At the Polk County Public Schools in Florida, district leaders began to discuss whether the demographics of their students enrolled in Advanced Placement courses reflected the demographic profile of their students as a whole in 2006.
They didn’t like what they saw.
So the school district began to hold an annual “AP Summit,” where all of the district’s guidance counselors and AP teachers were engaged in a conversation about equity and access. The district brought in various minority professionals, consultants and guest speakers from the College Board — creator of AP courses — to discuss ways to remove barriers and open access to AP courses for students from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds.
“The students typically are not the barriers,” said Rebecca Braaten, director
of Academic Rigor and Secondary Curriculum/Instruction for Polk County Public Schools. “The adults are the barriers.”
Once educators began to recalibrate their thinking about which students are AP material, they started to employ efforts to expand access to the college prep courses.
The extra effort has evidently paid off.
