I’ve taken a lot of AP classes, so I used to think access was simple. Either a school offered an AP course or it didn’t. The MCPS data made me realize that offering the course is the easiest part of the problem. During the 2023-2024 school year, all 25 comprehensive MCPS high schools offered AP courses. Eight also offered International Baccalaureate classes, and 15 schools offered at least 30 AP or IB courses.
Across the district, 49.3% of high school students enrolled in at least one advanced course. At the county level, that looks like broad access. The differences between schools tell a different story. At Poolesville, 77.6% of students took at least one AP or IB class. The rate was 76.2% at Churchill, 70.8% at Whitman and 69.3% at Wootton. At Gaithersburg, the rate was 19.7%. It was 31.6% at Northwood, 32.5% at Magruder and 32.9% at Blake.
The highest participation rate was almost four times the lowest.
The difference can’t be explained only by whether AP appears in a school’s course catalog.
Churchill offered 36 AP courses, and 76.2% of students took at least one advanced class. Clarksburg offered 35, almost exactly the same number. Its participation rate was 46.1%. Whitman and Blair each offered 33 AP courses. Participation was 70.8% at Whitman and 46.1% at Blair. Kennedy offered 59 AP and IB classes, more than almost any other school, but its overall participation rate was 49.6%. Poolesville offered 30 and had the highest participation rate in the county.
Poolesville operates as a whole-school magnet with selective programs. Comparing it directly with an ordinary neighborhood high school would ignore how different their student populations are. Blair is a comprehensive high school, but it also contains a selective science, mathematics and computer-science magnet. That affects its student population and some of its results. Kennedy creates another issue. Its 59 offerings included many IB classes, while the 37.2% exam-performance figure in the report applied specifically to AP exams. Not every student counted in those 59 courses later took an AP test.
Even after accounting for those differences, the Churchill-Clarksburg comparison is difficult to ignore. Nearly identical numbers of AP offerings produced participation rates more than 30 percentage points apart. Listing a course doesn’t guarantee that students feel prepared for it, receive encouragement to take it or can fit it into their schedules.
The student-group data are even more revealing. Across MCPS, 49.3% of students took at least one AP or IB course. Among students receiving free or reduced-price meals, the rate was 31.7%. Only 15.1% of students with individualized education programs enrolled in an advanced course. Among current or recently exited multilingual learners, the figure was 14.1%. The racial and ethnic data also showed large descriptive gaps. About 73.4% of Asian students and 66.1% of White students took an AP or IB class, compared with 42.7% of Black students and 30.3% of Hispanic students.
Those statistics don’t prove one simple cause. They definitely don’t mean that one group is naturally more interested in difficult courses than another. The differences build over several years. Students are placed into different math tracks. Some enter accelerated middle-school classes. Some have parents who understand every part of the course-registration system. Some are personally told by a teacher that they should try an advanced class. Others may be equally capable but enter high school without the same prerequisites or encouragement.
By the time registration opens, a lot of the difference already exists. A student who has taken accelerated classes for years may assume that AP is the obvious next step. Another student might look at the exact same class and assume it’s meant for someone else.
The AP course is technically open to both students. Their paths to its doorway were not the same.
MCPS students took 40,448 AP exams in 2024, and 76% earned a score of at least 3. At Walter Johnson, 87.9% of exams received a 3 or higher. The figure was 88.8% at Wootton, 87.3% at Churchill and 86.5% at Poolesville. Kennedy’s rate was 37.2%. Springbrook was at 47.3%, Gaithersburg at 48% and Watkins Mill at 48.3%. A lower pass rate doesn’t automatically mean a school is doing a worse job.
A school that allows a broader range of students to attempt AP classes may have a lower average than a school that enrolls only students who were already highly prepared. Schools also offer different combinations of subjects, and some AP exams are much harder to pass nationally than others. Judging schools only by pass rates could create a bad incentive. Schools might protect their statistics by discouraging students who are less certain to earn a 3.
But simply placing students into AP classes isn’t enough either. If a school expands enrollment, it also needs tutoring, prerequisite support, summer preparation and enough teachers and course sections to help students succeed.
Access without support is not really access.
MCPS already publishes the number of courses offered, student enrollment, exam participation and exam performance. I think the district should connect those numbers into one Advanced Course Pipeline: prepared in the prerequisite course, personally encouraged to enroll, enrolled, remained in the class, took the exam, earned a qualifying score. The most important stage might be the only one MCPS doesn’t currently measure: whether someone personally encouraged the student to enroll.
The district could ask students during registration whether a teacher, counselor or administrator directly recommended an AP or IB course. It could then compare those responses across schools and student groups. That would help separate completely different problems. One school might offer plenty of courses but rarely recruit students. Another might enroll students widely but not provide enough support. A third might produce excellent exam results partly by enrolling a narrower group.
Those schools shouldn’t receive the same solution. MCPS could also automatically identify students doing well in prerequisite classes and send them a specific course recommendation. Students could still decide that the class didn’t fit their workload. But the system would no longer depend completely on whether a teenager felt confident enough to volunteer. Students often reject themselves before a school ever has the chance to reject them. I have seen how normal AP courses can feel in one environment, which makes it easy to forget that another student may never have been told they belong in the same room.
MCPS has mostly solved the easy problem of offering advanced classes. It hasn’t solved the harder problem of making students across the county equally likely to enter and succeed in them.