Setting Students with IEPs Up for Failure: The Capitalist Capture of Advanced Placement Courses
Says he to me, “… but I have a counseling credential!”
Says I, “… see you (my SPED degrees, my SPED credential, my PhD), and raise you my lived experience as an unsupported and constantly gaslit autistic.”
The Advanced Placement (AP) programme has become a cornerstone of the US education system, offering high school students the opportunity to take ‘college-level’ courses and exams. Promoted as a pathway to academic achievement and university readiness, AP courses are often seen as a way to distinguish oneself in a competitive college admissions process. For many students, success in these courses opens doors to college credit and enhanced academic standing. However, this system is not designed to accommodate every learner, particularly those with Individualised Education Programmes (IEPs) due to Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD).
Whilst teachers and counsellors may encourage students with IEPs to embrace the challenge of AP courses, arguing that they never know what they can achieve, the reality is often far more complex. These students frequently rely on specific classroom supports—such as word banks, sentence starters, and graphic organisers—that are critical to their success but are notably absent during AP exams. The gap between the classroom environment and the testing conditions can be a significant shock, leaving these students unsupported at a crucial moment.
Despite well-meaning intentions, pushing students with IEPs into AP courses ultimately sets them up for failure. The College Board’s limited accommodations, combined with a capitalist system that prioritises profit over genuine educational equity, leaves students without the resources they need to succeed, perpetuating inequities in the name of academic advancement.
The Capitalist Oligopoly of the College Board
As I noted back in April, the College Board, despite its “non-profit” status, operates as a highly profitable entity, collecting millions annually through its Advanced Placement (AP) exams. Every year, high school students are encouraged to take AP courses, lured by the promise of earning college credit and boosting their academic profiles. Yet, this system prioritises profit over genuine educational equity, especially for students with disabilities. The College Board charges substantial fees for each exam, making it difficult for low-income students, including many with IEPs, to access the tests. This financial incentive drives the organisation to push as many students as possible into AP courses, even when they may not be suited for such challenges.
Schools, captured by this oligopoly, promote AP courses as markers of academic prestige, encouraging participation to improve their rankings. Students, even those with IEPs, are pushed into these courses, not necessarily because they are ready, but because the system rewards high AP enrolment. In the classroom, these students often receive the necessary accommodations, like word banks, sentence starters, and extra time—crucial supports outlined in their IEPs. However, when it comes to the AP exams, many of these accommodations disappear. The College Board offers only a limited range of supports, failing to provide the full accommodations students depend on for success in daily classwork.
This mismatch between classroom support and exam conditions sets students with IEPs up for failure. The College Board’s profit-driven model prioritises fee collection over fair testing environments, leaving disabled students at a clear disadvantage in a system that should, at its core, provide equal opportunity for all.
IEPs and AP Accommodations: A Mismatch
In many classrooms, students with SLDs thrive because of the extensive supports provided through their IEPs. These supports are tailored to meet the unique needs of each student, enabling them to access the curriculum effectively. For instance, students often rely on tools such as word banks, sentence starters, and graphic organisers to scaffold their learning. These accommodations are crucial for helping students like “Isabella,” a student with dyslexia and verbal processing difficulties, navigate complex material in her AP English course. In the classroom, Isabella's teachers provide her with repeated directions, frequent check-ins to ensure comprehension, and graphic organisers to structure her essays—all tools that are fundamental to her success.
When it comes to AP exams, the accommodations allowed by the College Board are minimal, creating a significant gap between classroom learning and testing environments. For instance, while clarified directions are permitted, this only applies to instructions on how to take the test, not to the actual test questions. In the classroom, Isabella relies on comprehension checks and clarification to help her understand the material, but during the exam, she must make sense of the often complex and abstract questions without any assistance. This distinction is crucial—although she may know how to complete the exam, she is left unsupported in interpreting the language used in the questions. Without the ability to clarify what the questions are asking, students like Isabella face confusion, making it harder to perform well.
Additionally, essential tools such as sentence frames and word banks, which help her organise thoughts and engage with content, are also disallowed. In place of the comprehensive support provided by her IEP, Isabella is granted only extra time—a measure that does little to address her specific challenges with processing and organising information. The absence of key accommodations leaves her at a distinct disadvantage, increasing the likelihood of poor outcomes.
This stark difference between classroom accommodations and the limited supports allowed by the College Board creates a jarring and often overwhelming experience for students like Isabella. The gap leaves them to face a high-stakes test without the tools they’ve relied on throughout the year, resulting in a higher likelihood of poor outcomes. The absence of key accommodations on AP exams strips away the equity that their IEPs aim to provide, leaving these students at a clear disadvantage and, in many cases, setting them up for failure.
The Real Impact on Students with IEPs
Students with IEPs often face significant challenges in AP courses, and their performance on AP exams reflects these struggles. Research consistently shows that students with disabilities, including those with SLDs, have lower pass rates on AP exams compared to their peers without disabilities. The lack of sufficient accommodations on these exams, combined with the rigorous content, creates an environment where many students with IEPs are set up for failure. Studies, such as Bittman et al. (2017), demonstrate that marginalised students, including those with disabilities, often experience lower enrollment and pass rates in AP courses, further reinforcing academic disparities. These trends are echoed by Koch et al. (2016), who found significant performance gaps between students in various demographic groups, further highlighting the challenges faced by students with disabilities.
