Advanced Partiality

“Since it writes the exams, signs off on every AP course syllabus, controls teacher training and manages the revision of approved textbooks, the College Board is capable of exercising exceptionally tight control over the curriculum. In effect, the College Board is becoming an unelected national school board, independent of district or state control.”[1]

– Stanley Kurtz, Ethics & Public Policy Center

The College Board’s Advanced Placement (AP) program is the most prominent name-brand series of college-level courses for high school students in the nation, if not the world. But now accusations of increasingly politicized content and slackening academic rigor have called into question the value of perpetuating the AP program’s curricular dominance over America’s high schools—particularly in areas such as U.S. history.

Likewise, while states across the nation have embraced innovative forms of school choice for their students—particularly through public charter schools and private education savings accounts—parents and educators who exercise school choice often remain beholden to the same curricular programming determined by executives of the College Board, simply trading one educational vehicle dominated by the College Board’s AP standards for another.

Despite growing academic, political, and financial concerns, however, state laws continue to prop up this flawed program with subsidies, grants, and endorsements over potential alternative providers. As this report finds, for example, the majority of states now actively promote or subsidize the AP program through direct, targeted statutory assistance—as states enjoy virtually no influence or accountability over the subject matter or academic integrity of the exams. This combination of favoritism and surrender of authority to the unaccountable College Board not only bolsters its current ideological trajectory, it stifles the emergence of competitors that could offer superior college-level examinations from entering the marketplace as well.

To help address these challenges, this report documents a sampling of the AP program’s shortcomings, the scope of statutory preferential treatment granted to the College Board across the nation, and potential policy solutions for state lawmakers to pursue.

• Although legally classified as a nonprofit, the College Board is a large corporation that in 2022 reported over $1 billion in revenue and paid its CEO a compensation package of over $2 million a year—nearly 30 times the median high school teacher’s salary.
• While unelected and unaccountable to state lawmakers, the College Board’s AP program acts as a taxpayer funded monopoly that dictates the curriculum for millions of American schoolchildren—even those who don’t take AP courses and exams—while superseding the requirements of state standards.
• The chairman of the College Board’s governing board has declared “anti-racism” as his “driving ethos;” he also stated as a district superintendent that all employees “must share” the goals of an “equity lens,” and oversaw the College Board issuing a letter of opposition to the Supreme Court’s decision to end race-based discrimination in college admissions.
• The College Board’s AP course frameworks—most notably AP U.S. History and AP African American Studies—have embraced ideologically driven, politically left-leaning views of their subjects while minimizing the emphasis on more fundamental aspects of history.
• Despite claims of institutional neutrality, the College Board now uses “Course Audits” to censor and reject schools’ use of acclaimed anchor texts such as Wilfred McClay’s Land of Hope in U.S. history.
• The College Board’s recent change in scoring methods have made AP exams dramatically easier to pass, regardless of students’ actual mastery of course content, calling into question the academic integrity of their offerings as truly college level equivalent.
• State legislatures are actively propping up the AP program’s dominance over what students are taught: 18 states have laws that require public colleges to accept passing AP exam scores for college credit.
• More than half of states—26—provide financial support for the College Board via a subsidy, tax credit, or other financial assistance for AP exam fees.
• 18 states have laws promoting the expansion of the AP program in high schools. Some of these states provide grants for AP teacher training and AP program development.
• States should end their favoritism toward the College Board and the AP program and adopt a policy of neutrality or innovation in establishing new interstate alternative college-level course examination programs.
• States should eliminate AP course syllabus secrecy and instead require transparency of public school AP course syllabi that are currently demanded of schools by the AP program and “audited” by the College Board for acceptability.

The College Board oversees the AP program, a series of ostensibly college-level courses for high school students. The College Board distributes curricular frameworks for AP courses and administers the AP exams, which test students’ mastery of AP course content. Many colleges and universities accept certain scores on AP exams for credit (see below).

