Seven years. That’s roughly how long the College Board told Medill it would take to develop and implement a brand-new Advanced Placement Journalism class for high school students, according to Medill lecturer and Teach for Chicago Journalism Director Michael Spikes.

That initial communication took place in 2022. Three years later, the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications has piloted an AP Seminar module with four local high schools and is planning to begin developing a full AP Journalism curriculum.

In the 2023-2024 school year, Medill piloted its media-focused module at Chicago-area schools William Jones College Preparatory High School, Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy, Northside College Preparatory High School and James B. Conant High School.

“We got positive feedback from all of the people that worked with it,” Spikes said. “Granted, it’s only the first year, but we saw that students did better in the course.”

Since the pilot program, Spikes said the College Board has informed Medill that it was “super happy with the module.” The next step, he added, is for the College Board to formally endorse the module and promote it to AP teachers nationwide on its website.

The idea came about when Teach for Chicago Journalism — Medill’s initiative to support journalism education in local schools — realized that many high school students wanted to take journalism classes but felt pressured to take AP classes instead, Spikes said.

“Medill has had interest over the years, over a long time, in cultivating not only the next generation of journalists through the students we teach here but also in driving high school students to think about journalism as a career,” Spikes said.

Medill approached the College Board with the idea for an AP Journalism course in 2022. When the College Board told Medill it could take nearly a decade to review a new AP exam and get approval from colleges to accept course credit, the initiative’s leadership pivoted.

Katie Fernandez, Teach for Chicago Journalism’s senior program coordinator, said the College Board suggested starting smaller.

From then on, Medill developed a module teaching media literacy, the modern media ecosystem and journalism’s role in democracy for AP Seminar — a yearlong independent research class required for the AP Capstone Diploma.

AP Seminar students learn interdisciplinary research skills by conducting independent and collaborative research projects, as well as an argumentative paper. Though the curriculum is flexible, teachers often dedicate much of the first semester to teaching the necessary skills to synthesize information and think critically. This first portion of the course typically focuses on one topic for a practice performance task, which is where Medill’s module comes in.

Because AP Seminar is content-agnostic — meaning teachers can choose practice materials on any topic and students choose the topic of their research — Medill’s practice module aggregates resources for students to analyze to prepare for their performance tasks, Fernandez said.

College Board spokesperson Sara Sympson said the organization looks forward to reviewing the module for final approval.

“We regularly partner with institutions to create and develop courses that we think will be relevant to students and for which they can earn college credit,” she said.

The College Board did not immediately comment on the criteria for the module to be approved for national implementation.

Spikes said he believes Medill’s module will align with the goal of AP Seminar: to introduce high school students to scholarly research and inquiry. Media literacy is fundamental to helping students analyze arguments from multiple perspectives, he added.

Katina Paron, a former program manager for Teach for Chicago Journalism, said high schools should embrace journalism education because it teaches necessary skills such as critical thinking and research.

“Journalism gives young people a seat at the table on issues that affect them,” Paron said.

Paron said she hopes a full-fledged AP Journalism class would introduce students to key topics in modern journalism, including its business model and impact.

Medill sophomore Margarita Williams took AP Seminar in high school and said she would have taken AP Journalism if she had the opportunity, especially if she could have learned the specifics of Associated Press style –– writing guidelines of professional journalism.

“Even for students who aren’t interested in going into journalism, it would be really great, because AP style is useful outside journalism — pretty much in any writing field,” Williams said.

Williams said an AP Journalism class could help underfunded schools that may not have a newspaper or literary magazine.

Medill sophomore Gabe Shumway said journalism is missing from many high school curriculums, and an AP Journalism course could help students “break the mold” of traditional essay writing.

“I felt like I was going in blind when I tried to do journalism in high school independently, so I would love something like that,” Shumway said.

Currently, Fernandez said Medill is focusing on rolling out the AP Seminar module to a broader audience. 

Without any concrete plans for an AP Journalism course, Medill’s goal is to launch the AP Seminar module nationwide this fall. If the launch goes well, Fernandez said she is ready to continue the process toward an AP Journalism class.

“It’s been a slow process,” Fernandez said. “Whenever they’re ready to move forward, we’re just sitting here waiting. We’re ready.”

This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.

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