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Melissa: It's The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry.

In the years following World War II, a group of influential educators, college administrators, and philanthropists were working to standardize liberal arts education in public schools. They wanted to ensure that a high school education was a leg up, not only to intellectual development, but to economic development too. In 1955, this working group officially launched the Advanced Placement program, also known as AP. All right, fast forward to the now.

As the parent of any recent high school graduate knows, AP courses are standardized college-level classes that students can take in high school. Ideally, it's meant to expose them to the depth, breadth, and intellectual rigor of content that they'll encounter in university classes. A third of American high school students in public schools took at least one AP exam in 2022. A number of states have even mandated that their public schools offer at least one AP course.

During the past 15 years, AP courses have expanded into more under-resourced schools, beginning to reach more Black, Hispanic, and low-income students. In these classrooms, the primacy of the AP exam has also grown steadily, particularly, in the face of increasingly competitive college admissions. This notion of AP is not only a bridge but a leg up from high school to college is firmly planted, but a new book argues that instead of advancing students, AP courses are short-changing them.

Annie: My name is Annie Abrams and I'm a public school English teacher and the author of Shortchanged: How Advanced Placement Cheats Students. Advanced Placement courses are supposed to more closely resemble college courses. There are a few different ways to think about the difference between high school and college courses. At the beginning of the AP Program, the idea is that high school teachers would have more autonomy, there would be more room to go into depth, the assignments would challenge students to think more expansive thoughts.

Now the program seems to be going in a direction that's a little more restrictive where it seems like the amount of information is what the company seems to think defines a college course.

Melissa: The company. What company are we talking about?

Annie: The College Board is the nonprofit that's behind Advanced Placement courses. They're also behind the SAT.

Melissa: My eldest is now a junior in college, so we just live this life. AP, at least in her experience, had become a track where by the time many students were in their junior year, every course that they were taking was an AP course. Is AP transforming into simply a track for the students at the most well-resourced schools?

Annie: Access to AP is still uneven. It's not actually like an entire incoming group of freshmen will have learned X, Y, or Z just by dent of the AP Program. There are a lot of incentives to broaden participation in Advanced Placement. There are incentives for teachers, for students, for families, for schools, administrators, but the upshot seems to be that Advanced Placement is expanding rapidly in terms of whether it's just a track instead of this kind of à la carte, if you're passionate about it, do it experience.

I think some of that has to do with the pressure of college admissions. Students try to load up on AP courses. They feel an immense amount of pressure to prove themselves when college admissions is what it is right now. It seems to me that the College Board over the past decade, especially, has put a lot more emphasis on the exam and it seems like that's the direction in which the College Board is taking the program, so to take the fact of the exam as a given and to work backwards from there in developing a year's worth of study as opposed to thinking the other way.

Melissa: Give me an example.

Annie: For instance, for the AP English Language and Literature exams, the exams look pretty similar across English subjects. Each of them has a multiple-choice section that's basically reading comprehension. Then they each have three essays. The rubrics for each of the three essays across both English exams actually look pretty similar. Those essays are 40 minutes. You get a point for having a thesis, you get a range of points for having evidence and analysis, and then there's a bonus point for sophistication.

The kind of thing that I'm talking about, I wonder what it would look like to say what should students study over the course of the year and how should we evaluate what we decide they should learn and know. Another way to put it is that the exams aren't an outgrowth of a conversation between teachers and students, they're external.

Melissa: You describe these changes that have occurred since the initial establishment of AP to what it is now, and you describe it as short-changing students, how so? How does it affect their college experience but also maybe their broader learning?

Annie: AP from the start was a shortcut. It's baked right in. It's what the program has always been. There was a professor who complained in the very beginning, in the 1950s, who said that liberal education doesn't include time off for good behavior. It's funny to think of education that way, that if you're super passionate about something or if you excel in one field, then you have less time to study it. That's not what it's supposed to be, how it affects education more broadly.

A question I have is why can't we have high school surveys that are distinct from introductory college-level courses. It seems to me that as civic institutions, high schools and colleges serve distinct purposes, and I'm not sure that collapsing them makes a lot of sense. Why would we cut short opportunities for students to learn?

Melissa: Tell me a little bit more about the teachers' side. What is the experience for teachers in AP courses?

Annie: Some teachers really appreciate the support and the sense of community that they find in AP. I would never deny that. The question though always with AP is whether there might be some richer, better way. Why aren't teachers taking courses in the content they're teaching instead of going through college board trainings is an example of a question you might ask. It can be really difficult to fill a year with content and with meaningful challenging curriculum. Teachers need a lot of support in doing that. I wonder what it might look like if there were a more active collaboration between professors and teachers instead of outsourcing that task to the College Board.

Melissa: What would that look like?

Annie: The history of the AP program gives some sense of what it might look like. The professors and teachers who were responsible for developing the program had pretty frequent meetings about what was working in their courses, what wasn't working in their courses, the philosophies of education that were guiding their practice. It was pretty constant communication about both teaching and about the subject matter that they were passionate about passing on to students. You could have something like summer seminars for teachers, things like that.

Melissa: Stick with us for more on AP courses right here on The Takeaway. Welcome back to The Takeaway, I'm MHP. I've been talking with Annie Abrams, a high school English teacher and the author of Shortchanged: How Advanced Placement Cheats Students. In January, Florida's Department of Education rejected the curriculum for a new AP African American Studies course. The College Board responded by de-emphasizing or altogether removing issues like Black Lives Matter and racial reparations, but the College Board now appears to be changing course again.

Last week, it announced that it would once again revise the curriculum. Their statement says in part, "The updated framework shaped by the development committee and subject matter experts from AP will ensure that those students who do take this course will get the most holistic possible introduction to African American studies." Here again is Annie Abrams.

Annie: There have been a lot of reports of students who love the AP African American Studies course and I have no doubt about the current liveliness that they're experiencing. It seems like there's real investment in the course and I think that that's probably what's making it successful in terms of the political interference. I have the text of the Stop WOKE Act pulled up actually, and there was a provision in the Stop WOKE Act for how African American history ought to be taught in Florida.

That wasn't really part of the discussion about AP African American Studies. The Stop WOKE Act came out way before the College Board rolled out the course. I was wondering if the curriculum was always going to comply with this definition of African American history. I'm going to read from it now.

"Students shall develop an understanding of the ramifications of prejudice, racism, and stereotyping on individual freedoms, and examine what it means to be a responsible and respectful person for the purpose of encouraging tolerance of diversity in a pluralistic society and for nurturing and protecting democratic values and institutions. Instructions shall include the roles and contributions of individuals from all walks of life and their endeavors to learn and thrive through history as artists, scientists, educators, business people, et cetera."

There's nothing wrong with that, per se, right? The question to my mind was always how that definition shaped the course even before the rollout.

Melissa: Speaking of things that shape the AP curriculum, can we talk about AI and how might the use of artificial intelligence influence what is happening in these courses?

Annie: The College Board's made some investments in EdTech. AP Classroom is their new digital platform. On AP Classroom, as it stands, a teacher can decide whether to unlock materials that are uploaded there. But then the idea is also maybe it's possible to go through an AP course without a teacher at all because the college board provides videos and assessments that align with the course and exam description, which of course all leads up to this one exam. The EdTech facilitates courses as test prep.

Melissa: Annie Abrams is author of the new book Shortchanged: How Advanced Placement Cheats Students. Annie, thanks for joining us on The Takeaway.

Annie: Thank you so much for having me.

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