The College Board has used these activities to transform itself into a major government-supported business. Although designated as a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, the College Board pulled in over $1 billion in revenue and reported over $2 billion in assets in 2022. Almost $500 million of this revenue came from the AP program alone. One analysis estimates that taxpayers foot the bill for $100 million per year in AP program testing fees. Because of its nonprofit status, this large corporation does not pay any federal income tax.[2]

The College Board uses its massive revenue to pay its top employees extremely well. In 2022, CEO David Coleman received an annual compensation package of $2.1 million.[3] This compares to the median school superintendent’s salary of $156,000[4] and is roughly 30 times the median high school teacher’s salary of $62,000.[5] The College Board’s president, Jeremy Singer, likewise received $1.8 million in annual salary and bonuses, with at least a dozen of the nonprofit’s other administrators collecting over $400,000 in annual compensation.[6]

The College Board’s size and power leads to its massive influence on K-12 education. In the U.S. public high school graduating class of 2022, more than one-third of students completed at least one AP exam.[7] Many more beyond this also take AP courses without taking an AP exam, which means that College Board’s direct influence extends well beyond only the number of students taking an AP exam. And because AP courses have historically been seen as the gold standard in college preparation courses, the AP program shapes not only the content taught to the top third of high school graduates, but also the curriculum for students of all ages and abilities.

As Stanley Kurtz, a scholar at the Ethics & Public Policy Center, has noted, “Since it writes the exams, signs off on every AP course syllabus, controls teacher training and manages the revision of approved textbooks, the College Board is capable of exercising exceptionally tight control over the curriculum. In effect, the College Board is becoming an unelected national school board, independent of district or state control.”[8]

Analysts from across the political spectrum have raised similar concerns about allowing a single entity to have so much sway over American education. Dana Goldstein, a reporter for The New York Times, writes, “Advanced Placement is the go-to program for schools across the country, making it something of a de facto national curriculum.” She notes that some studies suggest that alternative programs, like International Baccalaureate (IB), serve students better than AP.[9] Writing in the left-wing Slate, Joe Boeckenstedt warns, “What should concern us is that a private company [the College Board] has its tentacles so tightly wrapped around a public education system most Americans consider a public good.”[10] But while the success of a for-profit or private organization is not itself a problem, when combined with the statutorily driven favoritism and its unelected control over public institutions, the College Board’s financial largesse and academic integrity do merit public attention.

For over a decade, the College Board has actively worked to reshape the telling of American history toward a more ideologically progressive orthodoxy. Nowhere has this been clearer than in its efforts to transform the course standards of its AP U.S. History (APUSH) program or in promoting a new, aggressively political AP African American Studies (APAAS) framework. In both cases, the College Board released new, highly polarizing course frameworks that left significant gaps in students’ knowledge while offering largely one-sided, leftist views of their subjects. Following intense criticism of the shortcomings of these frameworks, the College Board obfuscated and deflected while making minimal changes in an attempt to pacify critics.

First, consider the APUSH framework. In 2012, the College Board released new standards for APUSH that contained remarkable oversights. Critics noted that the 2012 framework completely omitted such crucial figures as James Madison, Dwight Eisenhower, and Martin Luther King Jr.[11] Coverage of World War II emphasized issues like the internment of Japanese Americans over the American contribution to victory over the Axis powers.

Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, writes that when he reported on the shortcomings and omissions of APUSH, the College Board accused him of lacking expertise in the subject. After mounting criticism, including objections from academic historians, the College Board was forced to revise the framework in 2015. However, Wood argued that the revision merely changed some of the wording while leaving the underlying problems of the framework unaddressed. After all, the College Board did not modify the accompanying APUSH exam, which supposedly measured students’ mastery of college-level U.S. history.[12]

In 2019, the College Board subsequently issued another revision to APUSH, which included changes to the APUSH exam. In a comprehensive review of the 2019 revision, however, entitled “Disfigured History: How the College Board Demolishes the Past,” David Randall of the National Association of Scholars noted that while some improvements had been made, the framework still lacked or minimized coverage of essential topics, figures, and themes in American history. For example, in the hundreds of pages that outline the APUSH course framework, Randall observed the word liberty appears only seven times:

APUSH 2019 mentions neither liberty nor freedom in its coverage of The Constitutional Convention and Debates over Ratification, The Constitution, the Monroe Doctrine, Abolitionism, women’s rights, the Republican Party’s 1860 Platform, Civil War Emancipation, Reconstruction, Gilded Age laissez-faire policies, anti-imperial critiques, 1920s Political and Cultural Controversies, the Cold War, [or] domestic anti-communism.[13]

As Randall notes, other significant features of American history—including concepts such as federalism and the impact of religion on American colonization and culture are likewise given short shrift under the new framework.[14]

