Growth Industry

2019 ◽  
pp. 32-50
Author(s):  
Chester E. Finn ◽  
Andrew E. Scanlan
Keyword(s):  
Advanced Placement ◽  
Potential Contribution ◽  
College Board ◽  
Five Factors ◽  
Multiple Dimensions ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Multiple Issues ◽  
Best Teachers ◽  
Admissions Process ◽  
Middle Class Families

This chapter looks at more recent developments and the present state of Advanced Placement (AP). Advanced Placement's recent decades are notable for the program's stunning growth on multiple dimensions. Many more schools, students, and subjects joined in, and they did so at accelerating rates. At least five factors have fueled the AP program's expansion in recent years. First, the use of AP participation to rate and rank high schools has impelled more of them to increase their student numbers so as to boost their standings. Second, schools and districts were induced to add more AP courses because they wanted to challenge their students intellectually, tone up their curricula, hold on to their best teachers, attract and retain more middle-class families, draw more sophisticated employers to the area, and respond to demands from parents of gifted kids. Third, the country's mounting concern about equalizing opportunity for poor and minority youngsters and getting more of them into and through college inevitably drew greater attention to AP's potential contribution. Fourth, stiffening competition to enter top colleges and more scrambling by kids to advantage themselves in the admissions process also continued to pump air into the AP balloon. The fifth factor is the forceful marketing and lobbying activities of the College Board itself. As AP has expanded, it has done so unevenly, however, giving rise to multiple issues of fairness. The chapter then considers these inequalities.

Growing AP in Gotham

2019 ◽  
pp. 72-93
Author(s):  
Chester E. Finn ◽  
Andrew E. Scanlan
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
New York ◽  
Advanced Placement ◽  
Major Change ◽  
Department Of Education ◽  
School Reforms ◽  
Fort Worth ◽  
College Board ◽  
Early Results ◽  
Growth Initiative

This chapter assesses how the nation's largest school district, New York City, is tackling its own Advanced Placement (AP) challenge. In 2018, the city's Department of Education (DOE) housed more AP students than all but a dozen states. It is therefore not surprising that the challenge of effecting any major change in how AP works in Gotham is gargantuan when placed alongside a city like Fort Worth. Yet the story of AP in the Big Apple shares many of the same dynamics seen in Texas. As recently as 2015–16, more than a hundred of the city's four-hundred-plus high schools offered no AP courses at all—and many of those schools are located in poor neighborhoods full of African American, Hispanic, and immigrant youngsters. Over the years, municipal leaders sought in various ways to rectify this obvious inequity, even as they undertook myriad other high school reforms. One such growth initiative came in September of 2013, when the DOE joined forces with the College Board and the National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI) to launch an “AP Expansion” program meant to last three years. Two years later, Mayor Bill de Blasio declared—as part of his own ambitious education initiatives—that AP would be introduced into every high school that did not already have it. The chapter then analyzes in detail these two citywide initiatives, including their early results and some lessons that may be drawn from their experience to date.

Technology-based Assessment

Education ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Vergés Bausili
Keyword(s):  
Value Added ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
Potential Contribution ◽  
Plagiarism Detection ◽  
Institutional Practice ◽  
Electronic Assessment ◽  
Academic Scholarship ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Computer Based ◽  
Impact Of Technology

Scholarship around the potential contribution and impact of technology and the digital environment on assessment is substantial and in constant evolution. Such contribution has been argued along three main themes: the technology-based affordances and efficiency benefits emerging from the use of the electronic medium, the value-added/quality enhancing opportunities of electronic assessment, and the deeper and more far-reaching transformative potential offered by technology to change the nature of assessment. This article focuses on the first of these grounds: technology-based assessment. And it provides a historical overview of academic scholarship and institutional practice from the early days of computer-based assessment to more recent developments covering computer-based assessment, computer-adaptive testing, computer-assisted assessment, plagiarism detection technologies, esubmission, emarking technologies, and electronic management of assessment.

The College Board and Advanced Placement in German

1956 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 220
Author(s):  
Joseph R. Reichard
Keyword(s):  
Advanced Placement ◽  
College Board

Student Participation and Performance on Advanced Placement Exams: Do State-Sponsored Incentives Make a Difference?

2009 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 346-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dong Wook Jeong
Keyword(s):  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Advanced Placement ◽  
Student Participation ◽  
Test Results ◽  
College Board ◽  
Advanced Placement Exams ◽  
Fee Exemption ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Ap Exam

Many states provide incentives to students, teachers, and schools for the participation and success of students on Advanced Placement (AP) examinations administered by the College Board. The purpose of this article is to examine whether these incentives help students enroll and succeed in AP exams. An analysis of nationally representative AP exam data, taken from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, revealed that AP exam fee exemption, the most prevalent incentives, leads to an increase in the likelihood of AP course enrollees taking the exam—in particular, the disadvantaged. In contrast, little evidence was found that performance-based incentives, to which several states link AP test results, are helpful for improving AP exam participation and performance.

