Advanced Placement Courses Research Articles

Racialized teacher tracking: the systematic exclusion of black teachers from advanced-level coursework

ABSTRACT This study systematically investigates the relationship between race/ethnicity and assignment patterns to Advanced Placement (AP) courses by exploring notions of racialized teacher tracking. Administrative data are used to examine AP course assignment in Texas high schools between 2012–2019. Findings show consistent disparities in the likelihood of Black teachers being assigned an AP course, even when controlling for teachers’ graduate degrees, certification pathways, and career levels. Alongside interrelated micro and macro-level institutional factors influencing teacher assignment, findings demonstrate that race/ethnicity structures Black teachers’ access to school resources and shapes perceptions of their legitimacy and status.

Backtalk: Teaching historical reasoning helps democracy thrive

Beneath the turmoil over book bans, Advanced Placement courses, and teaching about race and slavery lurks a sobering fact about historical knowledge: History is not only about what happened in the past but also about how we know it. Understanding history means grasping both substance and method. If students are asked simply to memorize information about the past, rather than investigate it, then they have learned no way to distinguish historical claims from myths, legends, and lies. The work of history teachers is to build students’ historical reasoning skills so they can determine what is true.

Advanced Placement Human Geography Exam Participation and Performance in Texas School Districts

Texas is the state with the largest number of students taking the Advanced Placement (AP) Human Geography exam. State policy allows schools to offer AP Human Geography in ninth grade as a substitute for the on-level World Geography Studies course. AP’s growth in Texas has been driven by state policy that financially incentivizes students, teachers, and schools to participate in the program. This article examines changes in the geographic distribution of AP Human Geography course offerings and exam results in school districts across the state. Using data provided by the Texas Education Agency (TEA), AP Human Geography exam participation rates and scores were mapped for the period from 2014 to 2019. The results show the number of districts with low rates of qualifying scores has increased in each participation category with fifty-seven additional low-qualifying districts in 2019 compared to 2014. Racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps exist in many schools, calling into question the inequitable impacts of the state’s AP incentives and the practice of using AP Human Geography as a warmup AP course. Texas school districts should improve the preparation of students for advanced course work. Researchers can further explore district-level AP participation and performance through case studies and other methods.

The Discipline of Handwriting Quality and Essay Scoring

In the United States, many high school students take various Advanced Placement (AP) courses offered by the non-profit organization, Collegeboard. Specifically, AP English Language and AP English and Literature requires students to write three essays on the day of exam. These essays allow students to demonstrate their penmanship and quality of handwriting. However, it is unknown whether the quality of penmanship plays a role in essay scoring. Very few research has been done on this discipline, specifically handwriting and intelligence. To fill this research gap, this paper will explore and attempt to demonstrate an understanding of the potential correlation between the illegible ratio of handwriting to the overall essay rubric score. 68 samples were taken from CollegeBoard and analyzed through a content analysis with a mathematical equation, the ILR equation. The data was further analyzed with a Line of Best Fit, Pearson Correlation Coefficient, and P-value. The results showed that there were no clear significant differences between neat and messy handwriting and how well it scored on the AP exam. However, the overall length of the essay and its word counts had a strong positive correlation with the essay score. Due to various limitations of this research study, further research must be conducted and tailored to this study to find a clearer understanding of this phenomenon. Nevertheless, this research can serve as the basis and foundation for later studies in this field.

Advanced Placement Human Geography: Program Access and Effectiveness by Grade Level, 2001–2020

Since 2001, the Advanced Placement (AP) Human Geography program has grown substantially in terms of the sheer number of students taking the course and exam. The program’s growth curve is a marker of increased exposure to complex subject matter in high schools, which is a core AP objective. Viewing AP Human Geography’s growth in the aggregate, however, masks the program’s unequal record of supporting the second fundamental goal of AP, which is to facilitate the college transition of participating students. By grade level, the highest AP Human Geography exam scores on average were earned by high school juniors and seniors. Most of the exams were primarily taken by students in ninth grade outside of New England and the Middle Atlantic. Students in Texas and Florida together accounted for 35 percent of the exams in the peak year of 2019. AP Human Geography’s unintended status as a warmup AP course places it at odds with the College Board’s AP guidance and contemporaneous reports that most students start high school lacking the knowledge and skills for advanced geography coursework. The geography education of younger students would be better served by on-level geography courses and placement tests that are predictive of AP performance later in high school.