The College Board’s newer AP African American Studies course (APAAS) further dispenses with more traditional historical inquiry in favor of political expedience. Despite its innocuous-sounding name, APAAS does not offer an introduction to the complexity of African American history and culture, but rather an ideologically charged call for progressive activism.[15] Indeed, originally released in late 2022, APAAS immediately sparked criticism for pushing a political and social agenda on students. As Stanley Kurtz noted at the time, “The topic descriptions sound neutral, but the readings almost uniformly consist of neo-Marxist agitation—pleas for a socialist transformation of America, inspired by African Americans and infused with their cultural style. APAAS’s ‘debates,’ such as they are, explore precisely what sort of leftist radical you should be.”[16]

In fact, so ideological was the framework that the state of Florida refused to certify the course because it violated the state’s prohibition on promoting the tenets of Critical Race Theory in public schools.[17] Faced with the prospect of losing thousands of Florida students, the College Board was thus forced to revise APAAS—issuing a revised course framework in 2023 that removed much of the Critical Race Theory-related content.

Yet even these concessions proved to be only a partial—and largely fleeting—course correction. Upon urging from the left, the College Board released another new version of the course later in 2023. As noted by Max Eden, research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, these revisions “read more like a ham-fisted reaction to the criticisms of leftist activists than thoughtful refinements to enhance teaching and learning.” For example, Eden notes that the first revision had moved a required unit on highly controversial issues like prison abolition and reparations to an optional section, while offering students the option of studying black conservatism. The second revision, however, subsequently advised teachers to spend up to five days on reparations or prison abolition, while deleting the option of studying black conservatism.[18]

Examples like APUSH and APAAS thus demonstrate the College Board’s increasing inclination to replace more balanced and traditionally academically rigorous course guidelines with a suite of new and updated materials more palatable to progressive academics. Unfortunately, the College Board’s questionable decisions on course content do not affect just a single class or a single school district, but millions of American students in states across the country.

The College Board’s statement of principles laudably states that “AP opposes indoctrination,” “opposes censorship,” and “foster[s] an open-minded approach to the histories and cultures of different peoples.” As the organization states, “no points on an AP Exam are awarded for agreement with a viewpoint.”[19] Such statements suggest ideological neutrality and an assurance that students are not to be penalized for their own political beliefs.

However, such statements stand in sharp contrast with the College Board’s institutional practices, priorities, and programming decisions regarding the materials that are actually curated for inclusion on the curriculum frameworks and AP examinations that shape the instruction for millions of students—even setting aside the examples from the APUSH and APAAS courses described above.

Indeed, while the AP program may faithfully score individual student essays impartially, for instance, members of its leadership have avowed a commitment to politically charged ideologies that appear to be driving the organization’s course content priorities and its institutional positions on public policy questions.

Writing in 2020, now-College Board Chairman Tom Moore declared in his role as a public school district superintendent, “We as a district will not move slowly towards understanding. We will move actively, and immediately, to anti-racism as our driving ethos.”[20] Echoing these statements in a subsequent message, Moore reiterated, “My own promise [is] that from today forward we will be actively anti-racism [sic] in our thoughts, our actions, and our professional development.”[21]

Such statements may sound laudable, but as many political observers are aware, the term anti-racism—popularized by author Ibram X. Kendi in his 2019 book How to Be an Anti-Racist—calls for a radically different notion of equality than classical nondiscrimination. Rather, as Kendi famously writes:

The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist. … The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.[22]

Like Kendi, College Board Chairman Moore has also couched his views in terms of “equity,” writing further:

We have made great strides the past few years … as the lens of equity was focused on what and how we did things. … Some will read this and think they do not like the tone, or the message. … They will find this too political, and I will be told to ‘stay in my lane.’ … As a white male, and as a superintendent … I am sorry that I have not done more to achieve what she works for every day as our Director of Diversity Advancement. Everyone who works for West Hartford Public Schools must share this goal.[23]

While Moore’s statements reflected his leadership principles specifically as a district official—rather than in his capacity as the future chairman of the College Board—under his leadership the College Board has likewise aligned itself with the principles of equity and anti-racism over classical colorblind nondiscrimination. In fact, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 2023 decision striking down racial discrimination in admissions, the College Board issued a formal response condemning the ruling, proclaiming “We are disappointed in the Court’s decision.”[24]

In addition to the College Board’s troubling approval of racially discriminatory practices in education, its tactics of tightly controlling schools’ instructional choices are perhaps even more worrisome. Indeed, despite its aforementioned disavowal of censorship and its purported “open-minded approach to … histories,” the College Board now exercises control and an intellectual veto over disfavored course materials.

