Advanced Placement classes have exploded in popularity and prominence over the last few decades. The College Board, which designs and administers AP classes, has made a concerted effort to expand the program to high schools across the country, saying it offers students an opportunity to experience college-level coursework. As of 2025, nearly 80% of public high school students attended a school that offers at least five AP classes, according to the College Board.
The College Board, a nonprofit, launched the AP program in the 1950s, with the stated goal of challenging students with advanced topics and preparing them for college. Since then, the courses have become a near necessity for competitive college applications, in part because of the College Board’s own role in expanding AP’s reach and influence.
High school grades in college prep courses have become a top factor in admissions decisions, topping other criteria including essays, overall high school grade point average, and letters of recommendation, according to a 2023 survey of college admissions counselors. Taking high school AP courses, and passing the end-of-year exams, can also potentially accrue transferable college credits, shorten the amount of time students spend in college, and save families money.
In 2025, 3.2 million students across the U.S. took an AP course, a 30% increase from 10 years earlier. Leaders of the College Board — the same organization that runs the SAT — emphasize how important the program is for students pursuing college; in 2023, the College Board’s head of AP, Trevor Packer, told Education Week that when a student attends a school without a single AP class, it “moves them off the pathway to college, under-prepares them for what they will encounter if they do make it to a two-year or four-year institution, [and] sends a message to them that they are not part of a college-going culture.”
In Oakland Unified School District, roughly 33% of 11th and 12th graders were enrolled in an AP course last year, below the state average of 44%, and slightly lower than the national average of 38%.
But there are stark disparities in how AP courses are distributed across Oakland public schools and student populations, potentially denying hundreds of high schoolers a leg up in college admissions.
Students work on a group project during Shannon Carey’s AP U.S. History at Oakland Tech on March 9, 2026. Credit: Jungho Kim for The Oaklandside
School-level data reveals significant gaps: At Skyline High School, more than half of students, 58%, are enrolled in an AP course this year. Skyline offers 17 AP courses, spanning the arts and sciences, including American government, biology, calculus, computer science, and art. Oakland Technical High School, OUSD’s most populous, offers 15, including Chinese language, environmental science, and statistics. Oakland High School, with 1,500 students, has eight AP classes.
By contrast, nine OUSD schools, serving more than 2,000 high school students altogether, offer zero AP courses.
The racial disparities in OUSDs AP enrollment are just as striking. Around half of OUSD students are Latino, but only about 21% of Latino high schoolers are enrolled in an AP course, according to district data. Twenty-three percent of Black high school students are in an AP course across the district, while about half of white (48%) and Asian (48%) high school students are.
Such disparities are common within the AP program. Nationally, 54% of 10th, 11th, and 12th grade Asian students took an AP exam in 2025, while 20% of white students, 19% of Latino students, and 12% of African American students did, according to College Board data. In California, 57% of Asian students, 29% of white students, 21% of Latino students and 16% of African American students sat for an AP exam in 2025.
The economic disparities are also dramatic: Around 60% of high school students whose households are middle class or wealthy take AP courses, while just 25% of low-income students do, as measured by who qualifies for free or reduced-price lunches.
These enrollment disparities persist even at a school like Skyline, with its robust AP offerings. There, nearly 80% of Asian students and 70% white students are in at least one AP course this year, while just 40% of the school’s Black and Latino students are.
Cameron Williams, a sophomore at Skyline who is taking AP World History this year, said he’s one of the few Black students in his AP class. As a student at Skyline, he said he hears all the time about how it has one of the district’s most diverse student bodies — but it’s something he only sees in evidence in his non-AP classes.
“For Black people, there’s often a pressure to perform really well because of how underrepresented we are in so many different spaces,” he told The Oaklandside. “I definitely feel that in AP World, that I’ve got to do really well because I’m representing this community that is not really represented in my class. And nobody’s explicitly saying that out loud, but it does feel that way.”
Coliseum College Prep Academy, a school serving grades 6 to 12 in East Oakland, bucks this trend. There, about two-thirds of students are in at least one AP course, including 66% of its Latino students and 55% of its Black students.
The Oaklandside reached out to Vinh Trinh, a former Skyline principal who now works for the district helping school administrators connect with the College Board and plan their course offerings, to ask about the disparities.
Trinh said his department, which oversees the district’s high schools, was aware of the discrepancies in AP course access, but he said the district relies on individual school leaders to bridge those gaps.
“As a part of that process to get more of our underrepresented students into the AP courses, site leaders and AP teachers do intentional outreach by hosting informational sessions to encourage students to apply,” Trinh told The Oaklandside by email. He said those outreach efforts allow students to “learn more about the course content and the amount of work required to be successful in an AP course.”
“The master schedule always comes down to the vision of the principal,” he said.
An ‘AP Report Card’
At Oakland High, assistant principal Jennifer Howard said the academic schedule is decided based on teacher availability. The closure of the school’s Recent Immigration Support and Engagement, or RISE, program — due to fewer newcomer students enrolling — means more teachers will have space in their schedule to teach AP classes next year, she said.
