Advanced No More

The Advanced Placement program has made the College Board one of the most economically dominant and pedagogically powerful organizations in American education, at least for now.

Since 2023, the company has drastically inflated AP exam scores and continued using its monopolistic perch to push ideology into classrooms. The rationale for policymakers to continue supporting and subsidizing the company is, consequently, obsolete. We at Classic Learning Test believe that now is the time for a competitor.

As with teachers’ unions, most of the revenue for AP likely comes from state and local sources. The exact amount the College Board earns through AP course fees is a mystery. However, one estimate is $500 million per year, which is nearly half of the College Board’s $1.17 billion in annual revenue. In comparison, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, the country’s largest teachers’ unions, brought in $381 million and $214 million in revenue in 2024, respectively.

At its founding in 1956, the Advanced Placement program was not intended to be such a behemoth. As with teachers’ unions, most of the revenue for AP likely comes from state and local sources. Texas, for example, has a $42.3-million contract for AP costs. North Carolina spent nearly $15 million financing 155,935 AP exams in 2024—a number the state grew to 171,000 last year thanks to a $2-million state partnership with the College Board aimed at increasing AP enrollment. In states such as California, federal funds are used by local school districts to pay for AP. The Los Angeles Unified School District has allocated $5,416,803 for AP courses next year.

At its founding in 1956, the AP program was not intended to be such a behemoth. Its founders viewed it as “an opportunity and a challenge to … the strongest and most ambitious boys and girls.” For the program’s first several decades, its growth reflected that purpose. In 1956, 2,199 AP exams were administered nationwide. That number increased by an average of 10,567 tests per year over the next 30 years. By the pandemic’s aftermath, growth had accelerated to an average of 325,000 additional tests administered per year, reaching 6.25 million in 2025.

Amidst this blitz, the New York Times asked, in a 2023 article, “Why Is the College Board Pushing to Expand Advanced Placement?” The story noted that, “for the past two decades, the College Board has moved aggressively to expand the number of high school students taking Advanced Placement courses and tests—in part by pitching the program to low-income students and the schools that serve them. It is a matter of equity, they argue.”

That move was so successful that the Times said the AP program had become “something of a de facto national curriculum.” Indeed, the financial success of the AP program is matched only by its power over American classrooms.

Matt Beienburg and Tim Minella of the Goldwater Institute observed in a 2024 report (called “Advanced Partiality”) that the “AP program wields more control over public schools than state standards.” While states generally allow school districts and charter schools to choose curricula and course materials, the College Board allows little leniency. Every AP course is run through an audit by the College Board, which essentially gives the organization veto power over textbooks, source materials, academic activities, and syllabi.

Moreover, thanks to decades of lobbying by the College Board, many state-level policies require colleges to accept AP courses for credit, mandate that state education agencies maximize AP participation, subsidize that participation, provide bonuses to AP teachers and finance their training, award college scholarships for earning the AP Capstone diploma, and even insert AP participation into public-school accountability systems. And this doesn’t take into account the demand coming from parents who see an AP-filled transcript as essential to their children’s college applications thanks to the GPA boost local school districts provide for AP Courses.

Almost every college-bound student in America is both pushed and incentivized to take as many AP exams as possible. The education of millions of students considered “advanced” is thus ceded to a single company. Unfortunately, the education those students receive is mired in ideology and less advanced than ever.

Almost every college-bound student in America is both pushed and incentivized to take as many AP exams as possible. Headlines over politically controversial AP course materials hit a climax in early 2023 after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida forced the company to alter its AP African American Studies course material due to its reliance on critical race theory. While College Board CEO David Coleman denied that the changes were in response to pressure from DeSantis, internal communications proved otherwise. An architect of the original version of the course criticized Coleman for making secretive edits to the course, saying that the changes exemplified “the failure of AP to recognize both its own institutional racism and how its own lies and capitulation precipitated the creation of a monster of its own making.”

