NEW YORK—A comprehensive, worldwide effort to ensure that high school courses designated as College Board Advanced Placement Program^® (AP^®) courses are, in fact, meeting College Board college-level standards has just been completed.

    The review, which was conducted by 839 professors representing hundreds of colleges and universities as diverse as Yale University, Florida State University and Haverford College, provided secondary school instructors who teach AP courses with the opportunity to share their course syllabi with college faculty. During the process, instructors received feedback and obtained higher education’s confirmation of their courses’ value.

    “This joint effort between college and secondary school faculty attests to the passion of thousands of educators seeking to ensure that a highly diverse group of students is prepared for the challenges of college,” said Gaston Caperton, president of the College Board. “The quality of so many AP teachers’ work reaffirms what AP Exam results have long shown—that steadily increasing numbers of high schools can and do prepare their students for college by giving them access to college-level AP courses.”

    For the first time ever, a listing of all schools’ courses that have earned the authorization to be “AP” courses because of their high quality is available to the public. In total, 14,383 secondary schools worldwide succeeded in developing one or more courses that have received such authorization from the College Board, the not-for-profit organization responsible for the AP courses and exams.

    This yearlong intensive assessment of AP courses involved the review and analysis of more than 134,000 syllabi to determine which courses fulfill or exceed standards for college-level curricula. Courses that have not received this endorsement from higher education are not allowed to use the “AP” label on student transcripts.

    “As a result of this work, college admissions officials, students, parents and educators can have continued confidence that the AP designation on students’ transcripts is only allowed for syllabi that have been approved by college faculty,” said Trevor Packer, vice president of the Advanced Placement Program.

   The registry of approved AP courses, the AP Course Ledger, can be found at www.collegeboard.com/apcourseledger. The file can be searched by subject, school and state and is updated each academic year to ensure that only currently approved AP courses are included.

    Admission officers will also find the ledger valuable as they develop robust school and student profiles throughout the selection process. Admissions officers can easily view the full range of authorized AP courses offered at an applicant’s school to gain valuable insight into how any particular student has responded to these academic opportunities.  

    The Call for the AP Course Audit

    College and university admissions officers have increasingly considered AP participation a sign of motivation and college readiness when evaluating candidates for admission. Interestingly, 98 percent of admissions officers report that, in the future, they plan to weigh AP participation in their admissions decisions as much or more than they do now. Accordingly, in 2004, higher education officials and faculty asked the College Board to facilitate the development of a publicly accessible ledger of courses deemed qualified for the AP label.

    Thousands of college faculty and expert high school teachers worked collaboratively from 2004 to 2006 to codify which course elements would be mandatory in all AP courses. Their consensus was that AP teachers, like college faculty, should not all be required to teach an identical, day-by-day curriculum, but should instead have flexibility in designing their AP syllabi, as long as their courses covered all required topics and developed in the students the college-level skills expected in an AP course.

    “The criteria used to evaluate the courses reflect a powerful national consensus—across colleges, universities and public and private secondary schools—regarding which elements should be present in high-quality, college-level curricula,” said Packer. The evaluation criteria used by the college faculty who conducted the audit are available for public viewing at: http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/courses/teachers_corner/51265.html.

    Teacher Responses to the AP Course Audit

    “Teacher participation in the audit was a tremendous success. In fact, less than 10 percent of AP teachers felt the audit requirements constrained their individuality, which attests to the successful balance the auditors found between mandating high standards and respecting teachers’ and schools’ autonomy,” said Tom Matts, who headed the audit at the College Board. Teachers whose syllabi were not initially approved were given recommendations for improvement and invited to resubmit their course outlines.

    For some experienced longtime AP teachers, the audit served the purpose of raising understanding of their courses among higher education faculty, but was otherwise “just a relatively painless hoop to jump through.” Eighty-four percent of the AP teachers participating felt that the goal of ensuring consistency in labeling courses “AP” was appropriate, and 67 percent felt that the audit provided them with a valuable opportunity to reflect upon their course and its relationship to colleges’ expectations.

   The audit also provided a number of powerful benefits for students worldwide, by providing educators with the impetus to improve existing or new programs and retain sufficient instructional resources. A survey of 26,000 teachers who participated in the audit provided such a statistically significant sample size to justify the following claims about the impact of the audit. Hundreds of thousands of high school students will benefit from the increased resources they now receive due to the audit, which enabled a projected:

• 17,000 teachers to prevent reductions in lab time and instructional time that were scheduled to affect their courses;
• 16,000 teachers to obtain more current college textbooks for their students;
• 22,000 teachers to incorporate advances in the discipline that had not yet been added into their curricula; and
• 16,000 teachers to receive increased funding from their school or district for professional development.

    The College Board: Connecting Students to College Success

    The College Board is a not-for-profit membership association whose mission is to connect students to college success and opportunity. Founded in 1900, the association is composed of more than 5,400 schools, colleges, universities, and other educational organizations. Each year, the College Board serves seven million students and their parents, 23,000 high schools, and 3,500 colleges through major programs and services in college admissions, guidance, assessment, financial aid, enrollment, and teaching and learning. Among its best-known programs are the SAT^®, the PSAT/NMSQT^®, and the Advanced Placement Program^® (AP^®). The College Board is committed to the principles of excellence and equity, and that commitment is embodied in all of its programs, services, activities, and concerns.

   The Advanced Placement Program^® (AP)

    Since its inception in 1955, the AP Program has given students the opportunity to take college-level courses and exams in high school. Colleges in the United States and 40 other countries recognize AP Exam grades when making admissions decisions. Most colleges and universities in the United States and Canada grant incoming students credit, placement, or both for qualifying AP Exam grades in 37 different courses.

    Contact: Sheila Jamison, The College Board, (212) 713-8052, sjamison@collegeboard.org