Motivating and supporting advanced placement kids

Identifying gifted children at an early age and then providing them with intensive support is a key to boosting AP exam success for low-income and minority students, a new report from the Broad Foundation suggests.

• A big national push to enroll more students in Advanced Placement classes has driven up AP participation rates in recent years, but the broader access has come with a cost: 
• The pass rate on AP exams has dropped, and the share of those who get the lowest possible score has soared. 

The Broad Foundation looked at six districts that have bucked that trend, increasing pass rates for minority students without letting participation rates dip.The districts studied include Cobb County and Fulton County in Georgia; Orange County in Florida; San Diego Unified in California; Jefferson County in Kentucky; and the Garland Independent School District in Texas.

Many of the successful districts:

1. Start their search for gifted students in elementary school
2. Hire special instructors to challenge them. 
3. When the students hit middle and high school, they get extensive support in everything from binder organization to critical thinking to essay writing. 
4. Some districts hold weekend workshops for AP students in the months leading up to the exam. 
5. Others offer financial incentives for teachers — and sometimes students — for passing scores of three or higher on the five-point exam scale.

But the report also raises questions about the durability of the improvements. Several of the most successful districts are now cutting back the programs credited with improving their AP pass rates due to budget shortfalls.