Course Enrollment

The U.S. is spending a lot of money on expanding AP course taking. The article, “Louisiana gets federal money to help poor kids take AP tests for free,” notes that Louisiana received $158,085 to cover the costs of administering advancement tests to low-income high school students. This was part of $28.8 million in grants to 42 states to cover fees charged low-income students for taking advanced placement tests.

The Politico article, “Advanced Placement classes failing students,” notes that taxpayers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years to nudge more students into Advanced Placement classes, but that test scores suggests much of the investment has been wasted.

Based on the data contained in the annual College Board report, “AP Report to the Nation,” students from certain racial groups and socioeconomic backgrounds do not perform well on the AP exams. While there are many possible explanations, the undeniable reality is that students who attend high poverty schools or schools with high minority student populations (which are typically high poverty schools) have teachers who are not as experienced in teaching AP courses or preparing students to score highly on the AP exams. Another problem is that the students themselves, may not have adequate preparation for AP level course work nor do they have experience achieving high scores on the AP exams. After all, how do students perform well in college-level course work if their regular high school teachers are less experienced and their regular high school classes are less rigorous?

Additional components that are missing are:

• Lack of adequate support from teachers and fellow students to transition from the normal course requirements in their high schools to the necessary level of academic rigor to perform successfully on AP exams
• Lack of study groups to support learning beyond the classroom
• Lack of adequate preparation for AP exams
• Lack of supplemental materials

The problem is not that AP classes are failing students, but that schools are engaging in inadequate planning for how to ensure student success in such classes. Perhaps, as President Obama is attempting to hold colleges accountablefor their results, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan should hold states accountable for their AP exam performance results. The Sacramento Bee article, “Math, science program sees big improvement on AP tests,” provides an example what why must accompany the push to enroll students into AP courses:

“The pass rate on rigorous Advanced Placement tests went up by 72 percent last year at high schools that took part in a National Math and Science Initiative program that trains teachers and gives students extra help.”

The article goes on to note that the program includes extensive teacher training, a mentor for each teacher throughout the school year and help for students in Saturday sessions. The article also notes that the pass rate on AP math, science and English exams for participating schools increased by 72 percent compared to 7 percent nationwide.

The bottom line…

If your high school offers AP level courses, selective colleges and universities are going to hold you accountable for taking the classes to demonstrate your willingness to challenge yourself. If your AP teachers are not very good, then you are going to have to find a tutor and supplemental materials to ensure your success, as the colleges you apply to are either going to know your AP exam scores or question why you did not submit them if the AP classes are reflected on your high school transcript.

Here is exactly what will happen:

1. Colleges that you apply to will request a high school profile from your high school counselor. The profile will list the types of classes offered in your high school (which includes any AP classes), along with average SAT and ACT scores.
2. Colleges will ask your counselor if your course taking was highly rigorous, rigorous, or on level.
3. Colleges will compare the number of AP classes you took against the number of AP classes offered in your high school.
4. Colleges will review your course grades in your AP classes and your AP exam scores.

Colleges, however, will not ask you if your AP teachers were any good, if the classes that you took in preparation for AP level classes were any good, of if the students in your AP classes were any good. So the bottom line is that you will have do what you have to do to be successful, which may mean:

1. Identifying a tutor
2. Identifying supplemental materials
3. Creating study groups
4. Taking personal responsibility to ensure that you are adequately prepared to score 3 or higher on the AP exam for each AP class that you take

You may view this as being unfair, however, it is what it is.

In the research study by the College Board Advocacy & Policy Center, “2012 National Survey of School Counselors: True North: Charting the Course to College and Career Readiness” middle school and high school guidance counselors acknowledged that they simply do not have time, or in many cases, the training to for provide students with the necessary college or career guidance.

The National Office for School Counselor Advocacy(NOSCA) identifies eight components deemed to be critical to ensuring college and career readiness for students in grades K – 12:

1. College Aspirations
2. Academic Planning for College and Career Readiness
3. Enrichment and Extracurricular Engagement
4. College and Career Exploration and Selection Processes
5. College and Career Assessments
6. College Affordability Planning
7. College and Career Admission Processes
8. Transition from High School Graduation to College Enrollment

To support the implementation of these 8 components:

• Elementary school counselors should be creating early awareness and assisting students in developing the knowledge and skills that lay the foundation for the academic rigor and social development necessary for college and career readiness.
• Middle school counselors should be creating opportunities to explore and deepen college and career knowledge and assisting students in developing the skills necessary for academic planning and goal setting.
• High school counselors should be creating access to college career pathways that promote full implementation of each student’s personal goals that ensures the widest range of future life options.

