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I think that in order for it to be possible for schools to promote equality and excellence there would have to be a major overhaul in the way that schools are evaluated. Schools are evaluated based on mean test scores. Therefore, they nurture and encourage students that have higher abilities and aptitudes to reach their maximum potential. Their thinking is that those high scores will pull the school's average up. What they don't understand is that increasing the average student's performance would have a much higher effect on their school-wide average. In order to promote equality all students no matter what ability would have to have access to these college-prep classes or AP classes. What I have found in practice is that many schools say that they have an equal opportunity for all students to get into these courses, but what they do is discourage average kids or kids who may be below average, not to take these classes because it would hurt their GPA. I know that part of our evaluation is based on failures. If you put below average students in an AP course there is a strong chance that they might make a low grade or not pass. Instead of seeing the benefit to completing an AP or college prep class no matter what the grade is, schools are only focused on the grade itself. Even if you fail a course you have learned some portion of the information and are better for the experience. Therefore, I think that schools claim that they have these high test score averages and therefore claim they are pushing all of their students to excellence. However, I think in many cases these children are told to settle for less. Thus I don't think it is happens currently that a school can promote both but I do think it's possible with some changes in how things like failure and ability are viewed. A failure in an AP class is not an all-bad thing. The student stuck it out and had to have absorbed some portion of the information.

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