As a condition of participating in the AP program—and at the risk of litigation against schools who defy the College Board’s order to not even use the term “Advanced Placement” absent their permission[25]—the College Board requires schools or teachers to submit their own course syllabi for audit and approval by the College Board to even designate a course on student transcripts as advanced placement equivalent.

Indeed, through its process of “AP Course Audits,” the College Board requires extensive documentation of course textbooks, primary sources, and specific activities used to teach students. While such information would provide useful accountability to school governing board members and the public, it is instead provided privately to the College Board and used by the organization to actively dictate—or block—the materials used in the classroom.

In fact, the College Board has now wielded this power to reject the use of titles such as Wilfred McClay’s Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story, the 2019/2020 text showered with acclaim from faculty at institutions ranging from the University of Virginia to Princeton. Indeed, as Emory Professor of American History Patrick Allitt has written:

This is the most cheerful and inspiring history of America written so far this century. Where most historians emphasize fragmentation and oppression, McClay makes the case for a unified national story characterized by optimism and achievement. Without downplaying dismaying episodes, past and present, he shows how they have been offset by the American pursuit of reform, revival, and improvement. … I can imagine schools and colleges assigning this book with a sense of gratitude and confidence.[26]

Despite such endorsement by faculty of many of the nation’s most prestigious universities, the College Board has used its power to specifically deny teachers who have sought to use Land of Hope as an anchor text for their students, as shown in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: College Board denial of request to use Land of Hope for AP US History course instruction

While defenders of the College Board might point out that schools ultimately have the choice to participate in the AP program, schools are functionally required by state law to align their offerings with the AP program if their students are to be eligible for college level credit (as described in the following sections). As such, students, parents, and school administrators depend on the ability to verify the completion of AP level work, and as the College Board makes clear:

“Schools with courses not authorized or annually renewed through the annual AP Course Audit process are strictly prohibited from using the AP trademark.”[27]

In contrast to the College Board’s top-down control over schools’ syllabi and textbook choices, states across the country have long held that local school districts and public charter schools should be generally free to determine the curricula and textbooks used in class. While some have established additional state level safeguards or requirements—including prohibitions on public school instruction promoting race-based discrimination or lists of textbooks approved for use in public institutions—these requirements remain less domineering than those of the private College Board. And unlike those state level requirements for public schools that are subject to a public vetting process, those of the College Board dictate the shape instruction of both public and private education across states while lacking any public process for elected officials or state boards of education to consider the addition of new, high-quality materials.

In fact, in states like Arizona, Stanley Kurtz’s characterization of the College Board as a de facto “national school board” are even more poignant when one considers that its curricular demands largely supersede the impact of both the state’s history standards and local school board programming preferences.

In Arizona, while the State Board of Education adopts statewide social studies standards, for instance, these standards are explicitly prohibited from being enforced via exam requirements. As Arizona law declares:

“The state board may administer assessments of the academic standards in social studies and science, except that a pupil shall not be required to meet or exceed the social studies or science standards measured by the statewide assessment.[28]

As a result, state standards function as a recommendation of course content but come nowhere near the heavy-handed micromanagement of course materials demanded by the College Board, which has screened out materials such as Land of Hope—regardless of whether approved by the publicly elected school board members and despite prestigious academic acclaim.

Likewise, in states such as Georgia, where lawmakers have prohibited public schools from promoting the tenets of racial discrimination called for in Critical Race Theory, state statute specifically allows AP curricula to override this prohibition:

“Nothing in this Code section shall be construed or applied to … Prohibit the full and rigorous implementation of curricula, or elements of a curriculum, that are required as part of advanced placement, international baccalaureate, or dual enrollment coursework; provided, however, that such implementation is done in a professionally and academically appropriate manner and without espousing personal political beliefs”[29]

In short, even in states such as Georgia, lawmakers have been forced to accommodate the ideological designs of the College Board and allow its course content to supersede the instructional standards otherwise in effect for the state’s public schools.

