AP Scores, Participation Rise with Healthy Classrooms, Staff Outreach

The faster pace and heavier workload that come with signing up for an Advanced Placement course have often been a source of intimidation for many high schoolers, yet it’s quite the opposite at Madison Metropolitan Schools. Student participation and test scores are on the rise.

In the previous school year alone, the College Board recognized nearly 1,000 MMSD students with AP Scholar designations. Of the 2,170 students who took at least one AP exam, 44% earned one of the College Board's AP Scholar honors. 

That success didn’t happen by accident.

East High School Associate Principal AJ Simonini said getting students to sign up for the challenging coursework is rooted in relationship building and intentional conversations about the “why?”

“There's sometimes a preconceived notion that advanced placement courses should only – or only are – accessible to students headed to college,” Simonini said. “We want to ensure that that’s not the case at East High School.”

Together with school staff, he’s worked to help students understand that the benefits of AP exams go beyond just college credit. They serve as a relevant opportunity across fields; for example with job certification or licensing, practice with summative exams comes in handy.

“Those individual conversations, while time-consuming, are effective and we can’t in education get away from the importance of that,” Simonini said. “Trusted adults who are saying things like ‘I believe in you’ and ‘I know you can do it’, and ‘It might be hard and we're here to support you’.”

In the classroom for Math Department Chair at East Lindsay Sahlman, creating that support and belonging means meeting students where they are.

In Sahlman’s AP Precalculus class, practically that looks like taking the time, though at a faster pace and difficulty level, to review other math foundations at the start of the school year. 

“It gives them time to acclimate,” Sahlman said. “I think that also builds rapport to let them know, yep, this is review and come ask me if you have questions.”

These reviews also allow many students like East High School Sophomore Juniper to get ahead, confidently skipping past Algebra II and going straight from Geometry to AP Precalculus.

Juniper signed up for that AP class her freshman year because she wanted to give herself an extra challenge and believed she’d have the support needed to succeed. 

“I want to achieve as much as I can and know that I am capable,” she said. “If it's a safe environment to do so, then I just would want to do it and see if I could.”

East High School Math Teacher Eric Arnold said providing students the safety needed to take those academic risks begins with creating a healthy classroom environment.

“A healthy classroom isn't about just having rules and it isn't about the 10 assignments I made them do,” Arnold explained. “It's about–in a world where we're fighting for their attention in a lot of ways–creating an environment that's convincingly interesting and makes people wonder and question, and then feel brave enough to ask why.”

A big part of that for Arnold is getting students to accept that it’s natural to make mistakes. One method Arnold employs in class he calls “My Favorite Mistake.”  He anonymously shares a student’s problem-solving mistake with the class as an opportunity to normalize errors and help learners analyze them.

“The biggest piece of the academic risk that they are afraid of in a class like AP Precalculus is ‘how will I look compared to my peers?’” He explained.“It's just about confidence building, being intentional about that and not being afraid to have hard conversations about our feelings while we learn.”

Those efforts to empower young learners, paired with a focus on transparency and preparation, have not gone unnoticed by students like East Juniors Gassimou and Zadie.

“What really helped was they all came in with the expectation that everybody's gonna be accountable for their own work,” Gassimou said. “It just made me realize that I gotta take that effort myself. Like I can't make the teacher change this just for me. If there's something that I can do to improve my learning, I should probably do it.”

“Mr. Arnold gave you the whole schedule before, and you kind of just knew exactly what you were gonna be doing,” Zadie said. 

Those classroom experiences also keep students coming back for more. After taking three AP classes her sophomore year, Zadie signed up for four more her junior year. Gassimou signed up for five AP classes, after also taking three the year before.

“It's not just about getting kids into class; it's getting them to stay,” Arnold said. “That work's been intentional and has been happening around the school more and more, and I think that that's really one reason we're seeing more success at East.”

Gassimou also credits AP coursework and teacher leadership with helping him develop his time management skills, study habits and overall dedication.

“I would encourage other people to take AP classes because I feel like a lot of people are more capable than they give themselves credit for,” Gassimou said. “ They'll get a lot more out of it than they think.”

Through the 2021–22 and 2025–26 school years, the number of MMSD students taking at least one AP exam has increased 48%. During that same period, the number of AP exams taken by MMSD students increased 84%, with students taking 2,390 more exams than they did five years prior.

“It feels good,” Sahlman said of the success. “It also feels validating, you know, because we work really hard to meet students where they're at, and I think that makes a big difference.”

Sahlman believes a big part of AP success at MMSD also comes from staff working together and engaging with one another districtwide.

“It's just nice to have many brains focused towards the same goal,” she said. “We can really get to the root of what's best for students, and if we disagree, we can talk out why we disagree and come to a solution. And we've always come to a solution.”

The student registration deadline for the May 2027 AP exams is Oct 18. For more details on exam participation, visit our MMSD News update.