New AP Business Course Reaches 1,500 High Schools, Including Hoover High

The College Board rolled out its first Advanced Placement business course this fall, and it is now taught at more than 1,500 high schools nationwide, including Hoover High School near Birmingham, Alabama. In Gerri Kimble's class, students sit in a semicircle and debate how to handle part-time paychecks. Junior Darshan Parmar said he puts his money into index funds, including S&P, QQQ and VOO, and manages the investments himself rather than relying on his parents.

The coursework covers management and personal finance, along with the political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal factors that can shape a business. Senior Bramley Williams described it as "a foundational piece of business that we're learning." Sophomore Damola Kukoyi said he enrolled partly because the class could raise his grade point average, since AP courses are often weighted more heavily than other classes. AP courses are college-level classes, and students who take the exam can earn college credit, typically in subjects such as English, history and chemistry.

David Coleman, CEO of the College Board, said the organization created the course after students reported in AP surveys that they wanted to turn their ideas into jobs. The College Board develops AP courses for public and private schools and also administers the SAT. Coleman said business is a form of liberal arts and that teaching students to mix practical skills with theory "could not be more useful today." He also said, "Business is the constant learning of adaptation." The course is aimed at students who want a practical curriculum rather than a theoretical one such as AP economics, which remains available at schools like Hoover.

The class sits inside a wider shift in what high schools teach about money. Thirty-nine states require a personal finance course for graduation this year, four more than two years ago, according to the Council for Economic Education. A Federal Reserve paper published a few years ago found that families in states requiring financial education made different choices during the COVID-19 pandemic, using stimulus checks to pay down credit card balances and refinance mortgages while rates were low. Jennifer Steele, a professor of education at American University, said, "When we educate youth about how to use money responsibly they're really good at doing so."

Hoover High sits in an affluent Birmingham suburb and enrolls just under 3,000 students, the largest high school student body in Alabama. Beyond the AP class, the school runs a four-year business academy with courses in accounting and entrepreneurship. Senior Rachel Deschaine, who is enrolled in the AP course, said her father owned a trucking company and her brother is majoring in economics, and she hears the lessons discussed at the dinner table. She said, "There's a business in literally everything. If you're willing to understand how it works, it really opens up the opportunities to a person."

The College Board develops AP courses for public and private schools nationwide and also administers the SAT.