In addition to ideologically driven or otherwise questionable decisions about course content, the College Board has recently modified its scoring system for several AP exams, dramatically inflating students’ scores over previous years. The College Board has indicated that one of the reasons for this change was to have AP exam scores more closely mirror the grades that students received in high school AP classes and/or college level courses.[30]

The change led to a massive increase in the percentage of students who received a passing score on AP exams (three points or higher out of a possible five). For example, the year before the scoring system change, only 44 percent of students received a passing score on the AP English Literature exam. After the change, 78 percent passed the exam. Similarly, the passing rate for AP Chemistry increased by 21 percentage points.[31]

Experts in secondary and postsecondary education have accused the College Board of lowering the standards to prompt more students to take AP exams. Colleges require at least a three on an AP exam for credit, so greater passing rates incentivize students to take AP exams when they otherwise wouldn’t.

As Gary Stocker—the founder of College Viability, a company that assesses institutions’ finances—observed to TheWashington Times following the change, “The College Board is probably looking at a materially significant decline in revenue” due to the decreasing enrollment in American higher education. “They are adjusting their scoring to incent more students to pay and take AP exams.” As Shaan Patel—the CEO of an AP test prep company—similarly echoed in the Times, “I believe the changes to the AP scoring methodology by the College Board are primarily driven by profit. Yes, these changes do ‘dumb down’ the tests.”[32]

Joe Boeckenstedt, vice provost for enrollment management at Oregon State University, likewise claimed that the College Board’s easier scoring system would enable unprepared students to skip introductory college courses. “I’m very concerned about effectively passing students out of entry-level classes and getting them placed into more advanced classes they might not be ready for,” he said. “For an organization that claims to be student-focused, [the College Board] seems to be completely oblivious to the downstream effects of their business and revenue enhancement decisions.”[33]

Regardless of whether the new AP scoring standards reflect greater alignment with college-level course mastery (as suggested by the College Board) or a watering down of academic standards per its detractors, the fact that a single entity now arbitrarily determines (and can alter at will) the standard used for schools and colleges nationally further raises concerns about the near monopoly dominance of the AP program nationwide.

These changes to AP scoring—coupled with the increasing politicization of course content—should prompt more scrutiny about the AP program’s actual impact on students’ mastery of core concepts. Unfortunately, laws in many states give special privileges to the AP program, granting undue deference to the College Board’s signature initiative. In some cases, in fact, states even require that public universities automatically award credit for each passing score (three or above) on AP exams, even if those exam scores are now inflated beyond what institutional leaders believe is reflective of college level content mastery.

Despite growing concerns about the AP program’s political and academic integrity, state laws significantly favor the AP program in several ways. According to Goldwater’s analysis, 18 states have laws on their books that require public colleges to accept a passing score on an AP exam for college credit. (An additional four states have statutes that direct a state agency to develop a policy regarding the awarding of college credit for AP exams). In several of these cases, state laws endorse AP exams while providing no alternative exam that students could take for college credit, such as the International Baccalaureate  exams. These laws thus promote a government-endorsed monopoly in this sector.

The intention of these laws might be sound: to save students time and money by reducing the number of college classes they must take to earn a degree. But by giving a blanket endorsement to the entirety of the AP program—often while excluding other potential alternative exam opportunities—state lawmakers are compounding the dominance of the AP program and its ideological leanings.

As an example of the favoritism toward the AP program in state law, consider New Mexico, whose statutes declare that “public post-secondary educational institutions shall accept a score of three or higher on the advanced placement examination for post-secondary level course credit.” (See Figure 2). Furthermore, New Mexico state statute declares that “if an institution does not offer a corresponding course for a particular advanced placement examination, the institution shall award, at minimum, elective post-secondary level course credit for those students who receive a score of three or higher.” And in case the state’s colleges and universities still fail to get the picture, the law declares further that “an institution shall not require an examination score of more than three unless the chief academic officer provides evidence-based research to the higher education department that the higher score is necessary for a student to be successful in a related or more advanced course.”[34] In sharp contrast to this statutory elevation of the AP program, New Mexico law does not require public institutions to accept other exam series, such as the International Baccalaureate exams.

Figure 2

New Mexico Statues, 21-1-4

Figure 2

New Mexico Statues, 21-1-47

These provisions of New Mexico law work together to give massive advantages to the College Board. The law compels every public institution in the state to accept an AP exam score of three (which is merely a passing score) for course credit, even if the institution does not offer an equivalent course. Institutions that want to raise standards by requiring a higher score—perhaps in response to the College Board’s recent increase in the passing rate for AP exams—must justify this choice to the state’s higher education department. College-bound New Mexico students would be foolish not to take as many AP courses and AP exams as possible, because the state government has all but guaranteed that public institutions will honor a mere passing grade with course credit that saves them time and money. And every additional AP exam taken means additional fee revenue for the College Board. Other exam series, such as International Baccalaureate or Cambridge Advanced, do not receive the same guarantees of college credit, giving the College Board a clear statutory advantage over competitors.

