Do AP Exams Help Low-Income Students?

One of the things that made it challenging for me to find the right college was that my high school grades suffered due to my test-taking anxiety. My disposition is someone who becomes quite tense under situations of intense pressure, and I have memories of the Advanced Placement (AP) test, in particular, being hard on me, even though I did pretty well on it.

I recently ran across an article that demonstrated that AP courses are being pushed to more and more students, particularly in low-income schools. The New York Times article, written by Dana Goldstein, entitled. “Why Is the College Board Pushing to Expand Advanced Placement?” asks a question with a lot of different answers. This article uses various statistics and statements to answer the question posed in the title. Ultimately, the opinion I have about this topic is that this push for AP doesn’t quite come from an altruistic desire to bring education to all, but, instead, to supplement monetary gain for and the extended reach of the “non-profit” College Board.

The first thing I want to touch upon is the timing of this. According to reporter Dana Goldstein, “From 2019 to 2022, revenue from its other signature product, the SAT, plummeted to $289.2 million from $403.6 million, as more colleges dropped testing requirements for admissions.” Even in the current classes I’ve had this semester here at Farmingdale, the presence of final tests have slowly been phased out. The idea of performance ultimately being decided by exams has slowly been disappearing out of the focus in our educational system.

I actually wasn’t aware that the standardized tests were direct sources of revenue for the College Board. Although the College Board has non-profit status, this status has been questioned by the consumer rights organization Americans for Educational Testing Reform (AETR). AETR points to the College Board’s excessive profits and executive salaries. College Board CEO, Gaston Caperton, made $1.3 million in 2009. The College Board’s practice of selling test preparation materials and directly lobbying legislators has also been cited as unethical. At the end of the day, the College Board is a business, and making money is the goal of any business. Yet, the reason for pushing AP tests is credited to be in the interests of helping lower-income students and that rubs me the wrong way.

In fact, instead of helping low-income students, the outcome seems to be just the opposite. Goldstein writes, “But the grueling, multi-hour tests put many low-income students at a disadvantage. Their families have fewer resources to spend on test prep; they may not speak English as a first language; and they may have attended elementary and middle schools that provided less effective preparation.” This statement perfectly illustrates why this idea of pushing these tests onto people who come from marginalized backgrounds doesn’t sit right with me at all.

While I myself was prepared fairly well for the AP exam that I took, I was around other students who came fresh from other places in the world and didn’t know English at all. I saw them struggle with normal assignments, let alone tests. It was worrying to see these people evaluated as less competent and intelligent because of their inability to function like top performers on the AP test. 

Standardized tests are measured by preparation, ability to pay for resources, and factors that create results that mirror racial inequities. An article published by the Brookings Institution, written by Ember Smith and Richard V. Reeves, states that the “SAT math scores mirror and maintain racial inequity …….. Black and Latino or Hispanic students have lower SAT math scores on average, are less likely to attend college than their white and Asian counterparts, and are even less likely to pursue a STEM major.” This also shoots down those who believe there isn’t an inherent inequity that is present in the educational system. While it may not be instantly apparent, systemic inequality is something made from the ground up. Low-income groups, struggling to survive economically, will have trouble being able to match those who do have access to financial and social resources, no matter how you cut it.

To cap this writing off, I asked a few people in my life what they thought about the idea of standardized tests being pushed onto people with fewer resources. 

“I’m glad that colleges aren’t putting as much focus on test scores! They’ve always stressed me out,” said my sister, Kasey, who will be in the college system in a few years.

And Thomas, a student here at Farmingdale, said, “If you ask me? They [the College Board] just want the money. Even the college professors here mostly know that Advanced Placement courses and tests aren’t helpful to those who don’t have the drive for it.”

The truth of the matter is that the educational system has been shifting and changing and some of the established powers in this system have felt the financial pressure. Either they change to suit the new needs of the students, or they try to push their desired system onto students regardless of how much it really works. The College Board seems to be choosing the latter.