The Natural History of Motor, Cognitive Development and Mood in Early Onset Hereditary Spastic Paraplegias (S34.001)

<h3>Objective:</h3> To study the natural history of motor, cognitive development and mood in early onset hereditary spastic paraplegias herein called e-HSP. <h3>Background:</h3> e-HSP is a heterogeneous group of ultra-rare genetic diseases with the uniting clinical feature of lower limb spasticity and weakness presenting in childhood. However, little is known of the early development and psychological manifestations of e-HSP. Here we outline 87 patients with e-HSP and their early childhood development, cognitive function and mood. <h3>Design/Methods:</h3> Retrospective analysis of 87 genetically confirmed e-HSP patients, the majority with SPG4 and SPG3A mutations. Patients were consented and clinical information was collected at each clinic visit including developmental history, school performance and mood. Patients and families were contacted or met with in person to validate missing data points. <h3>Results:</h3> Two thirds of patients with e-HSP were found to have average to high cognitive function and perform well academically. Even 50% of patients who also had a confounding diagnosis of a neurodevelopmental or learning disorder were able to enroll in regular and advanced placement courses in school. 25% of patients had attention deficit disorder. Many of the patients had reported experiencing sadness around their diagnosis and 25% of patients reported being diagnosed with an emotional disorder such as anxiety or depression. Within SPG3A, 8/18 required assistance with long distances including a walker or wheelchair. Within SPG4, patients with de novo mutations showed a severe early developmental disorder. However, no genetic differences could be discerned in patients who had motor progression to walker or wheelchair use. Other mutations of SPG were included in this cohort but limited n-values confounded analysis on specific mutations. <h3>Conclusions:</h3> For the majority of e-HSP patients, motor disorder is the predominant disease feature, but patients should be screened for attention deficit, anxiety, and depression. <b>Disclosure:</b> Dr. Christie has nothing to disclose. Ms. Marvel has nothing to disclose.

Advanced Placement Gatekeeping and Racialized Tracking

Racialized tracking is central to sociological explanations for racially stratified educational outcomes. However, school officials’ decision-making is of debated importance for explaining racialized tracking. We contribute to this literature by examining the effects of schools’ enrollment policies for Advanced Placement (AP) courses. Using a unique combination of school survey data and administrative data from Wisconsin, we examine what happens to racial inequality in AP participation when school officials enforce performance-based selection criteria, which we call “course gatekeeping.” We find that course gatekeeping has racially disproportionate effects. Although racialized differences in prior achievement partially explain the especially large negative effects among students of color, course gatekeeping producesBlack-white and Hispanic-white disparities in participation even among students with similar, relatively low prior achievement. We further find that course gatekeeping has longer-run effects, particularly discouraging Black and Asian or Pacific Islander students from attending highly selective four-year colleges.

Advanced Placement and Initial College Enrollment: Evidence from an Experiment

Abstract To evaluate how Advanced Placement (AP) courses affect college-going, we randomly assigned the offer of enrollment into an AP science course to over 1,800 students in twenty-three schools that had not previously offered the course. We find no AP course effects on students’ college entrance exam scores (SAT/ACT). As expected, AP course-takers are substantially more likely to take the AP exam than their control group counterparts. At the same time, treatment group students opt out of the exam at very high rates and most do not earn a passing score on the AP exam. Though less precisely estimated, the results also suggest that taking the AP course increases students’ aspirations to attend higher-quality colleges but does not lead to enrollment in such institutions.

Therapy dogs effectively reduce stress in college preparatory students

A vast majority of high school students report feeling stressed, especially in schools with a rigorous curriculum. There are many strategies for reducing students’ stress and improving their mental health. Therapy dogs are particularly promising, as they’ve been shown to lower stress levels during a stressful test even better than a close human friend. The purpose of our study was to expand on these findings by investigating the effectiveness of therapy dogs on reducing stress levels of students who are enrolled in a school with a rigorous curriculum. We hypothesized that the time spent with a therapy dog, either before or after a stressful event, would decrease heart rate and reduce perceived stress levels. We conducted two experiments with a total of 87 high school students enrolled in advanced placement courses. In experiment one, the Sing-a-Song Stress test was followed by a therapy dog or control intervention. We observed no difference in heart rate between the dog therapy and control groups, but there was a trend towards lower State Trait Anxiety Inventory scores in the dog therapy group. In experiment two, ten minutes of dog therapy prior to three stressful Stroop tests more significantly reduced negative feelings in the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule for Children assessment compared to silent rest. These data suggest that therapy dogs could be an effective stress reliever for college preparatory students.

Prediction of differential performance between advanced placement exam scores and class grades using machine learning

IntroductionPast studies have found students to perform differently between class grades and standardized test scores – two essential and complementary measures of student achievement. This study examines predictors of the relative performance between these two measures in the context of the advanced placement (AP) program, namely, we compared students’ AP exam scores to the class grade they received in the corresponding AP course. For example, if a student received a high AP class grade but a low AP exam score, what characteristics about the student or their learning context might explain such discrepancy?MethodsWe used machine learning, specifically random forests, and model interpretation methods on data collected from 381 high school students enrolled in an AP Statistics course in the 2017–2018 academic year, and additionally replicated our analyses on a separate cohort of 422 AP Statistics students from the 2018–2019 academic year.ResultsBoth analyses highlighted students’ school and behavioral engagement as predictors of differential performance between AP class grades and AP exam scores.DiscussionAssociations between behavioral engagement and differential performance suggest that the ways in which a student interacts with AP course material to obtain high class grades can differ from study habits that lead to optimal performance on the AP exam. Additionally, school-level differences in relative performance pose equity concerns towards the use of AP exam scores in high-stakes decisions, such as college admissions. Implications are discussed from a pedagogical and policy perspective.

