Chapter 9: Exploring Teacher Perceptions of Historically Underrepresented Students in AP Classes

Over the past few decades, school districts across the nation have been striving to provide students with quality curriculum and opportunities to increase rigor, graduation rates, and reduce the achievement gap. Many public schools add Advanced Placement (AP) courses to their curriculum as a method for achieving their myriad of goals. Typically, AP classes serve as a haven for students who have been in advanced classes for most of their grade-school career—an elite group, to put it candidly. However, the AP program has changed from its traditional goals of reserving their program for gifted students to now including students of all abilities (McWilliams-Abendroth, 2014). Many schools aim to increase college enrollment and success by pushing AP enrollment opportunities to students of all ability levels and particularly those from historically underrepresented populations (Byrd, 2007; College Board, 2012; Texas Education Agency, 2017). Historically underrepresented AP students will be defined as a high school student who may not be typically tracked to be in advanced or honors-level courses. It may include students of color, students from low-income families, or those that do not speak English as their first language (King, 2010). While the barriers that might make a student historically underrepresented are not connected to each other, they may present themselves as mutually exclusive in some cases.