The angles of AP

While Advanced Placement classes seem to be deeply-rooted in school culture, many have yet to scratch the surface. The concerns surrounding student struggles, diversity, class size imbalances and enrollment prove the specifics of AP are more complicated upon further inspection.

“There’s so many different people involved in creating schedules and sometimes that can be very helpful because you get different perspectives. Sometimes it can make things more difficult because you have lots of people involved, so there might be people with different opinions,” Cedar Shoals counselor Christina Cotsakis-Cordon said.

Although advisors and counselors deal with scheduling and placing students into AP classes, Associate Principal of Instruction Dr. Melissa Pérez suggests that it’s also important for teachers to connect with students who are interested in taking their class.

“Last year we started offering AP Human Geography. (Former social studies teacher Andrew Vernor) was passionate about that class and he really wanted to make it happen. We put it on the course request sheet that students see with all of the courses that are offered. Beyond that, Mr. Vernor went to all the social studies classes and recruited for it and answered questions about what the course is. He recruited enough students to make the class last year,” Pérez said.

Pérez thinks these efforts to recruit can go to waste if students aren’t motivated to stay in the class. This leaves teachers and administration with the challenge of keeping students engaged.

“We also need to think about how we are keeping the students in the course. Are we supporting you once you’re in the class? Are we providing our teachers with enough training and opportunities to share with other teachers? Are we teaching that content to make the work engaging and accessible?” Pérez said.

Montu Miller is new to AP teaching this year, piloting the College Board’s new AP African American Studies class. In the first semester, he taught 22 students, which he attributed to the course’s novelty. When the second semester started, enrollment drastically declined. 

“I got 22 kids last semester, and to me that was solid compared to some of the people I talked to around the country. But then when this semester started, we had 13. I was like, ‘What happened?’ What I think happened is I slacked off on my recruiting,” Miller said.

AP Literature teacher Bryan Moore says that his class sizes have been steadily decreasing because of rising alternatives for a fourth high school English credit, such as dramatic writing or multicultural lit, and the fact that students can either take the AP Language or AP Literature exam to count for the same college credit.

“You don’t get a separate credit for passing the AP Literature exam. A lot of kids are like, ‘Why do I even need to take it if it’s not going to help me with college?’” Moore said.

The Cedar administration has increased its efforts to encourage students to take more difficult classes. Cedar’s total student population is 80% of Clarke Central High School’s, but Cedar only has around 29% of Central’s AP enrollment in the 14 classes both schools share. Pérez hypothesizes that students who take AP Government and Politics as freshmen are more likely to take other AP classes in the future because they would be already exposed to the workload. She also believes that the difference in AP enrollment between the two schools is because the middle schools that feed into Cedar recommend AP Government to less incoming freshmen.

While AP Government teacher Tommy Houseman supports more students taking rigorous classes, he has some concerns about the overwhelming class sizes he has to face and how that affects learning and exam preparation.

“FRQs (free-response questions) are my biggest challenge. The one thing that I’m still trying to figure out and work on is how to teach and give feedback. There have been instances where I’ve taught more than one section of AP Government, so take that 30 students and then add another 30 or 20 students to it and it becomes nearly impossible,” Houseman said.

Another issue Houseman runs into is not having another teacher to exchange ideas with, as he is the sole AP Government teacher. As a solution, he proposes that the school should take on another.

“There needs to be more of me. If we have more kids, then we could have an additional teacher. I’d have a colleague to collaborate with and we’d be pulling more kids into the program,” Houseman said.

DIVERSIFYING THE CROWD

According to the 2024-29 Clarke County School District strategic plan, CCSD plans to increase the number of non-white students taking AP classes or dual enrolling across the county. The projected goal for 2029 in that area is 84%, with the current starting point at 47.5%.  Cedar’s current percent of all non-white students enrolled in AP is about 15%.

“We want all students to be able to take advantage of the benefits in those AP/dual enrollment classes. Sometimes non-white students are not necessarily feeling as comfortable taking that leap, or not feeling encouraged to do so,” Cotsakis-Cordon said.

Sophomore Tanya Calderon-Salazar finds that in her personal experience, AP classes lacking in diversity can be intimidating for minority students and leave them feeling incapable.

“Because there are more white kids, I felt kind of shied away because there were only two other Hispanics in my class. It really is difficult because it’s like, ‘Oh, they’re maybe smarter, maybe I shouldn’t be in this class,’” Calderon-Salazar said.

Miller is a firm supporter of bringing more diversity into AP, and he believes that the new AP African American Studies course already opens up AP classes to more minority students.

“You don’t want AP classes to turn into a little private school within the public school. If it’s a bunch of white students in there, it’s just all one kind of person. You want black students to know that they have the capability to do the work just like the other students,” Miller said. 

WHAT ABOUT THE STUDENTS?

AP classes can offer many benefits to students beyond having a chance to earn college credit. Cotsakis-Cordon thinks that the discussion-heavy and written aspects of those classes benefit students in the long run.

“Learning how to answer the questions that are being asked of you is important, and knowing that there’s a format to the way that this question is being asked, and a way they want you to answer this question…for things like job applications, there’s an unwritten formula and how you answer some of those questions, so learning that, ‘Hey, there’s a way to write an answer to anything I just need to figure out how and what it looks like,’” Cotsakis-Cordon said.

“It’s important to consider the difficulty of an AP before you take it, because it’s harder to get a good grade in an AP. I feel like what you gain from a class is more important than any grade. Pardon my radical ideas, but is it so crazy to prioritize the furtherance of your mind over a system of grading?” Mowrer said.

Sophomore Tulsi Patel says one of her biggest struggles is with the AP workload, as it can take her hours at home to complete.

“I knew once I got to high school, it was going to get harder with AP classes. But at the same time, I didn’t realize that I’d be putting in this much effort for my homework alone,” Patel said.

At Washington-Wilkes Comprehensive High School,  which Calderon-Salazar went to in her freshman year, she says her English teacher prepared her for AP classes by having her do practice FRQs to get a taste for the more difficult coursework.

“I think that benefited me personally because she got us in the mindset to see the different answers and the format we should know how to answer and what is expected,” Calderon-Salazar said.

But on the counselors’ end of things, it can be difficult to explain the idea of rigor to middle school students. Cotsakis-Cordon thinks that it’s important to make sure students know that the classes they take matter, starting as early as 5th grade. That way, the idea won’t be so new to students when they’re told about AP classes.

“Going even back to the elementary schools, that scaffolding is so important. Letting kids know when they’re choosing their sixth grade courses that the level of their math they take actually matters because they can end up taking a different math in eighth grade Those students who have already had some high school exposure in middle school. Those are the students that I’ve seen that sometimes are the students that have the confidence to try a little more in high school,” Cotsakis-Cordon said.