Education Next – Julia Freeland Fisher
“Last month, Nat Malkus of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) published a study on the trends in Advanced Placement course offerings in public schools from 2000 to 2012. The data shows that from 2008 to 2012, the percentage of public schools offering AP courses declined from 79 percent to 74 percent, a backslide from the eight percent increase in schools offering AP courses eight years prior. Malkus found that small, rural, and high-poverty schools—that had championed expanding AP offerings from 2000 to 2008—were the leading cause of the subsequent drop in those offerings from 2008 to 2012. Given the economic climate in 2008, who can blame them? The recession left schools strapped for cash, so it’s hardly surprising to see small, rural, and high-poverty schools struggling to to finance AP classes—especially if too few students are academically prepared to justify hiring or training an AP teacher. It’s also worth noting that because many of these schools serve far smaller numbers of students, the decline in percentage of schools offering AP classes does not represent a proportionate decline in the number of overall students able to access AP coursework.”(more)