Pell grants vs. advanced placement.

• Author: Johnson, Kirk A.
• Position: Education - Column

IN HIS 2004 State of the Union address, Pres. George W. Bush proposed to "expand Advanced Placement programs in low-income schools." The President's subsequent budget for fiscal year 2005 calls tom" $28.000.000 in additional funding for the Advanced Placement Incentive Program. This would allocate some $52,000,000 in 2005 to establish Advanced Placement programs in low-income areas and prepare more teachers to instruct these rigorous classes.

While increasing college-level educational opportunities for low income students is a worthy goal, there are more efficient and cost effective ways in achieve this aim. Specifically, the President and Congress should divert the proposed $52,000.000 to the Pell grant program and aim these funds specifically at bright, low income high school students who could use the grants to attend classes at a community college or state university in the U.S.'s extensive network of higher education restitutions.

Such a program could enable over 43,000 high school students nationwide to attend one college class per semester. There are two basic ways that especially intelligent high school students can perform college-level work. First, they may enroll in Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate classes. More than 14,000 institution--about 60% of the high schools in the nation--offer at least one AP class. These courses are an extremely challenging way for students to experience the rigors of college while still in high school.

At the end of an AP class, the student is eligible to take a test administered by the College Board (the organization responsible for the SAT and a number of other exams). If he or she achieves a sufficiently high score, most colleges and universities will award the student a certain amount of credit toward a bachelor's degree.

The second way to get college credit while still in high school simply is to take one or more classes at a community college or state university. Virtually all states have some program that allows high school students to take such courses, subject to various admission requirements and regulations.

Federal initiatives clearly have favored the establishment of AP courses. One of the declared purposes of the No Child Left Behind Act was "to increase the number of individuals that achieve a baccalaureate or advanced degree and to decrease the amount of time such individuals require to attain such degrees."

To that end, the No Child Left Behind legislation authorized Advanced Placement Incentive Program grants, which provided roughly...