Education Week - January 18, 2017 - 11

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vision in the 1-year-old Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA. That
law ended a federal grant program
that has helped subsidize the cost of
AP and International Baccalaureate
exams for students from low-income
families for 17 years. Last year,
$28 million in grants lowered the cost
of 862,000 exams in 41 states and the
District of Columbia.
Subsidies and waivers from four
sources-the federal government,
states, schools, and the College
Board-typically slash the price of
AP exams-$93 each this year-to
between $5 and $15 for low-income
students, according to an analysis
by the Education Commission of the
States. IB tests are priced at $116
each, but typically cost low-income
students $15 or less. The disappearance of the federal grant program has
erased a piece of that financing pie,
however, leaving states, districts, and
schools scrambling to replace it.
The impact is potentially far-reaching. Last year, 22 percent of the 2.6
million students who took 4.7 million AP exams were from low-income
families. About one-quarter of the
76,000 students who wrote 55,000
International Baccalaureate exams
have similarly limited resources.

'It's Not Our Fault'
Some states, like Illinois, have
pledged to cover the lost federal
money, holding the cost of AP and IB
tests steady for needy students. Jason
Hefner, the state's deputy superintendent for teaching and learning, said

the Illinois board of education decided
to use $1.8 million of last year's unused Title I money to offset the loss of
the federal grant.
In Rhode Island, Alan Tenreiro,
the principal of Cumberland High
School, said he is relieved that his
state came up with the money to keep
low-income AP students' test fees at
$12. His school has seen a 70 percent
increase in the number of students
using fee waivers to take AP exams
in the last few years.
"That money is very important to
us," he said.
But other states, like Washington, can't pony up the money, which
rolls the problem onto districts' and
schools' shoulders. Some might be
able to find the cash to plug the examfee hole; others won't.
For Giles, a question mark hovers
over her carefully constructed college plans. Taking AP classes-and
exams-is a key part of her strategy
to become the first in her family to
attend college. A former foster child,
Giles wants to be a social worker so
she can help children who have been
removed from their homes.
She's counting on the sheen that
good AP scores can add to a college
application. And she's counting on
the potential tuition savings that
AP-earned credits can offer, too; her
mother is widowed and unemployed.
Now Giles worries that "it could look
weird" on her transcript if she skips
the exam. But if her school or district
can't help pay her way, she won't have
another choice.
"It doesn't really seem fair," she
said. "It's not our fault."
Todd Caffey, the AP coordinator at
Giles' school, said he fears many students will decide not to take AP tests
because of the higher cost, unless his
school or district finds a way to subsidize them in the next few months.
"The idea of someone opting out because they can't afford it makes me
crazy," he said.
There are federal funding streams

AP EXAMS: SHARING THE COST
For low-income students, the cost of Advanced Placement test fees has
been subsidized through four sources. Here is how the cost is typically
lowered to between $5 and $15 per test.

Cost of each Advanced Placement test (2017): $93
School-level waiver of
processing fee

State and/or
federal subsidies

College Board fee waiver
for qualified students
SOURCE: Education Week, Education Commission of the States, U.S. Department of Education

Ian C. Bates for Education Week

Rising Fees
For AP Tests
Stir Worries

Kailee Giles, center,
an AP student at
Tumwater High School
in Washington, worries
that skipping the AP
exam will "look weird"
on her high school
transcript. But she may
not have a choice if her
school or district can't
help her defray the
higher cost this year.

that can be used to replace the lost
test-fee grants, like Title I money, but
schools are just beginning to explore
those options. And the one that federal lawmakers envisioned as the
solution-the big block grant created
under Title IV, Part A of ESSA-
comes with risk and competing priorities, and is not an appealing solution
for many districts.

