States Should Launch Their Own AP Exams

The College Board has hardly covered itself in glory in recent years. As profits from the SAT have waned, it has aggressively expanded and diluted its Advanced Placement offerings. From infusing its pilot AP African American Studies course with Critical Race Theory to rejiggering the scoring to increase the number of credit-earning scores by over half a million, the organization seems intent on burning its social capital as a neutral arbiter of academic excellence.

As a virtual monopoly for college-credit-granting high school coursework, the College Board can easily get away with all this—and more. But its monopoly status is hardly enshrined in law, and a savvy state-led initiative could not only challenge it but dramatically improve the American public high school experience.

Such an initiative is extremely unlikely to come from a blue state, where the prevailing ideology is increasingly anti-testing and anti-meritocratic, aligned with DEI principles. However, red states have recently taken the lead not only on K-12 reform but also on higher education leadership. A flagship university-sponsored AP competitor could easily be launched in states like Texas, Tennessee, or North Carolina. But for narrative’s sake, let’s say that next week, Ron DeSantis announces that he expects whomever he appoints to replace Ben Sasse at the University of Florida to lead the initiative.

It would not be terribly hard, complicated, or costly to convene a council of professors in key subjects—math, chemistry, biology—to collaborate with curriculum design specialists and psychometricians to create syllabi and tests for college coursework accepted by Florida state colleges. The initial cost could be recouped through savings on state subsidies for AP tests and whatever lesser fees are charged for the new exams.

Maintaining the quality and rigor of core coursework is a noble enough aim, but the University of Florida could go much further. UF recently launched the Hamilton Center, devoted to teaching and research on Western Civilization. There is clearly massive appetite among parents for a more classical education. Tens of thousands of parents are opting out of public schools in favor of charter or private schools that teach the Great Books and the Great Debates. Yet public schools are notoriously unresponsive to parental demands for curricular changes and are especially unlikely to alter their offerings unless there is a clear value-add for college-bound high schoolers.

But what if a high school could offer a college-credit course in Constitutional Studies, featuring deep readings of the Declaration, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, and key Supreme Court cases? Or a course on the American Civil War?

There is, of course, AP English Literature. But why not (in translation, of course) a college-credit-opportunity course in Russian literature? Or French literature? Popular memes suggest that many students think about the Roman Empire every day. UF could design, and high schools could adopt, a college-credit-opportunity course on Rome. Or on Greek Philosophy. Or on Shakespeare.

Conservatives have, until very recently, essentially ceded the entire territory of public school curriculum—proving reticent to impose any state mandates on what many see as a local issue. The result has been a slapdash and increasingly ideological curricular hodgepodge. But a governor like DeSantis or Abbott could curate—rather than mandate—a better high school experience by piloting and expanding high-quality coursework.

It would be triflingly simple for universities outside Florida to accept credit for these courses. Entire states could agree to have their universities accept them. And within a few years, private colleges may be compelled to do so both because of market pressure and the higher quality marker these tests provide.

Aside from the opportunity to dramatically improve the quality and content of high school humanities coursework, UF—or any other state university system—could also leverage such tests for workforce development. Many states have made dramatic strides in dual-credit enrollment courses. College-credit-granting tests could serve as a new paradigm for helping students learn professional skills such as business development, nursing, or programming.

DeSantis could dramatically improve the quality of American public high school education with a directive to his university trustees. Or Abbott could do it. Or anyone, really. The crown of greater academic quality and more ennobling academic content is sitting on the ground for anyone to pick up.