Equity and Access to Advanced Placement for all Students

Advanced Placement courses provide students an opportunity to be exposed to the rigors of college while they are still in high school. Since policies play a role in the opportunities for students to pursue these courses, administrators must be aware of the ways in which their personal beliefs and school policies influence the courses taken by their students. The purpose of this study was to determine student, teacher, and administrator perceptions of allowing all students access to advanced placement courses in high school. This study incorporated a quantitative methods design. Quantitative data were collected in numerical data comparing student data in the controlled group against the data from the previous years. This study explored how instructors may have been affected by the policy including attitudes about AP courses and allowing all students access, and whether allowing all students access "waters down" the curriculum. This study also explored the effect of allowing more students access to AP courses on the percentages of students' scores on the exam. Data were collected at three high schools and the history of student enrollment in all AP courses was available to the researcher.