March 2004

Advanced Placement courses are a nationally recognized marker of academic excellence for students and their schools.

AP courses allow students, mostly juniors and seniors, to enter a universe of knowledge they might not otherwise explore during their high school years. The Advanced Placement Program, under the direction of The College Board, allows students to take academically demanding college-level courses and earn college credit before they attend their senior proms.

More than 75 percent of New York's high schools offer AP courses, far above the national average of 55 percent, according to The College Board. The extensive availability of AP courses in public schools has helped trigger explosive growth in the number of 11th- and 12th-graders demonstrating their intellectual excellence and readiness for college. The spread of the AP culture is being helped by a historic partnership between NYSUT and The College Board to expand AP opportunities for urban and rural students. That work is paying off.

The number of New York public school students taking Advanced Placement college courses has risen by 50 percent over the last six years, from 50,127 in 1997 to 75,029 in 2003. [7]

Since 1990, the number of New York students taking AP courses has more than doubled, while the number of low-income, African-American and Latino students taking AP courses and AP exams has more than tripled.

College Board President Gaston Caperton said New York ranks among the top states in the nation in its number of African-American, Latino and low-income students taking the college-level AP Exams.

Caperton said, "Throughout the nearly 50-year history of the Advanced Placement Program, the state of New York has consistently provided significant and ever-expanding numbers of traditionally underserved minority and low-income students with access to the stimulating and rigorous AP courses."

Caperton noted that even before the federal government began offering fee assistance for low-income students in 1988, "New York saw a growth from 1993-1998 of 109 percent in the number of AP Exams taken by low-income students; by contrast, nationwide the growth was only 88 percent during those same years."

The educational rigor offered to New York students through the Advanced Placement Program - and the excellence that has followed - is helping to establish New York's credentials as one of the best public school systems in the nation.

NEXT: "4. New York: Home to "America's Best High Schools"