A host of other states give similar preferential treatment to AP exams, which further increases the College Board’s dominance across the country. South Carolina, for example, requires every public college to award credit for a score of three or higher.[35] Oklahoma has a similar statute, stating that colleges in the state system of higher education shall not require a score of more than three on an AP exam to award college credit.[36] Kentucky statute likewise directs the Council on Postsecondary Education to require all public colleges to accept an AP score of three or higher.[37] In neighboring Missouri, state law similarly compels institutions to award course credit for a passing score on AP exams.[38]

Alongside requirements for public institutions to accept AP exams for credit, many states actively provide subsidies, tax credits, or other financial assistance for AP fees. Taxpayers thus give preferential financial support for the College Board’s dominance by sending the corporation millions of dollars in fees, even as the states retain virtually no influence over the academic integrity of the exams. And several state statutes set goals to increase AP participation or provide grants to promote the AP program at public schools. These statutory provisions include even more government support for the AP program, further increasing its reach.

More than half of states—26—allow for a state tax credit, subsidy, or other financial assistance to pay for exam fees associated with the AP program. Eighteen states have statutes that commit to expanding the AP program, and many of these states provide grants to aid districts in increasing AP offerings.

Arkansas provides an example of the extensive subsidies and support that states give to the AP program. As shown in Figure 3, Arkansas statute establishes the Advanced Placement Training and Incentive Program, which provides grants to organizations that seek to increase AP enrollment, to increase AP exam passing rates, and to develop AP programs in high schools.[39]

Figure 3

A.C.A. § 6-5-1203

A further provision of Arkansas law authorizes the state to pay AP exam fees, as shown in Figure 4.[40] Unlike the state’s Advanced Training and Incentive Program language above, this section does at least provide an allowance for IB exams as well, but any other provider would remain statutorily barred from similar government assistance.

Figure 4

A.C.A. § 6-16-804

Illinois state law similarly enshrines the promotion of the AP program in statute. The Illinois Board of Education is charged with seeking federal funds “to support Advanced Placement and Pre-Advanced Placement teacher professional development and to support the implementation of an integrated instructional program for students in grades 6 through 12 … that prepares all students for enrollment and success in Advanced Placement courses and in college.”[41] Statute also authorizes the Board of Education to subsidize AP exam fees for students who receive free or reduced-price lunch in school.[42]

Oklahoma state law establishes the Advanced Placement Incentive Program, which provides exam fee subsidies for public school students. This program further institutes several incentives for school districts to expand their AP programs, including grants for College Board teacher training and monetary awards to the district for all students scoring three or higher on AP exams. Finally, another Oklahoma law mandates that all public high schools offer at least four AP courses, and the law specifies that these courses must be approved by the College Board.[43]

Kentucky law likewise promotes the AP program through subsidies and mandates to increase AP participation. The law provides that “students enrolled in AP or IB courses in the public schools shall have the cost of the examinations paid by the Kentucky Department of Education.” Another provision requires the Kentucky Board of Education to set goals for increasing “the number and percentage of students enrolled in and completing AP and IB courses.”[44]

As this report has shown, state laws promote, subsidize, and favor the AP program, giving the College Board a dominant advantage over potential competitors. While this report has not reviewed state-level regulations regarding AP and other advanced course programs, a complete accounting of these regulations may reveal that the College Board receives even greater favoritism in many states.

Given the AP program’s flawed course frameworks and questionable policies on exam scoring, states should not give preferences to the AP program in expanding opportunities for students to take college-level courses in high school. Instead, states should allow or promote the emergence of new interstate alternative exam offerings in the marketplace that ensure students and schools have meaningful access to academically robust college-level courses and exams free of political activism.

Fortunately, states have legislative options to ensure the rigor and availability of college-level courses and exams.

Like many of these others, the state of Florida also has extensive statutory provisions that have promoted and subsidized the AP program. [45] However, in 2023, Florida legislators passed—and Governor Ron DeSantis signed—new language amending state law to reduce the privileged status given to the AP program and instead promote the development of new high-quality alternatives.

