Some might think that this looks bad.

According to a College Board report, about 800,000 public high school seniors in last May’s graduating class, or 26.5 percent of the class, took an A.P. exam at some point in their high school career, almost twice as many as took A.P. exams in the class of 2001.

While the majority of students who take A.P. exams still earn a passing score of 3, 4 or 5, which is enough to earn college credit at many institutions, the share of failing scores has risen with the program’s rapid expansion. In 2009, about 43 percent of the 2.3 million A.P. exams taken earned a failing grade of 1 or 2, compared with 39 percent of the one million exams taken by the class of 2001.

Now speaking as a teacher in an AP program (as well as a former AP student), I have to say that this does not surprise me. When you increase the number of kids taking the tests, you will quantitatively get more failures. But you will also get a higher failure rate because of who is taking the class and when they are taking it. This happens for two reasons.

1. If you increase the number of kids taking the test, some of them will be “marginal” AP students rather than the cream of the crop who traditionally have taken the class. I consider the course I teach at my school – last year we had 4 AP sections of the class, each full. This year we have 6 AP sections, also full. That is a 50% increase in students – not all of whom would have been deemed “AP material” in earlier years. Of those kids, we will see a greater percentage fail. That does not mean that they are “failures” at AP – it means that they are not yet working at a sufficiently advanced level to get college credit for their work. They have almost certainly learned a great deal, and are likely more prepared for college than they might otherwise have been.

2. We are offering more AP classes at earlier times. My school has 10th graders taking AP World History. At 16, two full years prior to graduation, they might not be “college credit” material according to the test, but my conversation with some of these students who I’ve taught in the past makes it clear that they are learning more and understanding more deeply. Some of them, though, will just not be able to meet the college credit threshold given their own cognitive and expressive abilities at their age.
   

As you can see, I’m not bothered by that failure rate. If our kids are exposed to more knowledge and more rigorous standards, they will learn more and be better prepared later on when they get to college. And that is, after all, what really matters.