NC Educators! We Need Your Voice for AP Courses!!

📢 Important news for North Carolina educators and students! For 11 years, the NC Advanced Placement Partnership has provided FREE professional development and allowed thousands of students to take AP exams at no cost. But the current Senate budget proposal threatens this vital program and student testing fees! 😟

We urge all members to voice your concerns. Every student deserves access to advanced learning opportunities!

Take action now: https://www.ncleg.gov/FindYourLegislators.

The North Carolina AP Partnership began in 2014 with bi-partisan support for broadening student access to and successful participation in Advanced Placement coursework. Increasing access to advanced courses is paying off for our students. North Carolina remains in the national AP conversation as a leader in expanding AP opportunities, resulting in student success. The work behind this success is largely the result of this partnership, and the team’s direct work alongside NCDPI, Districts, and Schools.

Ten-year NC AP Partnership Achievements:

• AP Participation: Increased by 26% statewide since NCAPP's inception.

• AP Exam Scores: Scores of 3+ have increased by 60% statewide.

• Regional Growth: All eight regions have seen significant growth in AP participation and performance.

• Subgroup Performance: Significant growth across nearly every student subgroup.

• National Comparison: Statewide growth in AP participation and performance is outpacing the national average.

2024 Milestones:

• Over 8,000 more students took an AP exam.

• Over 21,000 more scores of 3+ were achieved.

• North Carolina students took a total of 101,950 AP Exams, resulting in scores of 3, 4, or 5, equating to an estimated 305,850 college credits.

• Potential cost savings for students and families amounted to $76,156,650, based on an average rate of $249 per credit hour.

 The NC AP Partnership supports NC School Districts in the following ways:

• Managing AP Exams for all students, supporting individual schools through the entire processes of registration and administration.

• Providing customized NCAPP professional learning, including analysis of AP Score Reports, implementation of AP Course and Exam descriptions, and best practices for incorporating AP Classroom resources.

• Providing AP Teacher Symposia, which supports teacher collaboration and sharing of engaging instructional practices for over 350 teachers annually. This is vital to teachers, as they are often the only AP teacher of that course in a school with no one to partner/plan.

• Providing annual funding for AP Summer Institute Tuition Waivers for new AP teachers, with 538 teachers attending this professional development in the Summer of 2024.

• Implementing AP Impact Virtual Sessions which enhance best practices for active classroom instruction and foster statewide teacher collaboration. These sessions occur at just the ‘right time’ for teachers, aligned with the instructional content for intentional support.

• Providing data coaching and strategic partnering with school leaders to broaden AP access, expand excellence for students and teachers, and strengthen AP pipelines for increased student postsecondary success.

AP Course enrollment continues to increase:

• Currently, over 97,000 students are enrolled in at least one AP course in North Carolina’s public schools.

• This is a 30% increase in enrollment since the first year of the legislation (2014).

• These students represent over 180,000 AP course enrollments in NC’s public schools, as students may enroll in more than one AP course during a school year.

AP Exam Participation continues to increase:

• AP exam participation has increased by 12% statewide from 2023 to 2024.

• There were 84,372 students taking 155,935 AP exams in NC’s public schools in 2024, which is an increase of 14.2% from 2023 to 2024.

AP Performance continues to increase:

• AP exams with college credit bearing scores of 3+ increased by 26% statewide from 2023 to 2024.

• The percent of qualifying scores (3+) in North Carolina is 65.4%, exceeding the National qualifying score percentage of 65%.

👉 Don’t let funding cuts limit our students' futures! Contact your representatives today:  https://www.ncleg.gov/FindYourLegislators.

Our students deserve access to high level learning all day, every day.