Thousands of Educators Convened at AP Annual Conference 2024

Addressing an audience packed with thousands of AP® teachers at the opening plenary of the 2024 AP Annual Conference, Emmanuel Acho—author, sports analyst, and former NFL player—used his presence to remind educators of their power: “I wouldn’t be here if not for so many of my teachers. If not for seeds that were planted, I shouldn’t even be here. I wasn’t smart in high school, compared to the geniuses I went to school with, but someone planted a seed.”

Acho detailed his journey from high school sports star to influential author and public intellectual focused on getting Americans to have meaningful dialogue around topics like race. He called on AP teachers to dive into challenging discussions with their students and welcome the awkward or ignorant questions as a tool for sparking good conversations. Like an NFL training camp, “it’s grueling at first, but eventually comes to feel routine and even healthy,” Acho said. To be effective learners, students and teachers alike must be “comfortable being uncomfortable,” he elaborated. He closed by telling the assembled teachers, “Y’all have so much power. You have the power to infuse belief in an individual, and you have the power to undermine belief in an individual. Many of y’all will plant the seeds, and you’ll have no idea what kind of tree, what kind of resources bloom from that seed. But plant the seed, anyway.”

The AP Annual Conference brings together thousands of education professionals from the AP and Pre-AP® communities and provides them with an opportunity to learn, share, and gather the most current information about the AP Program. The conference schedule features workshops, content-driven sessions on a wide range of important topics in education and exhibits on new textbooks and classroom technologies.

Accelerating the Transition to Digital AP Exams

As part of the regular updates shared at APAC, Terry Redican, vice president for AP Program Delivery, announced that starting in May 2025, 28 AP Exams will move to the Bluebook™ digital testing application, the same platform successfully used for the SAT® Suite of Assessments. The change means that paper and pencil tests will be a thing of the past.

The AP Program is accelerating its timeline to digital testing because of the rise this year in bad actors stealing or otherwise compromising AP Exam content for financial gain. While none of the compromised material was distributed broadly enough to warrant large-scale exam cancellations, Redican explained that paper AP testing would continue to be vulnerable to theft and cheating. In addition to ensuring exam security, digital AP testing is more streamlined, accessible, and student friendly. AP students will be able to access free online practice resources, and test previews will be available for all subjects on Bluebook later in the 2024-25 school year. Students will also be able to access free online practice exams, quizzes, and other teacher-created assessments in AP Classroom.

New Research on High School Teachers’ Job Satisfaction and Retention  

Also at the AP Annual Conference, Jessica Howell, vice president of research, and Maureen Ewing, executive director of research, presented findings from a College Board survey of roughly 17,000 high school teachers from across the United States at the start of the 2023-24 school year. With teachers’ job satisfaction hitting an all-time low during the pandemic and documented increases in teachers leaving the profession, the survey was conducted to examine the current levels of teacher job satisfaction and identify the drivers of satisfaction in order to improve engagement and retention in the teaching profession. 

The new research finds that, among the 20% of high school teachers who report being very or fairly likely to leave the profession, roughly one-third report being very or somewhat dissatisfied with their job. Research shows that job dissatisfaction is a leading indicator of leaving the profession. More than half of high school teachers report that Lack of student motivation (69%) and Low levels of public respect for teaching (59%) detract from their satisfaction with teaching. 

The survey also asked teachers to rate the overall mental health of their fellow high school teachers in the school building. Only one-third of high school teachers report their peers have good or excellent mental health and, for those who cite poor mental health among their peer teachers, nearly 40% also report being very or somewhat dissatisfied with their job. Regression analyses suggest improving mental health perceptions is strongly associated with increased job satisfaction among high school teachers overall, for first-year high school teachers, and for AP teachers. 

AP District of the Year

The 2024 AP Annual Conference closed with a panel discussion made up of leaders from the three 2023 AP Districts of the Year. Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District (NY), Leander Independent School District (TX), and Los Alamos Public Schools (NM) were recognized for having AP programs that are delivering results for students while broadening access. All three school systems credit their success to yearslong initiatives to shift school cultures, end counterproductive tracking practices, and win broad community support for a more inclusive AP program.

All the districts recognized this year have taken focused action to close those gaps in participation so that their AP programs more closely mirror their student populations. Scott Bersin, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction in the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District on Long Island, credited steady support from his school board. District leaders were willing to lead many of those challenging community conversations and advocate for greater support to get students on track for AP. Raising the percentage of students with AP experience became a shared goal for the entire district, which made it easier to push for needed changes. “We challenged the entire district to grow that number,” Bersin said. “It started in the middle schools and worked its way up to high schools.”

Each of the leaders praised the AP Program’s professional development for helping to foster a sense of community among teachers, AP coordinators, and district leaders. J. Carter Payne, assistant superintendent for teaching and learning for Los Alamos Public Schools, said that AP Summer Institutes are the highest-quality professional development he’s ever experienced for teachers, and all three men agreed that bringing district leaders to the AP Annual Conference helped keep everyone energized about improving AP performance. 

“It’s so good for building community,” Payne stated. “The sense of community among staff in our schools is one of the great factors that leads our students to success.”

To read more highlights from the 2024 AP Annual Conference, visit College Board’s All Access blog.