The Advanced Placement Program in Texas — Local Access Offered by Public School Districts is Decreasing While the Breadth of Differentiated Courses Offered is Increasing

This article presents an analysis of the participation of Texas public school districts in the Advanced Placement (AP) program for academic years ending 2013 through 2019. We develop and estimate to a panel of school district data a hurdle count model composed of (1) a first stage fixed effect binomial logistic regression model of the probability that a school district opts-in to locally offer AP program courses in a given academic years and (2) a second stage fixed effect zero truncated Poisson regression model of the number of unique AP courses offered in a given year by opting-in districts. We find that the number of Texas school districts providing local access to AP courses is decreasing through time; however, we also find that districts that do provide local access to AP courses offer increasingly greater numbers of unique AP courses.

Multidisciplinary Climate Change Education: Determining Effectiveness Through Comparative Analysis

Climate Change Education (CCE) is one of the most widely-recognized mitigative solutions to the climate crisis, but research suggests that most global and national CCE policies and curricula are ineffective. A reason for this is that existing CCE curriculum consists of purely science-based pedagogy, despite the fact that multiple studies suggest that a multidisciplinary approach—involving humanities and the arts rather than just science—would be more effective. A case study was conducted at a select California high school, and compared the effectiveness of multidisciplinary CCE to the existing, science-focused CCE, in terms of Climate Literacy (CL) outcomes in students. CL encompasses climate change knowledge, credibility assessment skills, communication skills, and climate-related behavior, four factors that are important determinants when evaluating CCE effectiveness. Using survey research and structured interviews, the CL of students who took 3 or greater Advanced Placement (AP) courses was compared to that of students who took less than 3 such courses. Involvement in Advanced Placement (AP) classes, college-level classes offered to students by the College Board, was used as an indicator of being exposed to multidisciplinary CCE, and was compared to the effects of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) which are currently in use in California. The research found that CL within students was significantly greater in AP students in terms of climate change knowledge, credibility assessment, and communication; but climate-related behavior was low in both groups of students and did not seem to be affected by educational curriculum.

Advanced placement course credit and undergraduate student success in gateway science courses

AbstractApproximately 2 million students take Advanced Placement (AP) examinations annually. However, departmental policies that allow students to replace introductory courses with AP credit greatly vary within and across universities, even across relatively similar universities. This study examines the impact of AP credit policies on second‐course success in introductory Biology, Chemistry, and Physics course sequences at six large public research universities (N = 48,230 students). Applying logistic regression analyses, we found that general performance indicators and measures of systemic inequities during high school were predictive of students earning skip‐eligible scores. Interestingly, we descriptively discovered wide variation across institutions and disciplines in the percentage of students who chose to skip when meeting their local policies. However, logistic regression analysis did not find general trends of inequalities for skipping courses for students with skip‐eligible scores. We then applied inverse‐probability weights with regression adjustment to examine the effects of course skipping. We found that students who skipped their first course with AP credit actually performed similarly well or better in subsequent courses than did students who did not skip, even in contexts where lower AP scores were accepted. Therefore, our study suggests administrators to increase coherence in AP credit policies across departments and disciplines. In particular, we encourage modifying AP credit policies and academic advising to encourage students to skip when they have eligible AP scores. Benefits may include reductions in unnecessary coursework that is burdensome for both students and universities, potentially freeing up resources to better support students who were not privileged to enroll in AP courses during their high school education.

Advanced Placement and Equity: A Case Study of Two Suburban School Districts

This case study mapped patterns of disproportionality in Advanced Placement (AP) access, enrollment, and completion for systemically excluded students through secondary data analysis of the Civil Rights Data Collection (2015–6), and documents the degree of segregation within two diverse school districts. Although there was relatively robust overall AP course availability in both school districts, access and degree of racial segregation varied widely within the school districts. Findings establish disproportionality in AP enrollment and completion rates for Black and Latinx students. Such findings demonstrate the need for more research in regard to AP enrollment and completion for systemically excluded students.

