Florida Ranked #4 in Advanced Placement Class Performance

02/21/2018

Florida ranked fourth in the nation again for getting students to take — and pass — Advanced Placement classes, with students in the class of 2017 continuing a decade-long trend of AP improvement, results released Wednesday showed.

Nearly 31 percent of Florida’s public school students graduated from high school in May having passed at least one AP exam, which are offered in 38 subjects, from art history to biology to macroeconomics, and are meant to mimic introductory college courses. That compares with 18.4 percent leaving with a successful AP exam score 10 years ago.

The three states with better AP records than Florida, where 30.8 percent of last year’s graduates had AP success, were Massachusetts (32.1 percent), Maryland (31.2 percent) and Connecticut (31 percent). The Sunshine State has been a leader in the AP program for more than a decade.

Florida students also followed the national trend this year by showing interest in the the new AP computer science principles course, meant to be a precursor to the tougher AP computer science A class, which has been around for 35 years but taken by only a tiny number of students.