Dive Brief:

• While many people still believe Advanced Placement courses should be reserved for above-average performers, schools are welcoming a broader swath of students based on the belief that the rigor will help them in college and in life, regardless of their grade on the final exam.
• Jay Mathews writes for The Washington Post that most students at one predominantly low-income school called Preuss, a charter high school at UC San Diego, take at least six AP classes, and less than a third of the tests come back with passing scores. But along the way, they learn important life skills.
• Students who went on to college and impressive careers can look back at the perseverance they developed in classes that were hard, as well as the lessons they learned by continuing on after failure.

Dive Insight:

There is a divide in this country about whether it makes sense to offer more rigorous classes to all students and expect them to rise to the challenge. That is what the Common Core State Standards amount to. They are supposed to lead to a more challenging curriculum in schools, where students will be expected to achieve more than they have in recent years. Critics say a high jumper who cannot clear a 5-foot pole will not clear 6-feet just because the bar is raised. Of course, proponents say she may clear 5-foot-3-inches.

This is the key to offering Advanced Placement — or International Baccalaureate — courses to students from low-income families or other disadvantaged groups who are not at the top of the distribution when it comes to academic performance. They get exposed to a level of rigor that makes them strive for more, and even if they can’t clear the higher bar, they get the opportunity to do more than they would have otherwise. There is data to back that up: Recent information about IB shows low-income students who take just one course have better long-term outcomes than their peers who do not.

Recommended Reading

The Washington Post: How students find success — through failure — in Advanced Placement...