The Impact of Project-Based Learning on AP Exam Performance

Harnessing a cluster randomized controlled trial, we estimated the impact on students’ advanced placement (AP) examination performance of a project-based learning (PBL) approach to AP compared with a lecture-based AP approach. Through PBL, teachers primarily play a facilitator role, while students work on complex tasks organized around central questions leading to a final product. We estimated positive and significant treatment effects on AP exam performance for the overall sample, within both AP courses studied, and within low- and high-income student groups. Results support teacher-driven adoption of the PBL AP approach within both courses studied, among districts with open-enrollment AP policies and supportive of PBL, for students from low- and high-income households.

All In? Inequities in Hispanic Access and Enrollment in Advanced Placement

ABSTRACT In response to the national problem of overrepresentation of Hispanic students in general education classes, this study addressed Hispanic access and enrollment in Advanced Placement (AP) coursework in Virginia, a growing destination state for many Hispanic families and students. Through a secondary data analysis of the Civil Rights Data Collection (2015–6), this study mapped patterns of disproportionality in AP access and enrollment for Hispanic students who comprise 13% of enrollment in Virginia public high schools. Although greater AP course availability was found in suburban schools, where most Hispanic students are enrolled, there was disproportionality in regard to alternative schools. Further findings document disproportionality in AP enrollment for STEM and non-STEM coursework for Hispanic students. Such findings demonstrate the need for more research and reform in regard to AP access and enrollment for systemically excluded students.

Closing the Curriculum Gap by Updating Content Standards and Guidelines for Teaching Monetary Policy

The topic of the Federal Reserve’s (the Fed’s) implementation of monetary policy has a significant presence in economics teaching resources. Over the past decade or so, the Fed has purposefully shifted the way it implements monetary policy, introducing a new methodology with new policy tools. Unfortunately, many teaching materials are out of date with the Fed’s current ample-reserves regime and classroom teachers are often guided to teach old content. This guidance often comes from the Voluntary National Content Standards (VNCS) in Economics and the Advanced Placement (AP) Course and Exam Description that are sadly outdated. The VNCS influences the treatment of economics content in K-12 curriculum and textbooks, and the AP course framework determines the content taught in thousands of high school classrooms every year. As such, revising these influential documents is instrumental for closing the curriculum gap. We provide recommendations for how these materials can be updated.

Using Science Standards to guide the development of high school linguistics

As the linguistics community is pushing for more introductory classes to be taught at the high school level, it is useful to create a course framework. This framework can help provide structure for a potential Advanced Placement (AP) test and course as well as help interested teachers create successful proposals to add linguistics to their school’s course offerings. Rather than reinventing the wheel, I suggest that the existing Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) are an ideal starting point. Although not a science in the traditional secondary school sense, there is considerable overlap in methodology. Using the language of science can help those unfamiliar with linguistics see that it is the systematic study of language rather than just language learning, as well as help students transfer some of the skills and knowledge of practices that they already know from previous classes. This paper serves as an introduction to NGSS and the connections between the existing science standards and methodologies with the goal of demonstrating their usefulness for creating standards for linguistics.

College Credit on the Table? Advanced Placement Course and Exam Taking

Millions of high school students who take an Advanced Placement (AP) course in one of over 30 subjects can earn college credit by performing well on the corresponding AP exam. Using data from four metro-Atlanta public school districts, we find that 15 percent of students’ AP courses do not result in an AP exam. We predict that up to 32 percent of the AP courses that do not result in an AP exam would result in a score of 3 or higher, which generally commands college credit at colleges and universities across the United States. Next, we examine disparities in AP exam-taking rates by demographics and course taking patterns. Most immediately policy relevant, we find evidence consistent with the positive impact of school district exam subsidies on AP exam-taking rates. In fact, students on free and reduced-price lunch (FRL) in the districts that provide a higher subsidy to FRL students than non-FRL students are more likely to take an AP exam than their non-FRL counterparts, after controlling for demographic and academic covariates.

Exploring the Level of Grade 7 Students' Reading Proficiency in Comparison to the Norm

Reading comprehension requires specific skills, and improving it entails the collective efforts of the school, teachers, and students. Schools use various assessments to measure students' reading skills to ensure that students are at par with their grade level. This study ascertains the reading proficiency level of 232 Grade 7 students in an international school in Cambodia. The researchers used a quantitative method, and data from the Measure of Academic Progress Test were gathered through the Rasch Unit Scale. The participants are the whole population of grade 7. Furthermore, data were analyzed through arithmetic mean and standard deviation to assess students' proficiency level and identify the goal that should be prioritized for improvement. The results reflected that the majority of the students did not achieve the norm grade level mean Rasch Unit. Moreover, from the five goals, Literary Text: Language, Craft, and Structure should be improved the most. The findings of this study suggest improving all five reading goals with Literary Text: Language, Craft, and Structure as the main priority. Consequently, the results provided significant implications to the school in developing enrichment programs tailored to address the reading goals, teachers in terms of teaching strategies and differentiation, and students preparing for their Advanced Placement course.