At Oakland Tech, assistant principal and AP coordinator De’Shawn Woolridge said he picks which courses to offer based on several factors, including student interest and whether there are qualified teachers on staff.
“We look at courses and the credentialing that’s required to offer that course,” Woolridge said. “If we have teachers credentialed in that course, then we look for student demand for it.”
Carey talks to students as she walks through her AP U.S. History at Oakland Tech as students work on a project about social reformers, March 9, 2026. Credit: Jungho Kim for The Oaklandside
Woolridge created an “AP Report Card” this year to help him ensure that access to the courses remains equitable. The data-driven report card, he said, tracks the number of students taking AP classes and their demographics, allowing the administration to identify issues with the current program and set goals for the future. Woolridge plans to release his findings to the school community by the end of the school year.
On a recent Monday morning in an Oakland Tech AP government class, teacher Mitchell Varian put on a Lo-fi mix as his students arrived for second period. Some sat down to review their last unit, on economics, as other students trickled in to desks arranged in clusters of four.
The day’s unit was on the Bill of Rights. He asked the students, the majority of whom are Black or Latino, to close their laptops and remove their headphones and spend a few minutes writing down the amendments they know. Some groups got two, some four. One kid said, “The abolition of slavery” and then laughs – no, yeah, that came later — it was the 13th. Then Varian walked them through all 10 amendments, offering up Bulldog Bucks, for spending on school swag and snacks, to each kid who could properly define one as he goes.
“Who was advocating for civil rights?” he asked.
“The anti-federalists,” one student answered.
“And what did they want?”
“A smaller central government.”
“That’s right,” Varian said. “You have to think about, how do these amendments protect us from the power or potential abuse of the federal government?”
Class ended with a quiz on Kahoot, an interactive learning app. Chatter and laughter filled the room as the students came up with their answers. Varian’s lesson demonstrated AP’s core principles: evaluating evidence, developing students’ independent thinking, and supporting them to draw their own conclusions.
Varian said he used to teach at a private school, but came to OUSD for the opportunity to teach AP classes, and to work with a more diverse group of students. He offers five sections a day of AP Government.
He said it’s a faster paced class than the school’s regular government classes, and his students read the texts of Supreme Court decisions and many of the Federalist Papers.
Asked about the diversity of his class, he said there’s no prerequisite to get in and no requirement to take the exam at the end of the year, which comes with a fee.
Students discuss the Bill of Rights during Mitchell Varian’s AP Government and Economics course at Oakland Tech on March 9, 2026. Credit: Jungho Kim for The Oaklandside
He also said he actively works to get a lot of kids into the class, including reaching out to pathway teachers — educators who lead student cohorts focused on a specific industry, such as business, education, or law — to encourage their students to consider it.
Trinh, the manager of master scheduling, said OUSD has tried to do away with prerequisites districtwide, as it can serve as a barrier to entry.
“You cannot have someone who’s like a gatekeeper, who will allow certain kids to take APs, and certain kids who don’t,” Trinh said. “Our push as a district to schools is ensuring that AP courses are accessible to any student who wants to take an AP course.”
One obstacle remains a challenge: the fee-based test. Gaining credits from an AP course hinges on taking and passing the College Board’s standardized AP test at the end of the year, which costs families $99 per test. Even students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch have to pay $53. Last year, 40% of OUSD’s AP test takers paid the lower amount.
Williams, the Skyline sophomore, said he’s heard the exam fee often steers people away from taking more AP classes.
“I don’t think a lot of people know a portion of that cost is taken away if you apply with the school” for a discount, he said. “I talked to one of my friends who’s not in AP classes and that was a thing that made him not take AP World.”
A more equitable kind of college prep
While after more than 75 years, the AP program is still marred by disparities, a free alternative college prep option is rising in popularity: dual enrollment. Through this program, college professors offer college classes at high school campuses. In OUSD that means professors from the Peralta Colleges — such as Laney and Merritt — travel to district high schools to teach courses as diverse as African American studies, child development, economics, journalism, and psychology. Most of the credits will transfer to the University of California or California State University system, according to OUSD.
“When you’re applying to colleges, they’re looking to see what makes the student unique,” said Edgar Galvez, a college adviser at Oakland High. A dual enrollment class “says something about the student, that they’re taking initiative and challenging themselves, [which] really helps them stand out.”
Dual enrollment is a far newer strategy than AP classes, dating back only about a decade in California. These classes, funded by the state’s dual enrollment grant program, and anchored in the state’s extensive community college system, now reach more than 240,000 students each year statewide. While enrollment in AP courses in OUSD has remained roughly steady over the last 10 years, dual enrollment has gone from 5% of high schoolers in 2015 to nearly 20% of high school students in spring 2025, far higher than the state average.