Indeed, as shown below in Figure 5, previous references to “advanced placement course” were enlarged to “advanced course or advanced placement course.” While other specific references to the AP program remain, they were likewise supplemented with new language ensuring the allowance of additional offerings: “Advanced Placement Program administered by the College Board or a course that prepares students for assessments developed” in accordance with state law.[46]

Figure 5

In fact, in that same legislation and in companion budget language, Florida lawmakers even allocated over $2 million in funds to actively promote the development of new exam offerings for students in collaboration with the state’s colleges and Department of Education.[47]

An increasing number of states have enacted flexible, student-centric education models, including education savings account (ESA) programs, which allow families to use a portion of their students’ K-12 funding allocation for private and home-based education rather than public schooling. Many of these programs allow the use of ESA funds for standardized tests and other examination fees. It is imperative that states who have enacted or are considering enacting such programs ensure they do not artificially constrict students’ exam options in favor of the College Board.

Instead, states should model the flexible approach established in states such as Arizona, whose Empowerment Scholarship Account program allows families to utilize ESA funds for exam fees broadly defined. Specifically, under Arizona’s program, ESA funds can be used to cover “fees for a nationally standardized norm-referenced achievement test, an advanced placement examination or any exams related to college or university admission.”[48]

Such provisions ensure that families who exercise school choice are not restricted to the same narrow exam options they may have been limited to in their local school. Rather, families are provided the financial flexibility and incentive to deploy their funds wherever those funds will be of most value to their students’ academic success—including any potential new college-level exam offerings.

Similar to the work pioneered in states like Florida and Arizona, states should ensure their statutes do not preclude the emergence of new competitors against existing name brand course and exam series, including AP, International Baccalaureate, and Cambridge Advanced. All statutes with language that specifically identifies by name any of these programs should be modified to ensure support for any college-level course and exam that meets standards of rigor.

States could use the following language as a model:

Part I: Choice in Testing Act

1) In the following sections, the following terms have the following meanings:

a) “College-level course” means a course offered in a middle or high school that involves generally equivalent rigor and subject mastery as a comparable course at a university or college, as determined by [designated state agency].

b) “College-level exam” means an exam that tests a student’s mastery of content in a college-level course, as determined by [designated state agency].

2) [Designated state agency] shall determine which courses, exams, and exam scores, qualify as college-level courses, college-level exams, and passing scores for the purposes of state programs based solely on the academic merit and rigor of those courses and exams.

3) It is the intent of this state that students shall have the opportunity to take college-level exams from multiple providers and that qualifying scores on these exams shall provide students with the opportunity to earn college credit.

4) Except for examinations that are developed subject to the oversight and governance of a policymaking body that includes an agent of this state:

a) [Designated state agency] shall determine whether the examinations developed by a particular organization are college level on an individual exam basis.

b) No program or agency of this state that authorizes the use of funds for college-level exam fees shall limit the use of those funds to a specific college-level exam provider.

5) Nothing in these sections shall be construed to endorse, approve, or grant preference to any organization that provides courses and exams that is not subject to the oversight and governance of a policymaking body that includes an agent of this state.

Part II: Transparency in Testing Act

1) Any course syllabus or course audit materials submitted by a public school employee to a college-level exam provider as a condition of course designation shall be disclosed and remain available on a publicly accessible portion of the school’s website for the duration of time that the designated course is offered at the school and for at least one year thereafter.

States should not be artificially compounding the control and influence of the College Board—an increasingly ideological private corporation—by awarding it privileged status in the promotion of its courses and in the exclusive provision of millions of dollars in testing fees. Instead, states should build on the recent work pioneered in Florida to eliminate the favored monopoly status of the College Board in state law and promote the establishment of new interstate college-level exam alternatives more responsive to the students, schools, and state education leaders seeking academic excellence.

Just as a majority of states have withdrawn their support for the National School Boards Association in the wake of that entity’s inflammatory political posturing,[49] states across the nation now have the opportunity to distance themselves from supporting another institutional behemoth whose ideological underpinnings may stand directly at odds with that of their citizenry.

By opening up the marketplace for college-level exams and promoting the development of new offerings, states can help restore both excellence and choice in high school education, ensuring that students have access to academic experiences of the highest quality and rigor.

