The pursuit of equity and excellence: Advanced placement exam participation and performance by sex and by race/ethnicity, 1996–2022

Abstract

The Advanced Placement (AP) program was originally designed to provide advanced coursework to intellectually able students while still in high school. Given the attention paid to AP participation and performance in college admission decisions, it is important to consider sex and race/ethnicity differences in those measures. Here, I report on participation and performance for 19 different AP exams for even-numbered years from 1996 to 2022. Females are consistently overrepresented among examinees in many and in the most common AP exams. At the same time, for many exams, females are overrepresented among those scoring at the lower tail and underrepresented at the upper tail. Since 1996, Whites have been consistently overrepresented in some exams (e.g., Psychology) and underrepresented in others (e.g., Spanish Language) relative to their representation among U.S. high school students; Asians have become increasingly overrepresented in most, but especially STEM, exams; Hispanics have been consistently underrepresented except in Spanish Language and Spanish Literature; and Blacks have continued to be substantially underrepresented in all exams. For most courses and most years, the majority of White and Asian students earned a qualifying score while the majority of Hispanic and Black students did not. In the context of previous research showing that group disparities in AP participation and performance are greatly diminished after accounting for group disparities in intelligence, I discuss the future of AP.