A Crowded Pot
In writing ESSA, legislators
rounded up dozens of programs, including the one that subsidized AP
test fees, and created a block grant
to support them. Money from that
pot is to be distributed by formula
to states, which then share it with
districts. Those "student support and
academic enrichment grants" can be
used for many things, which gives
districts maximum flexibility.
But it also puts districts in a bind
by making them choose whether to
spend the money on AP exam-fee
subsidies, or on college and career
counseling, dropout prevention, student mental-health programs, or expansion of digital coursework, among
the many allowed uses of the money.
One complication with Title IV is
that it was authorized at $1.6 billion, but it's likely to be funded at a
far lower level. One recent round of
budget negotiations proposed $300
million. The other issue about Title
IV money is that it becomes available
in 2017-18. A special rule created for
the block grant allows districts to essentially borrow on next year's allocation. That move would let them use
next year's money to lower the fees of
AP exams given this spring.
Texas plans to take advantage of
this provision to replace its $3.5 million grant. But some states are uneasy with that solution, since Title IV
funding, and districts' allocations, are
still uncertain.
Illinois officials heard from superintendents who were worried about
relying on Title IV money to make up
for the lost AP test-fee grant, Hefner
said. "They would make that decision
without knowing what their allocations would be, so wisely, they were
nervous about that," he said.
State officials were also unhappy
about how the Title IV solution
would force districts to weigh AP fee
subsidies against other equally valuable programs, Hefner said. "That's
a decision we didn't want districts to

have to make," he said.
At the U.S. Department of Education, which oversaw the AP test-fee
program, officials worry that by pitting AP test fees against other district
priorities, Title IV threatens to erode
access to AP for students who need it
the most. Without a dedicated funding stream for those exams, "there is
going to be a significant difference in
what districts and schools will be able
to do for students" to defray the cost of
AP tests, said Monique M. Chism, the
deputy assistant secretary for policy
and programs.
"This is not a year where things will
[transition] and then be reset to normal," Chism said. "I don't know that
we'll ever get back to the before-ESSA
levels" of AP funding.
The College Board, which owns the
AP program, is working to get more
low-income students into AP classes,
and has seen the share of such students rise from 12 percent of examtakers in 2006 to 22 percent last year.
But Trevor Packer, who leads the AP
program, said the organization is worried that the disappearance of the federal grant program could deny needy
students key benefits, such as earning
college credit.

Pressure or Support?
To prevent that, the College Board
has undertaken a particularly intense
outreach effort to urge schools and
districts to consider Title IV as a way
to keep AP fees down for low-income
students. It hired extra staff to make
an estimated 3,500 phone calls to AP
coordinators at schools with large
enrollments of low-income students.
Its leaders discussed the Title IV solution with top officials at state departments of education. And it sent
letters to schools, telling them that
ESSA "explicitly allows" use of the
Title IV block grant to subsidize AP
exam fees, urging them to ask their
state and district leaders to "take specific action" to use that money for that
purpose.
Those tactics didn't make a universally good impression. In one meeting with state leaders, a top official
"had smoke coming out of their ears"
when a College Board representative
offered Title IV as a fix for the lost
federal AP-fee money, said one meeting attendee. "We have a lot of things
in mind for that money, and here
comes the College Board, thinking it
can tell us how to spend it," he said.

Sending letters directly to schools
didn't sit well with some state leaders, either. "That definitely felt like
a strong-arm tactic to me," said one
state department of education official.
Packer disputed the notion that its
outreach is too heavy-handed. The
meetings and letters are the most effective way to inform states of important changes in federal law, and offer
them potential solutions that can preserve AP access for students, he said.
"I do feel we have an obligation to
these students, who signed up for
this additional work without knowing something changed for them,"
Packer said.

Difficult Choices
How many states and districts will
opt for a Title IV solution is an open
question. But meanwhile, they're devising other solutions that carry their
own tough choices.
Prince George's County, a large
district in Maryland, sent a letter
to parents in October, in response to
worried phone calls about AP testfee increases. Chief Executive Officer
Kevin M. Maxwell assured them that
the district would keep the fees low
despite the loss of the federal subsidy.
"This decision does have some financial implications that will require
some additional adjustments, but we
feel that this is the right thing to do,"
he wrote.
Maryland has not offered to replace
the lost federal grants for districts,
counting on an increase in overall
K-12 funding, and a large-scale conversion to more-flexible block grants,
to enable districts to pay for what
they need, said department of education spokesman William Reinhard.
In Vermont, deputy secretary of
education Amy Fowler laments the
spot her superintendents are in. That
state can't cover the lost federal grant
money for AP fees. Local superintendents report that they'll find a way to
manage, she said. But she anticipates
painful tradeoffs.
"It sets up each of the various possibilities in competition with each
other for those dollars," she said.
"And the higher the poverty in a community, the bigger the hit will be. In
some places, they might have to say,
we're just not going to do AP [subsidies], and use those resources for our
preschool program instead. Those are
the kinds of choices people are going
to have to make."

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