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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.

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