Missouri students have increased their scores on Advanced Placement (AP) exams over the past decade, but scores also show barriers remain for all high school students in the state to achieve equitable access to upper-level coursework.
AP courses offer high school students the opportunity to take college-level coursework and, if they do well on the final exams for their particular AP courses, they can enter college with some credit. With this credit, they might be allowed to skip equivalent courses in their college career, moving on to more advanced courses earlier and saving on tuition costs.
In the 2005-06 school year, 3,400 students in the state scored 3 or higher on their AP exams, but that number has more than doubled over the following decade, according to the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE).
In the 2015-16 school year, 6,938 students scored 3 or higher on their exams. DESE reported 61 percent of Missouri students who took the exams scored 3 or higher, compared with the national average of 56.2 percent.
Although it's up to individual colleges and universities to decide what acceptable scores are, students usually need a minimum score of 3 out of a possible 5 on an AP exam to earn college-level credit.
Nationally, 645,000 students in the class of 2006 took at least one AP exam, and 14.3 percent of them scored a 3 or higher. Ten years later, 1.1 million students in the class of 2016 took at least one AP exam, and 21.9 percent of them scored a 3 or higher, according to The College Board - the college entrance exam nonprofit that oversees the AP program.
Among Jefferson City Public Schools students, 537 were enrolled in AP courses last school year, said Tammy Ridgeway, JCPS director of secondary education.
Out of 112 AP exams JCPS students took last year, 81 scored 3 or higher.
It does cost money for students to take the exams, but DESE communications coordinator Sarah Potter said AP discounts exam fees for low-income students. Their fee is $94, and the self-imposed discount brings it to $53.
In years past, federal subsidies have brought the fee down even more to $15. In 1999, more than 45,000 low-income students nationwide took advantage of the federal discounts. By 2016, more than 450,000 students did, according to The College Board.
This year, however, federal funding will not come through for states because of changes in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) - the Obama Administration-era replacement for the Bush Administration's No Child Left Behind Act. ESSA passed Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support in 2015.
This year's changes eliminated the federal program dedicated to providing subsidies for low-income students' AP exam fees. That program was consolidated with about 48 other programs into a new ESSA Title IV "block grant" system for "student support and academic enrichment grants."
That means it's up to individual school districts to decide how to cover low-income students' AP exam fees beyond the $53 discounted rate, Potter said.
School districts can still use the Title IV block grant funding to help students from low-income families cover AP exam fees. However, that money will have to be allocated out of a collective financial pot for a district that can also fund needs including classroom technology resources and staff support for them; drug use and violence prevention; reducing out-of-school suspensions; mental health care services and support for students; increasing access to quality science, technology, mathematics, computer science, music, arts, foreign language, American history, civics, economics and other courses for all students, but particularly those of under-represented groups like girls, minorities, English learners, children with disabilities and low-income students; and accelerated learning opportunities, which include dual credit and AP programs.
"Changes in federal funding will not impact AP," Ridgeway said of JCPS' AP programs. "We are looking at how to expand students' taking the exam and offering ways to help defer the cost."
State funding for AP-related programs has been modified, too.
In the fiscal year 2018 budget for DESE, Gov. Eric Greitens cut $100,000 out of a requested $415,875 for AP and dual-credit funding. Potter said the money cut was specifically for National Math and Science Initiative training for more Missouri teachers to get training on teaching AP courses.
"This cut eliminates the training entirely for the whole state," she said.
AP exam results reflect apparent economic disparities between communities and students' access to advanced-level coursework. Disparities between racial, ethnic and gender groups show progress remains to be made in preparing high school students for college through accelerated learning programs like AP.
"That follows the pattern that we see in all other subjects," Potter said. "It makes sense that we'd see that in AP scores as well."
Missouri AP score data for the 2015-16 school year shows wide disparities between students who are white or Asian and students who are Hispanic/Latino, native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, American Indian/native Alaskan and black.
Students who are Asian had the highest average AP exam scores in the state, at 3.46. Students who are white had average scores of 3.13. Students who are black had the lowest average scores in the state, at 1.93.
The average score overall for the 42,080 AP exams taken by 25,610 students in the state last school year was 3.03. No broadly classified group of students of color scored above this average. The average score of the 23 exams taken by students who identified as "other" was 3.13. For the 500 exams taken by students who did not identify their race or ethnicity, their average score was 2.57.
For all groups of students, girls scored lower on AP exams than boys. The average statewide score for girls last year was 2.95, and for boys was 3.11. Significantly more girls than boys took AP exams in the state last year.
Potter said one reason particular groups of students don't do well overall on AP exams is those groups haven't typically been offered higher-level coursework before, so they aren't prepared for the AP work. Providing those opportunities is important for students to close achievement gaps, she said, and "AP is a big part of that."
"The (JCPS) district deals with the same issues as other schools in the state," Ridgeway said, reiterating the district has discussed "ways to assist with deferring the cost of the exams for students who need financial assistance."
Jefferson City High School counselor Carrie Welch added, "Counselors work in small groups and individual planning sessions to encourage and educate students on AP courses and testing." This means counselors show students what AP classes they can take and what exam scores they would need to transfer in credits for the specific degree program at the school they're looking into.
Blair Oaks High School doesn't participate much in AP coursework, said Principal Gary Verslues. The school offers only one AP chemistry course, and very few students take it each year - from "no one" to five or six students each year, he said.
In the 2015-16 school year, six Blair Oaks students took the AP exam for chemistry, and none of them qualified for a passing score, Verslues said.
He said they would like students to perform better on the exam, but added far more Blair Oaks students use dual-credit options available through Central Methodist University and State Technical College of Missouri.
Not counting duplicate students, he said, about 70-75 students take advantage of dual-credit courses that are the "basic freshman-level courses for college" - sociology, psychology, speech, U.S. history, American literature, statistics and Spanish.
"It's kind of a personal preference," he said. Students have much more control with dual credit, he said, because whether they get credit is not determined by their one-time performance on an exam.
Of the 537 JCPS students enrolled in AP courses last year, Ridgeway said, some chose to take the courses for dual credit.
An advantage of AP over dual-credit work is its portability, Potter explained. Students can take their AP credit to any institution in the state, and to colleges and universities outside the state, too.
Last year, JCPS students took 14 AP courses - in English, calculus, statistics, biology, chemistry, physics, history, government, psychology and human geography. This year, two AP computer science courses have also been added, Ridgeway said.
Greitens noted some of the difficulties for rural school districts to provide AP course opportunities during a news conference Thursday with reporters and editors as part of a Missouri Press Association program at the Capitol.
"I believe the number last year was something like 367 of our (520) school districts in the state of Missouri did not have one single child who took one single Advanced Placement test."
Greitens said he spoke with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush during his visit to the Capitol on Thursday about how that state had addressed the same problem.
Greitens said Missouri is "pushing course access and the ability of students to take classes virtually." He explained that what happens in many smaller, rural districts in the state is that there may be a couple students qualified and ready to take an AP exam like chemistry, "but it doesn't make sense for their principal to dedicate one teacher to teach an AP chemistry class just for those two kids."
He said districts that have implemented virtual course access options have seen dramatic increases in AP class participation.
In DESE's 2018 budget, Greitens proposed an additional $2 million in funding for virtual education opportunities - a 339 percent increase over the previous amount budgeted.