Testing Time: The College Entrance Examination Board's examination for Advanced Placement in mathematics

1957 ◽  
Vol 50 (6) ◽  
pp. 458-461
Author(s):  
Edwin C. Douglas
Keyword(s):  
Advanced Placement ◽  
Mathematics Teacher ◽  
Previous Article ◽  
Entrance Examination ◽  
Testing Time ◽  
College Entrance Examination ◽  
College Entrance ◽  
College Board ◽  
Made In

In a previous article the author attempted to describe the regular achievement examination program in the field of mathematics of tho College Board (see The Mathematics Teacher, April, 1957). An attempt will be made in t his article to describe the Advanced Placement Examinations in Mathematics.

Advanced Placement Computer Science

1984 ◽  
Vol 77 (5) ◽  
pp. 372-379
Author(s):  
James S. Braswell
Keyword(s):  
Secondary School ◽  
Secondary Schools ◽  
Computer Science ◽  
Advanced Placement ◽  
Secondary School Teachers ◽  
First Year ◽  
School Teachers ◽  
College Board ◽  
Science College ◽  
Teacher's Guide

The College Board's Advanced Placement (AP) offering in computer science is in its first year of operation. In the spring of 1983 the board (1984) published a course description to serve as a guide to those secondary schools that wish to offer AP Computer Science. This course description is also the basis of the first AP examination in computer science that is being administered in May 1984. A teacher's guide for AP Computer Science (College Board 1983) has also been prepared to assist secondary school teachers in planning and teaching the course.

Dismantling Roadblocks to Equity? The Impact of Advanced Placement Initiatives on Black and Latinx Students’ Access and Performance

2019 ◽  
Vol 121 (5) ◽  
pp. 1-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Roegman ◽  
David Allen ◽  
Thomas Hatch
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Advanced Placement ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Student Groups ◽  
College Board ◽  
Data Collection And Analysis ◽  
And Performance ◽  
K 12 ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Racial Ethnic

Background Increasing access to Advanced Placement (AP) coursework has been a long-term goal of the College Board and many districts across the country, yet achieving this goal has remained elusive, particularly for African American and Latinx youth and youth in poverty. Purpose In this study, we analyze the work of five districts that have identified inequities in AP participation and developed initiatives to address these inequities. We examine these districts’ strategies, as well as their impact on both access to AP coursework and success on AP exams. We consider how efforts to increase access to AP have affected different racial/ethnic student groups. Participants The five districts are led by superintendents who were members of the Instructional Leaders Network (ILN), a statewide network that focuses on supporting superintendents’ system-wide, equity-focused improvement. The districts vary in demographics, size, and socioeconomic status. Data Collection and Analysis This mixed methods study includes five years of AP enrollment and performance data for four districts, and two years of data for one district. We also identified two of these districts as case studies of AP initiative development and implementation and conducted a series of interviews with administrators from the districts over the five years of the study. We analyzed quantitative data descriptively and used Bonilla-Silva's (2018) concept of color-blind racism to analyze these data in relation to the interview data. Findings All districts adopted strategies focused on students as a whole, which for the most part led to an increase in access for all racial/ethnic groups, but no consistent pattern of reducing over- or under-representation. In terms of outcomes, in some districts, more students received scores of 3 or higher from all racial/ethnic groups, but disparities in average test scores remained. Additionally, across all districts, Black students continued to receive the lowest scores. Conclusions As school districts, individual high schools, and the College Board continue their focus on increasing equity in both access and performance, their approaches need to involve ongoing data collection and evaluation on how different programs and initiatives are positively or negatively affecting student populations that have been traditionally under-served as well as students in general. This research demonstrates that color-neutral policies need to be constantly interrogated by K–12 administrators and other stakeholders to ensure that the policies do not reinforce and sustain existing inequities. If districts seek to target groups of students who are underserved, they need to consider strategies and policies that explicitly and directly address those groups.

Do Grade Weights Promote More Advanced Course-Taking?

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 310-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin Klopfenstein ◽  
Kit Lively
Keyword(s):  
High Schools ◽  
Advanced Placement ◽  
White Students ◽  
Class Rank ◽  
College Board ◽  
Additional Weight ◽  
Small Impact ◽  
Standard Deviations ◽  
The Impact ◽  
First Time

When calculating class rank, high schools often give additional weight to grades earned in College Board Advanced Placement (AP) courses as an incentive for students to take hard courses. This paper examines changes in student course-taking behavior after an increase in AP grade weights at Texas high schools. We find that raising the magnitude of the AP grade weight in schools already using weights has a small impact that is limited to white students who are not eligible for free or reduced-price lunch (FRPL). When schools introduce grade weights for the first time, the impact is large and widespread with the probability of taking an AP course increasing by 3 to 12 percent and the number of AP courses taken increasing by 0.13 to 0.95 standard deviations. Impacts are largest among students who are not FRPL eligible.

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