Advanced Placement courses in a small rural high school: Allocation of educational resources and perceptions of major stakeholders

In a small, rural school district in northeastern Pennsylvania, Northern Area school leaders, in order to improve educational opportunities for talented students, have adopted the Educational Testing Service's Advanced Placement (AP) Program, a program which is designed to offer challenging courses with the goal of preparing students who take these courses better academic preparation for college and college credit if they score well on AP tests given at the end of each school year. This case study focused on the impact of the Advanced Placement Program on the students enrolled in the AP courses and the teachers teaching the AP courses in Northern Area. In addition the study considered the AP program from other perspectives, including the effects of the program on students not taking AP courses, the teachers not teaching AP courses, the issue of “fairness in a democratic institution,” and the program's effect on the teaching/learning climate at Northern Area.;Data for the study were derived from qualitative methods, such as interviews, classroom observations, field notes, national AP program documents and local school district documents. Analysis of the data and a review of the educational literature regarding AP programs aided in the investigation of the impact of one AP program's effects on the key players in one rural school and helped to inform some key issues. First, politically powerful, albeit well-meaning, parents and community members tended to impose their will on the educational community, often times with a negative result. Second, many children not enrolled in classes that were a part of the Advanced Placement Program ended up in larger classes as a result of schedule changes deemed necessary to accommodate AP students, thus receiving fewer district resources. Third, students no enrolled in AP courses were relegated to a lower track because district leaders held up AP courses as the best or most challenging courses; therefore, the whole AP effort set up a hierarchy designed to celebrate AP students over everyone else in the school. Fourth, teachers teaching AP courses expressed positive attitudes about their own self-worth because they were teaching AP courses.;Although many other issues, in addition to those listed above, emerged during the course of the study, the broader purpose of this study was to identify a whole range of issues and effects that arise, and must be considered, when school district leaders decide to initiate any new educational program. The study concludes with suggestions for further study.