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How to fairly recognize the desire to achieve
Each year the nonprofit College Board connects students to programs and services such as the SAT and the Advanced Placement program. A long-time advocate for open-access policies in the AP program, the College Board's equity and access policy statement sets the standard for equitable access to programs. It reads as follows: "The College Board strongly encourages educators to make equitable access a guiding principle for their AP programs by giving all willing and academically prepared students the opportunity to participate in AP. We encourage educators to eliminate barriers that restrict access to AP for students from ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic groups that have been traditionally underserved; make every effort to ensure their AP classes reflect the diversity of their student population; and provide all students with access to academically challenging coursework before they enroll in AP classes. Only through a commitment to equitable preparation and access can true equity and excellence be achieved" (College Board, 2015).
John Marshall Fundamental Secondary School in Pasadena, CA, does its best to adhere to the admonition of the College Board. Purposeful focus on removing barriers to the AP classes, advocacy for diversity through actions, and development of a pre-AP program beginning in sixth grade has resulted is drastic growth in students taking and succeeding in AP courses.
Marshall serves 1,924 students in grades 6-12. Sixty-seven percent of students receive free and reduced-price lunch, and 52 percent come from families where both parents have not attended college. Marshall is ethnically diverse, with a demographic that is 64 percent Latino, 10 percent African American, 17 percent white, 3 percent Asian American, and 6 percent other. Fifty-eight percent of the students speak a language other than English in the home, representing 17 different languages, and 10 percent have IEPs.
In 1998, the time period when Marshall began to institutionalize Open Access to AP courses, Marshall enrolled the same number of students with similar demographics to today; 107 students took 154 tests in eight subjects. In 2014, 422 students took 1,068 tests in 22 subjects. Of the 241 seniors, just under two-thirds took at least one AP exam, and almost 95 percent are enrolled in...