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North Carolina education leaders were in a celebratory mood Wednesday as they announced record numbers of students taking and passing Advanced Placement courses.
More than 90,000 students took AP exams during the 2024-25 school year, a 7.3% increase from last year. Students sat for more than 171,000 exams, up 9.8%.
NC Schools Superintendent Mo Green discusses the academic gains of students taking and passing Advanced Placement courses during a meeting of the State Board of Education, Nov. 5, 2025. (Screengrab: NCDPI video stream)Students are also performing better, according to a presentation to the State Board of Education. About 72% of AP exams earned a score of 3 or higher, the threshold for college credit, according to state data. State officials said the number of qualifying scores has nearly doubled since 2021, as more students take more exams and succeed at higher rates.
“North Carolina public school students are making history,” said Superintendent of Public Instruction Maurice “Mo” Green during a press conference Wednesday.
“This is what it means to achieve educational excellence for all students,” Green said. “Being able to increase scores while increasing access – two metrics that sometimes do not rise together – is huge.”
School officials said that all student groups and regions saw gains both in participation and performance on AP exams. Sneha Shah-Coltrane, the state Department of Public Instruction’s senior director of advanced learning and gifted education, said the growth reflects a broader shift in mindset across schools, including the view that advanced coursework should be available to every student, not just those in well-resourced communities.
Sneha Shah-Coltrane, NCDPI“As you can see from all of these incredible districts from across North Carolina, we want to ensure that each and every child has access and success for advanced coursework,” said Shah-Coltrane. “It doesn’t matter where you live, we are working hard to ensure we are providing access and opportunities to each and every one of our students across North Carolina.”
The Southeast region saw the largest increase in participation, with 10.8% more students taking AP exams than last year. The West recorded the biggest rise in total exams administered at 17.5%, while the Northeast posted a 28% increase in qualifying scores, the fastest year-over-year score growth in the state.
State leaders also credited a decades-long effort to expand AP access, including a 2015 law that created the NC AP Partnership. The program, which pairs DPI with the College Board, provides professional development and targeted district support.
Districts leaders shared examples of changes they said helped expand access to advanced coursework and improve student success.
In the Alamance-Burlington School System, where the number of qualifying scores more than doubled, Superintendent Aaron Fleming said the district stopped offering an honors version of some classes and instead enrolled students directly into AP courses.
“We’ve made a deliberate move to offer pre-calculus only as an AP course, eliminating the honors option,” Fleming said. “This has successfully given students who hadn’t previously taken an AP course a chance to experience and succeed in a rigorous academic environment.”
The district also introduced courses such as AP Seminar and AP African American Studies, encouraging more students to attempt college-level work.
North Carolina’s growth continues to outpace the nation, with the state’s qualifying AP exam scores rising from 65.4% in 2024 to 72.1% in 2025, compared with a national increase from 65% to 70.1% over the same period.
Green said the state’s progress supports its broader goal of making North Carolina’s public schools the best in the nation by 2030.
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