Increase Equity and Access
- Identifying and Addressing a Gender Gap to Build AP Participation
- Identifying Students Who Are Ready for Advanced Coursework
- Providing Advanced Learning Opportunities for Students of All Abilities
- English Sequence Options for AP Seminar Promotes Equity
- Increasing College Enrollment
- Revealing Student Success and Potential
Identifying and Addressing a Gender Gap to Build AP Participation
Program: AP
Description: To increase interest and participation in AP courses, especially among males and particularly male students of color, Uniondale Union Free School District created a comprehensive campaign called “AP is U” that helped spread the message via in-school posters, newspaper advertising, a video, and a webpage. The campaign sought to dispel perceptions that AP was elitist, boost confidence in each student’s ability to successfully manage the rigor of AP, and put a human face on the coursework.
How: Comparing its current AP enrollments against the rosters of prospective students generated through AP Potential, Uniondale Union Free School District discovered an imbalance—that more girls than boys enrolled in AP courses. In fact, the data bore out that enrollment was 70% female to 30% male. Particularly lacking were male students of color. This data surprised their Superintendent, Dr. Monique Darrisaw-Akil. “It hit me like a bolt of lightning and made me determined to close the gender gap in our AP participation with intentional planning and outreach.”
Students most in need of exposure to the college-going mindset and college cost savings that AP classes afforded were missing out. And they may be deprived of the valuable real-life skills built through AP courses, like critical thinking, collaboration, and time management.
To uncover the “why?”, the school district learned they first had to overcome the perception that AP was selective and only students of high academic caliber could succeed. This perception existed not just among students, but also parents. First, the school district eliminated many prerequisites that may have been barriers in the past. Next, they set ambitious goals to 1) increase AP enrollment by 10% over a two-year period and 2) increase AP enrollment by male students of color by 15% over a two-year period. They significantly surpassed both goals thanks to a multichannel campaign using students to share their success stories.
To districts that seek to broaden access to AP, Dr. Stacie Reid, Director of Guidance, advises “Connect with the entire school community. This can’t be a top-down initiative. It has to be inclusive. Speak to your teachers and counselors because when they’re excited and passionate about something it can build student interest. Have conversations to change student mindsets and behaviors to encourage them to think ‘You can do this.’ Make sure there is support for students, so they succeed, perhaps by providing peer mentoring or tutoring.”
Shared By: Uniondale Union Free School District, Uniondale, NY
Identifying Students Who Are Ready for Advanced Coursework
Program: SAT, AP
Description: The school uses data from the SAT Suite of Assessments and the AP Potential tool to learn where students are academically so they could determine the best way to meet their needs.
How: "Data from the SAT Suite of Assessments has helped us tremendously, especially in regards to our AP program. Between AP Potential and the PSAT 8/9 and PSAT/NMSQT assessments that we give, we are able to find those “diamond in the rough” students that may not have had the academic successes that would have lent themselves to being successful in AP classes traditionally, but we are able to see that “untapped” potential and use that as motivation for them. The SAT Suite of Assessments gives us a true gauge of where students are in the learning process, and we utilize it as an important data point when analyzing how to best meet the needs of students."─Brett McCann, Former Principal, Streetsboro High School, OH
Shared by: Streetsboro High School, OH
Providing Advanced Learning Opportunities for Students of All Abilities
Program: AP
Description: This AP District of the Year winner implemented policies that broadened access to AP and delivered positive results for students.
How: Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District in New York was honored as the 2023 AP Medium District of the Year for its outstanding efforts to broaden access to Advanced Placement® and deliver positive outcomes for students.
To achieve these results, the district used methods of instruction that allowed a wider range of students to succeed in AP.
A section of its AP English Language and Composition course is cotaught by special education and general education teachers. Seniors are encouraged to enroll if they haven’t previously taken the course or AP Seminar. Students are encouraged to attend a support period to help them outside the classroom if necessary.
The AP Capstone™ program, which includes AP Seminar and AP Research, is also cotaught. Pairing English and Social Studies teachers, along with the help of media specialists, has reduced the student-to-teacher ratio to 1:12. Students benefit from having more individualized support from their teachers, and their chances of success increase.
The impact of the district’s effort can be seen in the data: 70% of students graduating from Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District have taken at least one AP course.
"We’re committed to access and participation in education and ensuring that a diverse range of students can benefit from and succeed in challenging academic programs. We really believe in the research that college and career access is improved when students are involved in high-level work, and the AP curriculum is as good as it gets.” ─Scott Bersin, Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction, Bellmore-Merrick CHSD, NY
Shared by: Bellmore-Merrick CHSD, NY
Watch this video and read this blog post to learn more about how Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District expanded access to AP.
English Sequence Options for AP Seminar Promotes Equity
Program: AP
Description: This school adopted AP Seminar as a core English course and replaced their Honors courses with Pre-AP English 1 to help students build the skills they’d need to succeed.
How: "We knew that adding AP Seminar to our English sequence would engage more students because of its project-based assessments and skills-based framework. We also knew that introducing Pre-AP would lead to stronger outcomes for our students who needed more support. Over time in our English department, our narrative became what skills do we need to develop here versus how many books will we get through this year. We believe that AP Seminar was the foundational course for our English sequence.” ─Tanya Bernier, Dean of English Language Arts, B.M.C. Durfee High School, MA
Shared by: B.M.C. Durfee High School, MA
Increasing College Enrollment
Programs: SAT, AP
Description: Administrators leverage data from the SAT Suite of Assessments to help inform program- and classroom-specific changes.
How: "We use AP, SAT, and PSAT-related assessments to help guide our decision making at a macro and micro level. This allows for program- and classroom-specific changes based on data. We've had a 95% increase in AP Exams taken and a 94% increase in the number of students taking AP courses in the last 2 years. Since we started to analyze the data related to the SAT Suite of Assessments, we increased the number of our graduates attending college by 15 percentage points and went from 0 to 5 students participating in the National Merit® Scholar Program. The SAT Suite is clearly having a positive impact." —Dr. Mark Smithberger, Principal, Berea City School District, OH
Shared by: Berea City School District, OH
Revealing Student Success and Potential
Program: SAT, AP
Description: To create personalized pathways for students, the district uses data from the SAT Suite of Assessments and AP to understand students’ academic strengths.
How: "The AP, SAT, and PSAT-related assessments are really avenues to reveal success that students have experienced so far, and an avenue to reveal potential. These are tremendously useful tools in the K−12 space because of our ability to reveal success compared against the national pool of test takers who have a proclivity to go to some kind of postsecondary learning. The opportunity to connect a student with a pathway that they otherwise wouldn't have experienced because they had success on an assessment or an opportunity to target and pinpoint some challenges previously unidentified is absolutely critical to the work that we do." —Thomas Taylor, Superintendent, Stafford County Public Schools, VA
Watch the full video to learn how Thomas’ district uses data from the SAT Suite and the AP Program to connect students with the pathway that’s best for them.
Shared by: Stafford County Public Schools, VA