Unfortunately, the education AP students receive is mired in ideology and less advanced than ever. Yet, despite earning scorn from the Left over the scuffle with DeSantis, AP Courses remain ideologically one-sided. The AP African American Studies course continues to present socialism and communism as the preferred ideologies of black Americans, as exemplified by the course’s focus on groups such as the Black Panther Party and Black Lives Matter and activists such as Angela Davis. The course also continues to present ideas rooted in critical theory as facts, such as the notion that race is “socially constructed” for the purpose of oppression; it underscores the writings of critical theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw. AP World History, meanwhile, presents patriotism as a mechanism Europeans used to manipulate colonized people, explains that capitalism caused colonialism and “limited [women] to roles in the household or roles focused on child development,” and presents the British opium trade in China as the example of “free trade.” AP Psychology presents progressive notions of “gender identity,” as well as the theory of Adverse Childhood Experiences. The latter, which postulates that almost any negative childhood experience can cascade into intergenerational societal problems, has been used by left-wing activists to justify progressive public policies and practices such as trauma-informed care and trauma-informed pedagogy. Both are as bad as they sound.

Beyond course descriptions, there is the all-important factor of how the College Board views exemplary work. Each year, examples of excellent AP research papers are published by the College Board, giving insight into how a student can earn a coveted score of 4 or 5. Recent examples include articles about the need for critical race theory for Asian Americans, how the U.S. healthcare system mistreats “women and queer people of color” despite “medical discoveries and whatnot,” why the overturning of Roe v. Wade will cause women trauma and economic suffering, and how Florida students are “not as educated about nonbinary gender identities as they could be.”

As if on cue, the College Board launched a quiet change to the scoring of its most common AP courses in 2023. This “great recalibration,” as the Fordham Institute dubbed it, effectively flipped the number of passing and failing scores for the most popular courses. Whereas approximately 22-23 percent of students earned a 3 or higher on AP U.S. History prior to the recalibration, now nearly 50 percent pass. AP English Literature saw the passage rate increase by about 250 percent. Of course, this change increases demand for AP exams among students by allowing them to more easily earn college credit and pad their transcripts. It also means that the definition of “advanced” is surreptitiously dumbed down.

Unfortunately, dumbing AP tests down has proven to be an excellent business decision that most states have yet to question. North Carolina, Oregon, Michigan, Illinois, Texas, and other states announced record-breaking AP participation and passage rates in the last year.

“The number of Oregon students participating in AP courses has increased by 70% since 2021,” the Oregon Department of Education bragged in a November news release. “More students are not only taking AP courses but also succeeding. In 2025, 71.9% of Oregon AP exams received a qualifying score of 3, 4, or 5 … a 17.9% increase over 2024.” Oregon framed these skyrocketing numbers as proof that providing access to AP courses improves “college readiness.” There was no mention of the fact that the exams had suddenly become easier.

There is undoubtedly demand for an AP competitor among numerous private colleges and K-12 schools across the country. In the face of the AP program’s economic success, it may seem like folly to consider creating an alternative. However, in an era defined by declining student performance, grade inflation, and declining standards, someone must take a stand. The Classic Learning Test has done just that.

In the fall of 2026, the CLT will launch an AP alternative called Enduring Courses. Starting with two initial classes in the humanities and then expanding by two to four courses per year thereafter, Enduring Courses will provide a rigorous, college-level challenge to the strongest and most ambitious American students. The courses will combine insight from academics at our 330 partner colleges and several of our renowned K-12 school partners.

There is undoubtedly demand for an AP competitor among numerous private colleges and K-12 schools across the country. However, whether or not Enduring Courses will be open to public-school students and students matriculating to public universities will ultimately be up to policymakers, given the regulatory moat for which the College Board has successfully lobbied. Policymakers will need to recognize that the AP system is no longer what it used to be. The company that defined advanced K-12 education for 70 years has unearned its monopoly.

Michael Torres is director of legislative strategy at Classic Learning Test.