In an announcement from the Virginia Department of Education, about thirty percent of Virginia public high school students demonstrated college-level achievement on at least one Advanced Placement, or AP, exam in 2018 placing Virginia just above the national average and ranking the state eighth in the nation.
That data comes from The College Board, the not-for-profit college readiness organization that develops standardized tests and administers the Advanced Placement program.
About 64,000 Virginia students took at least one AP exam, about 700 in Montgomery County, 50 at Radford High.
The fees for AP exams are can be hefty, but unavoidable because of the weight the tests hold in college admissions.
The VDoE announcement that began with the welcome announcement that Virginia students are doing well, concluded that the cost of AP tests, critical to university entrance, are a barrier that blocks many from taking them.
“We are extremely proud of our students’ accomplishments in Virginia, making us a national leader in college-level attainment while in high school. However, gaps for certain student groups continue to persist, so we must continue to expand access and equitable opportunities for AP achievement, especially among student groups where those gaps exist,” Superintendent of Public Instruction James Lane said.
In an email, VDoE Director of Media Relations Charles Pyle said College Board data suggests that, between 2015 and 2018 , about 5 percent fewer exams were taken by students identified as disadvantaged, and there about 5 percent fewer disadvantaged students took at least one AP exam.
“The number of AP exams taken by students identified as economically disadvantaged has dropped from 13,726 for the class of 2015, to 13,012 for the class of 2018,” he said. “The College Board also reports that the number of economically disadvantaged Virginia graduates who took at least one AP exam before completing high school has dropped from 4,197 for the class of 2015, to 4,002 for the class of 2018.”
Superintendent Lane identified subsidies as playing a role in fewer exams being taken.
“In conversations with College Board representatives, we learned that the majority of the states ranked above Virginia provide additional funding to school districts that enable them to provide additional supports to students. These include funds targeted towards increasing access to AP courses and additional instructional supports for teachers and students,” Lane said.
In an effort to avoid controlling a state’s academic standards and assessments, the federal Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 discontinued a program that provided grants to states to subsidize AP and International Baccalaureate examination fees for economically disadvantaged students according to the VDoE announcement.
Instead, the funds were consolidated with other grant programs and local school districts were given greater flexibility on their use, it said.
“An exam fee should not stand in the way of a student earning college credit and potentially shaving off a significant portion of the cost of college,” Lane said in the announcement.
Lane plans discussion with educators and with state and local policymakers to find alternative supports for students to even the playing field between Virginia and other states.
“We must ensure equitable access for our students as well. When we have supported students through exam-fee reductions in the past, through either grants or appropriated funding streams, we have strong evidence to suggest that these strategies had an impact.”
College credit is earned by passing AP exams.
As a whole, Virginia students in the class of 2018 earned more than 313,000 college credits by passing AP exams and potentially saved more than $140 million in tuition according to the AP exam administrator, The College Board.
The ten most popular AP courses among Virginia’s 2018 graduating seniors were English Language and Composition, U.S. History, U.S. Government and Politics, Psychology, World History, English Literature and Composition, Calculus AB, Biology, Statistics and Environmental Science.
