The near half of the student body that took Advanced Placement exams this year can blame former Headmaster Col. John Mason Kemper. A total of 480 students took 1,070 AP exams this year, according to Linda Sullivan, Director of Standardized Testing. According to Andover’s official history, Youth From Every Quarter, written in 1978 by Fritz Allis Jr., the concept of this relationship between high schools and colleges first arose under the direction of Kemper and other school deans. Allis wrote, “[The AP exams] represented the first time in the history of the school when something initiated at Andover contributed to the establishment of an educational program of national importance.” The book says that in 1950, Kemper appointed faculty members to an Alumni Educational Policy Committee. This group, along with college representatives from Harvard, Princeton and Yale, and high school representatives from Exeter and Lawrenceville, authored a study in 1951 exploring the relationship between the last two years of high school and the first two years of college. The study involved 341 graduates from the three all-male high schools who had matriculated at one of the three colleges. The study revealed that because of the advanced courses offered at boarding schools, many of the students were repeating the same course material during their first year of college, and that the students who took the same course twice often did not score any higher the second time. After the study was completed, the committee released a report titled “General Education School and College,” which implemented changes that still exist today. The report called for advanced classes in both high school and college to ensure that the students were not repeating their studies, because “it is better for these students, we believe, to wallow in a few difficulties than to slumber in indifference.” Phillips Academy and other schools were not the only ones suggesting change. Allis wrote that, around the same time, the president of Kenyon College created the similar Kenyon Plan. In 1952 and 1953, many schools began to set up initial Advanced Placement courses, overseen by The College Board, with the first Advanced Placement exams administered in 1954. The Advanced Placement program took on a role of increased importance, as well, after the USSR launched Sputnik, the first satellite ever launched into outer space, in 1957. Educational policy makers feared that American students were falling behind Soviet students in math and science education, and, in response to this fear, the AP program became more widespread in its application.