The notion that students with IEPs should “embrace the challenge” of AP courses often comes across as an empty platitude. Educators and counsellors who push this idea should be aware of the academic limitations these students face when their accommodations are stripped away. Whilst the intention may be to encourage growth, the reality is that students are entering an exam environment that does not reflect the support they receive daily. The disparity between their performance in class and their outcomes on AP exams reflects this fundamental gap in understanding their needs. Encouraging students to take these courses without proper support is not empowering; it’s setting them up for unnecessary stress and failure.
Failing AP exams can have a profound impact on students’ confidence and future prospects. For students with IEPs, who often struggle with self-esteem in academic settings, a failing score can reinforce feelings of inadequacy. Additionally, an AP course on a transcript without a passing exam score may raise questions in college admissions offices, further disadvantaging these students. Clark et al. (2018) highlight how pass rates are often linked to early academic achievement, with students from marginalised backgrounds—including those with disabilities—less likely to perform well on AP exams. The disconnect between the support provided in class and the demands of the AP exam leaves students with IEPs vulnerable to academic failure, undermining their confidence and limiting their opportunities for success.
The Hidden Costs of AP Courses
The financial burden of AP courses extends beyond individual students and families to entire school districts, which often cover the exam fees for their students. In large urban districts like mine, where many students come from low-income backgrounds, the district assumes the cost of AP exams in an effort to make the courses accessible to all. Yet, even with districts absorbing these costs, the College Board collects millions upon millions in fees annually. This highlights the massive revenue generated by what is, ostensibly, a “non-profit” organisation. Despite its non-profit status, the College Board functions like a for-profit corporation, leveraging its monopoly over advanced academic testing to generate enormous income.
The millions in AP fees collected each year, regardless of whether they come directly from families or from school districts, expose the lie of the College Board’s “non-profit” claims. Whilst students and schools are funneled into paying these fees, the organisation offers little in return in terms of equitable testing environments, especially for students with disabilities. The system is designed to maximise profit by encouraging mass participation in AP courses, even though students—particularly those with IEPs—are not always supported in a way that reflects the additional challenges they face.
At its core, the AP programme represents a capitalist enterprise, where the goal is profit maximisation, not educational equity. The millions generated by the College Board each year are funneled into sustaining this revenue model, rather than addressing the deep disparities in access and success, leaving students with IEPs to bear the consequences of a system that puts profit over their academic well-being.
Rethinking the Value Proposition
The notion that AP courses inherently represent academic “excellence” has become a dominant narrative in high schools, with students encouraged to take these courses as a mark of distinction. However, this idea ignores the reality that AP courses are not universally beneficial, particularly for students with IEPs. The assumption that AP courses are a necessary part of the high school experience creates unnecessary pressure on students, often pushing them into environments that do not accommodate their unique learning needs. For students with disabilities, the value proposition of AP courses falls short—success rates are low, whilst the emotional and academic burden is high.
For students with IEPs, who rely on tailored supports to thrive in the classroom, the AP system offers little in terms of real value. Without the full range of accommodations allowed in their daily instruction, these students often struggle to meet the demands of AP exams, leaving them demoralised and with no tangible benefit. The high-stakes nature of these courses can overshadow alternative pathways that would better support their growth and success.
Instead of funnelling everyone into AP courses, schools should prioritise more inclusive and supportive academic pathways. Options like dual enrolment programmes, vocational courses, or tailored honours tracks can offer students the chance to excel in environments that respect their individual needs, providing them with meaningful academic challenges without the same level of risk and exclusion present in the AP system. These alternatives not only align better with students’ strengths but also foster a sense of achievement, rather than reinforcing feelings of inadequacy.
Final thoughts …
The current AP system has increasingly become a profit-driven enterprise rather than a genuine educational tool. Students with IEPs, who rely on tailored classroom supports to succeed, are set up to fail in a system that strips away their necessary accommodations during high-stakes exams. The College Board, masquerading as a non-profit, rakes in millions each year from schools and districts that pay to offer AP exams, reinforcing the illusion that AP courses are the pinnacle of academic achievement. However, the reality is far different for students with disabilities, for whom the AP system offers little real value, as the accommodations they rely on in the classroom vanish during testing, leaving them to face an inequitable and unsupportive environment.
It is time to re-evaluate how schools promote such courses and exams, particularly for students with IEPs. Encouraging students to take AP courses without acknowledging their individual needs does more harm than good. Schools must shift their focus from blindly pushing students into the AP pipeline to considering alternative, more equitable pathways that cater to diverse learning needs. Dual enrollment, vocational training, and other honours tracks provide meaningful academic challenges without the same exclusionary barriers, offering students a chance to succeed in environments that recognise their strengths and provide necessary support.
More broadly, the corporate capture of education has transformed AP courses into a vast money-making machine. The narrative that students must take AP courses to prove their academic worth feeds into a capitalist system where corporate interests like the College Board reap enormous profits. This commodification of education disproportionately harms marginalised students—those with IEPs, from low-income backgrounds, or from underfunded schools—by prioritising profit over equity. To truly serve all students, we must dismantle this corporate influence and advocate for an education system that places genuine academic growth and inclusivity above the pursuit of profit.