When the Advanced Placement (AP) program was established in 1955, it was designed to distinguish high-achieving high school students by giving them access to more rigorous, college-level coursework. Nearly a half-century later, enrollment in AP courses is expanding to include not just the highest-achieving students, but virtually anyone who wants in. According to Kathleen Kennedy Manzo of Education Week, the College Board is "trying to recast the program as being within the reach of any student willing to do the work, regardless of academic standing." Indeed, many see AP courses as one way to close the achievement gap - by exposing poor and minority students to more rigorous coursework. While few would take issue with increasing the level of expectation for all students, expanding access to AP programs could water down the content of those courses. According to Jennifer Dounay of the Education Commission of the States, "there is a concern among some that AP, in trying to go beyond its initial mission to serve only academically gifted students to serving as many students as sign up, is going to compromise the program's high benchmarks." In fact, there is some evidence that such concerns are causing schools to ditch AP programs altogether. According to the Wall Street Journal, many elite private schools - which used to offer lots of AP courses - are scrapping the courses and developing alternatives for which students can earn a "mark of distinction" on their transcript if they do well. Such moves seem to suggest that there will always be those who challenge the "Lake Wobegon Effect" by creating new distinctions when old ones lose their meaning. Even if, in this case, the new distinction is to ditch something they helped to legitimize and bring others to covet.
"Some private high schools drop AP courses," by Anne Marie Chaker, Wall Street Journal, November 23, 2004 (subscription required)
"Advanced Placement courses cast wider net," Kathleen Kennedy Manzo, Education Week, November 3, 2004 (registration required)