Most counselors support these 8 components and although 9 out of 10 counselors believe that all students should have access to a high-quality education, only 56 percent of counselors see this as a reality in their schools (49 percent in high poverty schools).

In response to these eight components, high school and middle school counselors surveyed indicated that only:

• 50 percent of counselors have the training and knowledge to implement schoolwide strategies
• 48 percent of counselors know how to create solutions that remove barriers
• 47 percent know how to keep students’ parents and families involved
• 31 percent of counselors collaborate with outside organizations and businesses to support their strategies

Less than half of all counselors believe they have sufficient training to assist students with:

• academic planning,
• college aspirations,
• college and career admission processes,
• connect college and career aspirations and the selection processes,
• enrichment and extracurricular activity engagement, or
• college affordability planning

The reality in most schools is that guidance counselors are responsible for too many students, lack adequate resources, were not adequately trained in college and career planning during graduate school, and lack access to high quality staff development in their current school districts.

The undeniable truth is that students and parents are unlikely to receive sufficient guidance from guidance counselors to develop an effective middle-through-school college admissions and financial aid plan. Students and their families must accept responsibility for developing their plans and for putting forth the necessary effort to implement their plans if students are to expand their college and financial aid options.

In my book, Empowering African American Males: A Guide to Increasing Black Male Achievement, I recount an encounter with my then ten-year-old son:

“Dad, I don’t want to be in Target [the talented and gifted program] this year. Since I’m going to be playing football, I believe it’s just going to be too much work for me. Maybe I’ll go back to Target next year.”

In response to my son, I said, “Jalani, I can understand how demanding it can be to attempt to balance your school work with the mental and physical demands of playing a sport. However, you are such an intelligent young man, I know you can balance both of them if you put forth the necessary effort. However,  your mother and I do not want to over burden you , so if you are sure that you cannot handle it. WE WILL HAVE TO TAKE YOU OUT OF FOOTBALL!”

My son stared at me in disbelief (this was not exactly the answer he was expecting) and responded: “That’s alright, Dad, I think I can handle it.”

I long understood the negative social acceptance among peers and sense of social isolation experienced by Black students when enrolled in gifted programs and advanced classes and when they are high academic achievers. A study by researchers from the University of Michigan and Boston University provides greater insight into the social costs of school success for Black students:

“The negative social consequences of getting good grades were particularly pronounced for black and Native American students in high-achieving schools with small proportions of students similar to themselves.”

Some of the additional findings were:

• For whites, the link between GPA and social acceptance was strongly positive over time—the better their GPA, the more likely that students were to feel accepted and the less likely to report feeling lonely
• For black and Native Americans, the relationship between GPA and social acceptance was reversed: the higher their GPA, the lonelier they were likely to report feeling, and the more they were likely to report that others had been unfriendly or disliked them
• While Hispanics overall displayed a patter similar to whites and Asians, students of Mexican descent showed patterns similar to blacks

The researchers go on to note:

“This analysis did not identify reasons for racial and ethnic differences in relation between school achievement and a sense of social acceptance, but it does strongly suggest that racial dynamics within schools are having an important influence on students’ lives and should not be ignored. In fact, these dynamics are likely to be an important mechanism behind racial/ethnic gaps in achievement.”

As a result of the gentle nudging by my wife and me, continued high expectations and our understanding the peer pressure our son was experiencing, we were able to ensure that our son continue his course of high academic achievement. The results were our son’s acceptance into the Honors College at Morehouse College and his receiving the Gates Millennium Scholarship.

Parents and schools must do more to assist students in understanding the potential long-term consequences of the choices they make, i.e., “Is social acceptance today more important than hundreds of thousands of dollars toward my future college education based on my grades and test scores?” Even if students cannot fully appreciate the potential long-term consequences, it is a conversation that we must have as we encourage them to set new standards of academic achievement where it is cool to have a high GPA, cool to earn thousands of dollars in scholarships, and cool to achieve grades and test scores on a comparable level as other students!