UWorld recently chatted with Implementation Lead and Strategist Laura Maddaford, a former high school English teacher, about the challenges in recruiting and retaining students for Advanced Placement® (AP) courses. She shared insights on her experiences and best practices that other educators can adopt.
“Recruiting students into an AP Literature course was a challenge; however, an even greater challenge was keeping the students in the course, especially after they received their first graded essay,” she stated. “Looking at all the inked questions over their (maybe) 500-word essays, students went through all the grief stages.”
She says that students often believe that their profound thoughts transferred onto paper are a fit of glory and must then reconcile their idealized writing self with the reality of their necessary growth. Immediately, many want to throw in the towel and withdraw from the course to the safety and comfort of an on-level course.
So how did Laura manage to retain all her students each year?
Making Failure Safe Through Mastery Grading
The key to retaining students was building an environment where it was safe to fail, as true learning comes from understanding what we don’t yet know. For AP, mastery grading — a grading concept where students can redo work or show mastery in another form, focusing on learning rather than the grade — provides the safety net for students to try (and try again).
It promotes continual learning and allows students to measure their growth. Research indicates that mastery learning can lead to significant improvements in academic performance.
Rethinking What (and How) We Grade
Laura also shares that she learned to be truly selective in what and how she graded the submitted work. One of the fastest ways to lose high-achieving students is if they fear the repercussions a class may have on their GPA. A New York Post report highlights that 91% of students feel academic stress, with many associating their self-worth with GPA and college acceptance outcomes. This intense pressure can lead to sleep deprivation, strained social relationships, and diminished mental health.
At the beginning of the year, consider not taking grades straight from AP-level work but instead using corrections and self-reflections as the pieces to grade.
This approach would accomplish the instructional goal of reteaching and assessing learning, while still providing students an opportunity to learn without negatively impacting their grades. This safety net allows students to buy into the culture of growth and improvement teachers strive to build in their AP classrooms.
Student Buy-In: Why High-Interest Topics Matter
Building classroom culture also requires students to buy in, which is why choosing topics or works of high interest is essential. Of course, the standards still need to be taught. How educators approach these standards and present them to students allows the ability to bridge the gap from us as gifters of knowledge to them as knowledge discoverers.
In Laura’s classroom, works such as Hamlet no longer resonated as many students interpreted the existential crisis as someone “just doing too much.” However, Othello drew students into discussion and debate as they engaged in questions of jealousy, racial bias, and manipulation.
A Shakespearean classic and all of the skills inherent in reading older literature were still covered, but in a way that engaged the students.
High-interest topics will yield high engagement and ownership of learning, which helps create life-long learners and not just receptacles of what teachers can teach.
The Principal’s Role in AP Retention
While teachers play a critical role in recruiting and retaining AP students, principals also significantly impact a program’s success. Principals can support AP growth in a few ways.
For example, principals build the master schedule and set the stage for AP success by ensuring AP teachers have manageable class sizes and adequate planning time. This allows teachers to provide meaningful feedback, design innovative lessons, and build the kind of safe learning environments that keep students engaged.
Principals can also champion the idea that AP courses are for all motivated students, not just those who have always excelled. They can set the tone by celebrating growth, not just high scores, and encouraging students to see AP as a path to greater academic confidence and college readiness.
Finally, principals are the instructional leaders on campus and must foster collaboration among AP teachers. This can lead to more cohesive, supportive classrooms, which helps retain students and boosts overall teacher morale and effectiveness.
Building a Thriving AP Culture Together
Ultimately, the most successful AP programs are built on collaboration. When teachers create engaging, supportive, and academically rigorous classrooms while principals provide the structural and cultural support needed for students and teachers to thrive, campuses are far better positioned to recruit and retain students in AP courses.
By working together to reduce barriers, celebrate growth, and empower both students and teachers, schools can cultivate a vibrant AP culture that prepares students for the challenges of college and fosters a lifelong love of learning.
