Conclusion

Now, looking at the results of our models, we can provide policy makers more insight as to what school characteristics best explain AP Exam participation.

Since a majority of the features in both our linear model and the top of our feature importance plot are related to other academic courses and exams, we would recommend that policy makers work towards increasing enrollment in other academically rigorous programs and activities as a way to encourage participation in AP Exams. Because the percentage of chronically absent students was also found to be an important factor, policy makers should certainly aim more attention towards decreasing chronic absenteeism and promoting school retention as well. Our findings also suggest that advocating for higher teacher salaries is crucial since this corresponds to lower teacher turnover rates and teachers with more work experience which ultimately leads to a better quality learning experience and higher student achievement.^[5] Since race was included in our final explanatory variables too, policy makers should focus on creating race-conscious education goals that are designed to explicitly discuss race, consider racial achievement gaps, and provide equitable support as opposed to composing race-neutral plans and proposals.

We also suspect that our findings may have been largely affected by the numerous discrepancies and missing values within our data. In order to properly investigate the nuances of the current academic landscape, we would also urge policy makers to advocate for the collection of more accurate and robust data. Naturally, there are many other confounding variables that we were unable to take into account, such as the individual student’s emotional wellbeing, home life, or socio-economic status, that may have been a large factor in determining AP Exam participation. But out of the available school characteristics that we have considered, these are the actions that we would propose in an effort to improve AP Exam participation rates.

Of course, there is always room for improvement and researchers are still struggling to properly address many of the issues in our current education system. However, we hope that future research will allow all students the right support and resources they need to reach their goals.