The following is a list of states that require public colleges to accept AP exams for college credit, while not endorsing any other series of exams for credit, such as the International Baccalaureate exams: [50]

• California: EDC § 79500
• Delaware: DC Title 14, Chapter 90E, § 9002E
• Kentucky: KRS 164.098
• Missouri: RSM 173.1352
• New Mexico: 21-1-47 NMSA 1978
• Oklahoma: 70 OS § 3207.1
• Rhode Island: RI Gen. Laws 16-59-4(25), § 16-59-6(16), § 16-32-2(i)
• South Carolina: SCCL § 59-29-190

The following is a list of states that require public colleges to accept AP exams for college credit, while stating that other exam series may also be required or accepted for credit, such as the International Baccalaureate exams:

• Florida: Stat. § 1007.27
• Illinois: 105 ILCS 302/30
• Indiana: IC 20-32-3-10; IC 20-36-7-3
• Maryland: Education Code Ann. § 15-134
• Minnesota: MS 120B.13
• Ohio: ORC § 3333.163
• Oregon: ORS 350.417
• Texas: Texas Education Code § 51.968
• Utah: UC 53B-16-110
• Washington: RCW 10.053, 28B.10.054

The following is a list of states that direct an agency (such as a board of regents) to develop a policy regarding college credit for AP exams, while not requiring the awarding of college credit for AP exams:

• Arizona: ARS 15-1626
• Louisiana: LRS 17:3162, 17:3163, 17:3164.1
• Virginia: CV § 23.1-906
• Georgia: 20-2-159.4

The following is a list of states with statutes that authorize subsidies or other financial support for AP program fees:

• Alabama: CA § 16-6J-2(10)(h)
• Arizona: ARS 15-2402(B)(4)(g)
• Arkansas: ACA § 6-16-804
• California: EDC 52242, § 41580(d)(6), § 41590(d)(1)(D)
• Colorado: CRS 22-95.5-102
• Florida: Stat. § 1002.394(4)(a)(5)
• Illinois: 105 ILCS 302/25
• Indiana: IC 20-36-3-8, 20-51.4-2-9
• Iowa: IC 261E.5, § 257.11B(1)(b)(1)
• Kentucky: KRS 348, KRS 141.504(2)(a)(9)
• Massachusetts: GL Title XII, Chapter 69, § 1D(iii)
• Michigan: MCL § 388.1694
• Minnesota: MS 120B.13(3)
• Missouri: RSM 166.705(2)(g)
• Montana: MCA 20-7-1506(5)(a)(ii), 20-7-1704(1)(f)
• New Hampshire: NHRS 194-F:2(II)(i)
• North Carolina: NCGS 115C-174.26(a), § 115C-595(a)(3)(e)
• Oklahoma: 70 OS 1210.701(A)(2), § 28-101(A)(7)(d)
• Pennsylvania: 24 PS 25-2599.8
• Rhode Island: RI Gen. Laws § 16-98-6
• South Carolina: SCCL § 59-8-110(13)(f)(1)
• Tennessee: TCA § 49-10-1403(b)(7)
• Texas: Texas Education Code § 28.053(g), § 28.054
• Utah: UC 53F-2-408.5(2)(b)(ii)(B), 53F-6-401(11)(i)(i)

The following is a list of states that set goals in statute to expand or promote the AP program in high schools. Some of these states provide grants to develop AP programs at schools:

• Arizona: ARS 15-1283(B)(3)(e)(i)
• Arkansas: ACA § 6-5-1203
• California: EDC 52240, § 41580(d)(1)
• Colorado: CRS 22-95.5-202
• Florida: Stat. § 1003.4295(2)
• Illinois: 105 ILCS 302/20
• Indiana: IC 20-36-3-5(b), 20-36-3-7, 20-36-3-8, 20-36-3-9(b), 20-30-10-4, 20-24-4-1(a)(8)(A)(iv)
• Kentucky: KRS 622, 160.348, 158.849
• Minnesota: MS 13, 120B.132
• Mississippi: MCA § 37-15-39
• North Carolina: NCGS 115C-174.26(f), § 115C-238.81(b)(2)
• Oklahoma: 70 OS 703, 1210.704
• Oregon: ORS 180(3)(C)(v), 340.300
• Pennsylvania: 24 PS 25-2599.6(b)(1)(i)(M), 25-2599.2(b)(13)
• Rhode Island: RI Gen. Laws 16-98-3, § 16-96-4, § 16-96-5(b)(1)
• Texas: Texas Education Code 28.009, § 28.051, § 28.053
• Utah: UC 53F-2-408.5(2)(b)
• West Virginia: WVC 18-2I-4(7)(b)