In fact, dual enrollment is fast outpacing AP classes in the district. With dual enrollment classes, students only need to earn a C or better to earn college credit, unlike AP classes, where students must pass the end-of-year standardized exam. That’s led to a far higher success rate for students: More than 6,500 OUSD students have passed at least one dual enrollment course in the last four years. Over the same time period, about half that amount, 3,350, have passed an AP exam.
Standardized tests are known to produce racially disparate outcomes; the College Board’s analysis shows a 17 to 30% gap in exam pass rates between white students and Black and Latino students.
Varian engages with a student during his AP Government and Economics class at Oakland Tech March 9, 2026. Credit: Jungho Kim for The Oaklandside
With no fee-based test, OUSD’s dual enrollment program also serves high proportions of students receiving free or reduced-priced lunch: around three-fourths of dual enrollment students are low-income, similar to their representation in OUSD overall.
Dual enrollment courses are also spread across a wider range of high schools; about two-thirds of OUSD’s high schools offer more dual enrollment courses than AP classes. Gaps remain between racial groups taking dual enrollment classes, but they aren’t as stark as those with AP. During the 2024-2025 school year, 39% of Black students, 46% of Latino students, 55% of Asian students, and 56% of white students took a dual enrollment class.
At Castlemont High School, Principal Joseph Blasher said his team has made a deliberate decision to move away from AP offerings and instead to help students prepare for college and gain college credit by providing more dual enrollment opportunities.
Student pass rates were a factor, he said. While 92% of OUSD high schoolers taking an AP class got a passing grade last year, only 39% passed the College Board’s exam.
“Let’s say you invest all this time and energy [offering AP courses], but students have a lot of different things going on and let’s say they can’t take the test or don’t do well on the test, they don’t get the end piece that’s important for AP,” Blasher told The Oaklandside. “It’s great that it’s on your transcript, but it also doesn’t help with securing some college credits” for students who don’t pass the exam.
Castlemont students have seen higher success with passing dual enrollment courses. About 20% of Castlemont students are in a dual enrollment course, Blasher said, and last school year, 87% of them passed the class. He said these courses also give students a more accurate college class experience.
“Dual enrollment offers a different level of seriousness: we have the college professor come down, this prepares our students for what a college class could feel like, rather than their science or math teacher teaching an AP class,” he said.
In addition, Blasher said, dual enrollment classes are easier to add to the schedule. Assigning a teacher to teach an AP course means there are fewer non-AP course sections available for all the other students. Bringing in dual enrollment professors, by contrast, lessens the burdens on Castlemont teachers, who can then focus on students’ other learning needs.
Maya Valenzuela is a senior at Oakland Tech who will have taken five AP courses and seven dual enrollment courses by the end of this school year. She said to have college credit hinge on a single standardized test puts pressure on students they don’t face in dual enrollment courses.
AP tests are graded by members of a national panel of “readers” hired by the College Board who have no relationship with the students whose tests they’ll be grading.
With dual enrollment, Valenzuela said, “you can build a relationship with the people who are grading you. There’s more understanding between the two of you.”
Amy Martinez is a counselor and the dual enrollment specialist for Oakland Tech, which has one of the largest dual enrollment programs in the district. She wants students to have access to college courses no matter their grade point average or previous experience with the course material.
“If students want to take these courses and they’re interested, we’re all here to support them,” she explained. “We want them to try college courses and we want them to take these classes that they find interesting.”
The strategy appears to be successful. Oakland Tech boasts a 97% pass rate in the college classes it offers, far higher than the 60% average pass rate among all students in the Peralta system. The commitment to offering students courses that interest them is part of a district-wide philosophy. While AP offerings are limited by a campus teacher’s availability, credentialing, and scheduling, dual enrollment can be offered as long as there’s a match between student interest and a professor’s time. And district data doesn’t show a tight correlation between AP course offerings and admission to four-year colleges.
Leslie Hsu Freeman, who serves as the dual enrollment manager for OUSD, sees vast potential for the dual enrollment program to close gaps in the district’s college prep disparities and send more students to college.
“First-generation students are going to college at far lesser rates than their counterparts that may have parents that graduated from college,” Freeman told The Oaklandside. “We continue to see disparities along race, class, and many lines that continue to exist in our society.”
Students who take at least one dual enrollment course in high school go to college at a higher rate than those who didn’t, according to department data. In 2023, nearly 70% of students with at least one dual enrollment class matriculated to college within one semester of graduating, compared with 45% of those who didn’t take a dual enrollment course.
“I don’t think [dual enrollment] is the only solution, but I think it’s a really great tool for a district like ours that’s incredibly, beautifully, diverse, and has a very significantly large population of students of color, underrepresented students, and first generation students,” Freeman said. “I think it’s a great opportunity for us to improve the chances of our students being able to access college.”
This article was reported in collaboration with two Oakland high-school student reporters, Zoe Psomas and Twyla Hoshida, who are participating in an Oaklandside high-school fellowship program made possible by a grant from the Stuart Foundation.
It is also part of a national initiative exploring how geography, policy, and local conditions influence access to opportunity. Find more stories at economicopportunitylab.com.
Esther Kaplan contributed reporting.
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