A Welcome Hard Lesson

Advanced Placement Courses Worth It for Teen Mother

Deeannah Taylor sprinted from the senior parking lot to the red brick administration building at Glen Burnie High School for her 12 p.m. Advanced Placement physics exam. She arrived, breathless, at 12:02. The counselor asked whether she needed a few minutes to cool down. Deeannah shook her head no.

She sat down, took a breath and put the events of the previous six hours behind her -- the pre-dawn study session, the trip to the pediatrician with her 15-month-old daughter, the desperate dash to school.

This 17-year-old mother is the new face of Advanced Placement in the Washington region.

The Anne Arundel school system has doubled participation in the AP program in three years, filling classrooms with a new generation of AP scholars: smart students with checkered academic pasts; working-class teens who will be the first in their families to go to college; youths like Deeannah, with adult-sized concerns. The pattern repeats across the Washington suburbs.

"I feel like I work harder this year. I'm motivated," said Deeannah, a senior whose class schedule includes AP courses in physics, psychology, statistics, Spanish and English literature.

A few years ago, a student such as Deeannah would have been discouraged from AP study, which challenges high school students with college-level work.

Once the province of an academic elite, AP courses were offered to small groups of students handpicked by their teachers. Glen Burnie High, for example, required students to fill out an application and complete a sample assignment to be considered for admission. The process yielded a crop of mostly white students from upper-income families.

On the theory that more students could benefit from advanced courses, school systems in the region have opened the floodgates, actively recruiting promising students, breaking down admission barriers and offering classes on AP study skills.

Critics say AP classes have become crowded, noisy and undisciplined. They cite falling pass rates on AP exams as evidence of eroding standards. Defenders, including Anne Arundel Superintendent Eric J. Smith, contend that even a middling AP student is better off for having taken the courses.

"Public education is in one business, and that's to open doors for children," Smith said. "It's why we're here."

Glen Burnie is a working-class Baltimore suburb. The high school's senior parking lot is filled with new cars bought with student wages from night and weekend jobs. Barely 80 percent of students will finish Glen Burnie High, and only one in four of those will attend a four-year college. Deeannah works weekends at a Bob Evans restaurant in Pasadena. Her pay goes to diapers and day care.

She spent Mother's Day waiting tables, working with a migraine and a sore throat and fever she had picked up from her daughter, Jamara. The manager gave her and the other mothers white flowers to wear on their aprons.