Advanced Placement and Black High School Students: A Logistical Regression of College Persistence Factors

The purpose of the present study was to examine how Advanced Placement (AP) course participation influences the postsecondary persistence of Black students compared to other commonly examined factors, using a nine-predictor logistic regression model. We extracted data from the 2012/14 Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS:12/14). Black students represented 13.9 percent (N = 3475) of the BPS:12/14 student sample. Our research focused on Black students and considers the effect of their intersecting characteristics on persistence in postsecondary settings. The results suggest that AP courses have a statistically significant positive effect on their odds of college persistence (OR = 1.67). Specifically, compared to student GPA (OR = 1.68), AP course participation had the largest effect on student persistence in postsecondary education. The present study contributes to the literature by providing group-specific effect size benchmark data to characterize the impact of unique factors on the persistence of Black students in postsecondary education. These data have the potential to support meta-analytic thinking as well as policy and praxis to support the postsecondary retention of Black students.