Editorials

The Alabama Advanced Placement Initiative received $1 million from the Legislature during the 2006-07 school year. This allowed 56 school systems to offer AP courses for which students who make the grade — and that isn't easy — receive both high school and college credit.

For the school year 2007-08, the Legislature appropriated $2.6 million. Thus, 71 school systems in the state offered AP courses.

The results, an exuberant Gov. Bob Riley told The Associated Press, "are absolutely incredible." This past year the number of Alabama public-school students taking AP exams increased by 24.3 percent. The national increase was 8.6 percent.

Of course, the reason more students took AP courses was that the Legislature allocated more money, and that allowed more students to take advantage of this program. What is important is that Alabama students were given the opportunity — and they seized it. So much for the criticism of young folks today taking the easy route.

"Alabama students can reach higher and achieve more than historically people thought they could," state Superintendent Joe Morton told The Associated Press. "They ran, but they ran toward it — not from it."

Even more significant is that as the number of students taking the test increased, so, too, did the percentage of students who made the grade. In Alabama, 7.8 percent more achieved the highest score possible on the AP exam. The national increase was 5.7 percent.

The Legislature's response to this success?

It cut funding from $2.6 million to $1.6 million.

Let's be fair: When the money was cut, the Legislature did not know how popular and successful the program had been. Moreover, this is a tight budget year, and since AP courses do not have a large constituency it was an easy place to trim. As the old saying goes, "$1 million here and $1 million there adds up to a lot of money." And with less than half the school systems getting any AP funding, who will be upset?

Well, no one — until this report came out. And now it's easy to wonder just how closely legislators looked at what they were cutting.

Here is a program that rewards students and helps parents with college costs, and it does so for relatively little money in terms of the state's budgets. Instead of trimming it back, legislators should have sought ways to expand it to the rest of our school systems.

There is a bright side to the story. Expectations are that thanks to our distance-learning initiative — Alabama Connecting Classroom, Educators and Students Statewide — all Alabama schools next year will have AP courses online.

Unless, of course, the Legislature cuts that, too.