Back

Adopt Impactful School and District Policies and Supports

Encourage and support your teachers and coordinators by creating policies that aid participation and promote engagement. 

These spotlights capture a moment in time. The featured educators, courses, or assessment offerings at a particular school or district may have changed but the strategies and learnings are timeless.

Propelling AP Participation with English 10: AP Seminar 

Program: AP

Description: The district sought to use strategic plan-driven access and opportunity policies to offer English 10: AP Seminar rather than Honors English 10 in a pilot at one school. Later, the district experienced an uptick in AP participation overall, prompting leaders to offer this option at all its high schools.

How: Red Clay Consolidated School District in Delaware leveraged community input to identify strategic plan priorities. Student growth, success, and fair and just outcomes rose to the top. The district set as policy its commitment to opportunity with the launch of its latest strategic plan. The success of English 10: AP Seminar, piloted at one magnet school, led school leadership to adopt this as a systemwide option. The course also broadened access for students who don’t usually have the chance to take Advanced Placement® courses. This opportunity, in turn, helped boost these students’ profile on college applications, enhanced their potential to achieve college success, and promoted career exploration.

Read Red Clay’s story here, including how to use an instructional coach to support success.

Shared by: Red Clay Consolidated School District, New Castle County, DE

How AP Seminar Delivers College- and Career-Ready Skills

Program: AP

Description: To prepare students for the teamwork and collaboration skills critical to college and career success, this Michigan school district substituted AP Seminar for English 10, leading to 100% participation. By requiring all students take the class to fulfill their sophomore English requirement, students benefited from the social interaction, critical thinking, intellectual curiosity, and leadership acumen the course cultivated.

How: Built on a philosophy by district leaders that all students are capable of higher-level learning, Rockford Public School’s strategic plan, the Rockford Action Model for Success, served as the launchpad for an ambitious effort to substitute AP Seminar for English 10. Under the Academic Excellence pillar of the strategic plan, the district committed to providing high-quality, inquiry-based learning to ensure students are prepared for college and career. The AP Seminar requirement also helped close achievement gaps for underrepresented and underperforming students, who received scaffolded support and intervention. The district pays for all digital portfolio submissions for the end-of-course AP Seminar Exam to ensure all students have access to college-credit-earning opportunities. This policy resulted in nearly 65% of sophomores earning a qualifying score of 3 or higher on the exam, as well as a variety of other positive outcomes. Read more about their experience, along with their advice for preparing your faculty. 

Shared by: Rockford Public Schools, Rockford, MI

Changing Culture to Remove Barriers to Advanced Learning

Program: AP

Description: Driven by a commitment to equity and excellence, San José Unified School District (SJUSD) has significantly expanded access to AP courses, ensuring equitable opportunities for all students, particularly those from underrepresented and high-needs backgrounds. 

How: Serving 25,000 students across 42 schools, with 80% being underrepresented minorities and over 44% classified as high-needs, SJUSD focuses on equity as a cornerstone of their educational approach. They collect comprehensive data to identify students ready for advanced coursework, ensuring equitable access. 

SJUSD's strategy includes changing perceptions of the AP classroom, providing professional learning opportunities for all teachers to be able to teach AP, and communicating the importance of advanced coursework to all stakeholders, including parents. They also prioritize budget allocations to support advanced learning, including paying for all AP and SAT exams and funding AP student boot camps and faculty professional development.

The results are impressive: 70% of SJUSD students take AP courses, with 70% of these students being minorities. Additionally, 73% of AP students achieve a score of 3 or higher on their AP exams.

Read more about how SJUSD succeeded in expanding access to advanced learning opportunities here. You can also watch this insightful Ed Talk featuring Superintendent Nancy Albarrán.

Shared by: San José Unified School District, CA

AP Expansion to Align with School and District Goals  

Program: AP 

Description: New leadership set districtwide goals of offering AP at every high school. 

How: 

  • Set a district goal of offering a set minimum number of AP courses in every high school.  

  • Provide strong administrative support to remove barriers to increase not only the number of AP offerings but also the number of students enrolled.  

  • Proactively work to change the attitude of teachers who don't encourage all students to take AP.  

Shared by: Jersey City Public Schools, NJ 

AP Teacher Development Program 

Program: AP 

Title: AP Teacher Development Program 

Description: Provide districtwide or statewide professional development and ongoing support to new AP teachers and schools that are expanding their AP program. 

How:  

  • Put on subject-specific weekend workshop retreats for AP teachers.  

  • Host 1-day exam preparation workshops a month before AP Exams, designed to help AP teachers make the exams less intimidating for their students.  

  • Promote that all workshops will count toward continuing education units.   

“Teachers go back to their school after a mentoring workshop and feel more confident. They’re not only more comfortable teaching their own course; they return to their school saying, ‘We need to offer more courses. We need to open up the doors to kids.’” —Brendan Murphy, AP Calculus Teacher, John Bapst Memorial High School 

Shared by: Maine Department of Education, ME 

Automatic Enrollment in AP 

Program: SAT, AP 

Description: To expand and diversify the AP student population, these administrators use performance data from the SAT and PSAT-related tests to select which students are ready for which AP classes. 

How: 

  • Automatically enroll students in AP classes by utilizing AP Potential™ suggestions.  

  • Believe that students will live up to expectations. Make academic acceleration a part of regular conversation at school board meetings, in other administrative gatherings, and at family/community events to help create a new culture of high expectations. 

  • Back up your commitment to academic acceleration by funding AP Exams, SAT, and PSAT-related assessments. 

  • Ensure parents are consulted if students prefer to opt out of these opportunities.  

“We believe all students can achieve at very high academic levels. The traditional system is designed to select and sort. And the students who are sorted out are the students of color, the underrepresented, and the underserved kids. We don’t just encourage them to apply to college; we’ve removed the institutional and social barriers to change their academic trajectory. By removing these barriers, we’ve given our students access to opportunity, and they have responded beyond our wildest expectations.”—Rob Neu, former Superintendent, Federal Way School District, WA 

Shared by: Federal Way School District, WA