Earlier this year, the Aspen Institute’s Education & Society Program and the College Board announced a multiyear program, running from September 2026 through 2029, to increase the share of low-income and “missing middle” students who take Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, or dual-enrollment courses.
The pitch is simple: it’s free. Applications were due June 15, and the application says, “District leaders commit to a no-cost, three-year engagement that includes participation in biannual convenings, virtual learning sessions, and Learning Lab site visits.”
According to emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, the first convening was held in Aspen, Colorado, from Sept. 20-23, and the hosting organizations paid for participants’ flights, hotels, and meals. A second convening is being planned for spring 2027.
But free travel is only part of what districts receive, and “no-cost” describes the fee, not the obligations.
According to information provided to interested applicants, districts must, before acceptance, sign a data-sharing agreement to “provide current disaggregated data on advanced coursework participation.” That means the number and percentage of students enrolled in Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, and dual-enrollment courses, “disaggregated by race, ethnicity, income status, and other locally relevant student groups.”
District leaders are also required to provide course participation, pass rates, and outcomes for student groups enrolled in advanced coursework. The agreement also asks for information on “college enrollment … and other indicators that help districts identify whether advanced coursework participation is translating into stronger postsecondary outcomes.”
In other words, participating districts have agreed to hand over enrollment and outcome data broken out by student demographics, for the purpose of boosting Advanced Placement participation and socially engineering advanced coursework. And the request for racial data raises a question. The program’s public materials name low-income and “missing middle” students as the target. Why, then, does it ask for race?
The first cohort includes the following 24 districts, spanning urban, suburban, rural, and county systems:
- Virginia: Fairfax County Public Schools, Prince William County Public Schools, Richmond Public Schools
- Mid-Atlantic and Northeast: Montgomery County Public Schools, Maryland; Manhattan High Schools District and Yonkers Public Schools, New York; School Administrative Unit 20, New Hampshire
- South: Atlanta Public Schools, Georgia; Hillsborough County Public Schools and Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Florida; Jackson Public School District, Mississippi; Metro Nashville Public Schools, Tennessee; The Innovation Project NC, North Carolina
- Midwest: Chicago Public Schools, Illinois; Detroit Public Schools Community District, Michigan; Cleveland Metropolitan School District, Ohio; Milwaukee Public Schools, Wisconsin; Rochester Public Schools, Minnesota
- West and Southwest: Alief Independent School District, Texas; Clark County School District, Nevada; Denver Public Schools and Jeffco Public Schools, Colorado; Compton Unified School District and Long Beach Unified School District, California
Before a school district agrees to share data on its students, parents deserve to know it is happening, and the public deserves to know who approved it.
Fairfax County Public Schools, one of the 24 districts, would have had to sign the data-sharing agreement to join the network. I searched the district’s publicly available school board documents and found no record of a vote on that agreement. I also found no record that district leaders notified parents that data on their children would be shared. As a parent with children in AP classes, I personally have not been notified. Last week, I emailed Superintendent Michelle Reid asking whether a vote or notification took place. As of publication, she has not responded. If this agreement was appropriate, why is there no public record in Fairfax of a vote or notice to the families affected?
There is also a question of priorities. According to the Virginia Department of Education, about two in five economically disadvantaged students in Fairfax County failed their state standardized tests in reading, math, and science in the 2025-26 school year. If the goal is to help economically disadvantaged students, it seems critical to help the 40% who are not performing at grade level.
There may be a financial incentive. College Board, which co-runs the Social Mobility Leadership Network, charges $99 per AP exam, so a program that expands AP participation is also likely to increase revenue from the exams.
The network’s stated goal is to make advanced coursework available to every student. Its public materials do not say how districts will treat prerequisites or screening, but a goal of universal access invites the question of whether course standards would bend to meet participation targets.
After the Fairfax County School Board overhauled Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ) admissions for “equity” over merit in 2020, for example, the school’s ranking fell, the number of National Merit semifinalists decreased from 165 to 81 in the first class admitted under the new process, and the school was forced to provide remedial math support for freshmen. The TJ case shows how standards and outcomes take a hit for the sake of “equity” and social engineering.
Expanding access to advanced coursework is a worthy goal, and no one should object to helping more students succeed. But the way a district pursues that goal matters as much as the goal itself. Decisions about sharing student data and about the standards behind advanced courses belong in public view, not buried in an application. Before a district signs on to a program billed as free, families deserve a public vote, plain notice, and honest answers about what the district is committing to. Fairfax has given parents none of those so far.
As it turns out, there’s really no such thing as a free trip to Aspen.
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