleges in this country. In this essay, I would like to discuss the benefits of Advanced Placement (AP) work for gifted learners, establish the relationship between AP and our current understanding of the talent development process, and delineate special issues and concerns that educators of the gifted must be cognizant of in enc ouraging their students to participate in AP. The arguments used against Advanced Placement are important to acknowledge. One such argument is that the program only offers advanced-level work without sufficient differentiation for the gifted in areas like depth and complexity. Another argument focuses on the heavy emphasis on core content at the expense of studying ideas and principles that have interdisciplinary applications closer to how the real world works. A third argument suggests that AP is designed only for students who think convergently and can study factual material well. These arguments, however, are not buttressed by the evidence regarding the efficacy of other types of gifted programs at the secondary level that is reported in the research literature. In fact, the evidence we do have suggests that AP is the most popular secondary program among gifted students, their parents, and their schools (AAGE, 1974; Kolitch & Brody, 1992). Rationale I would argue that AP is critical to promoting the academic talent development process in gifted adolescents and other students electing for such coursework. AP represents coursework calibrated to selective college curriculum with suggested syllabi and training available to teachers interested in teaching a specific AP course. And student exams are assessed holistically by teams of secondary and university faculty. As such, the program represents the best gauge we have in American education of successful curricular collaboration across K-12 and higher education. It also represents the hallmark program for judging the quality of student learning at the secondary level through the use of recommended course syllabi and standardized exams. AP is also an important part of state education policy in 23 states, providing support for training of teachers, test fees for students, and support for school district participation. The program has gained such favor among policy makers because of its proven effectiveness in enhancing the quality of educational experiences for college-bound populations over the past 40 years. More recently in the current reform climate, it is seen as a model for implementing high standards at all levels of the school curriculum. It has grown from offering a few courses to now providing 33; from serving a few thousand students to serving over 700,000 per year; from being offered in selected states to now being offered in all states and internationally (College Board, 1999). The success of AP, however, cannot be measured only in numbers. It also can be measured in the benefits it has produced for gifted students over the years. Dr. Julian Stanley once remarked that AP was the best friend gifted students will ever have in their K-12 educational years. He may well be right, for it offers an array of benefits not found in many other educational options. Thus, its role in the talent development process is central as can be seen from situating it as an example of differentiated curriculum. …