A New Generation of AP Courses Offers More Opportunities for Students

By Kim Spangenberg

VHS Learning is excited to offer three new AP Career Kickstart courses for the 2026-2027 academic year. These new courses take a Career Technical Education (CTE) approach and offer a unique blend of academic rigor and hands-on, career-focused training. The courses also include business cases or work-based scenarios to ensure students are prepared for both college and careers. Students do not need prior knowledge of these subjects to enroll and will be engaged in authentic work that provides the opportunity to earn employer-endorsed credentials as well as college credit. We expect these courses will provide valuable opportunities to engage more students in AP-level work, in preparation for various post-secondary pathways.

The three new courses include:

• AP Business with Personal Finance: Students explore key business disciplines of entrepreneurship, marketing, finance, accounting, management, and strategy as well as personal finance, and complete an entrepreneurial project to demonstrate business and professional leadership skills as well as a Financial Advisor Project to apply real-world financial advice and planning. Aligned with National Standards for Personal Financial Education, this course offers students the opportunity to earn a U.S. Department of Commerce endorsed credential as well as college credit. More information on this course from the College Board is available here: AP Business with Personal Finance.
• AP Cybersecurity: Through extensive lab work, students explore defense-in-depth strategies and learn to address specific vulnerabilities, attacks, mitigations, and detection measures across a variety of domains, including physical spaces, computer networks, devices, applications, and data, and develop skills to analyze and mitigate risks and detect attacks. This course aligns with the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) Workforce Framework, prepares students for high-demand tech roles, and can result in an industry-endorsed AP Cybersecurity Credential and potential college credit. More information on this course from the College Board is available here: College Board: AP Cybersecurity.
• AP Networking: We are continuing to participate in the pilot of this course in 2026-27, with registration extended to more schools and students. Through extensive lab work, students explore the infrastructure of the digital world and develop skills to design and configure a secure network, and protect networks. This course also aligns with the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) Workforce Framework, prepares students for high-demand tech roles, and can result in an industry-endorsed AP Networking Credential and potential college credit. This course is expected to officially launch in 2027-28, when it will become available for all schools to offer. More information on this course from the College Board is available here:(AP Career Kickstart).

This new AP Career Kickstart program supports students in developing professional career-focused skills. The employer-endorsed credentials that students earn with passing exam scores will help differentiate students applying for apprenticeships, jobs within the industry, or four-year degree programs.

The three new courses follow the addition of AP African American Studies to our AP catalog in 2025-26. This exciting interdisciplinary AP course provides students with the opportunity to engage with African American history and culture through thoughtful encounters with rich and varied sources. It is one of four courses currently offered that includes through-course project work that is scored and used in the calculation of the AP exam score. AP Computer Science Principles, AP Latin, and AP Seminar require various levels of project or research work as well.

Three world language courses will also be revised this year to require a research project, including AP Spanish, AP French, and AP Chinese. These revisions are in response to the changes to the Course and Exam Descriptions (CEDs) recently released by College Board and reflect the recent trend in AP courses to incorporate through-course work that contributes to AP exam scores.

The addition of AP Business with Personal Finance, AP Cybersecurity, and AP Networking expands our catalog to 35 AP courses, offering a diverse range of AP subjects to suit a variety of student interests and grades. AP Human Geography, AP English Language and Composition, AP Computer Science Principles, and AP Precalculus, are well suited for a younger student looking to explore topics. AP Environmental Science, AP Psychology, and AP Art History engage students in cross-disciplinary study, while AP Music Theory, AP Chinese Language and Culture, and AP Physics C, allow advanced coursework in music, language, and science. Our many AP offerings allow students to choose from a wide array of subjects that best suit their passion and experience.

At VHS Learning, our strong commitment to offering an extensive AP catalog aligns with our mission to expand opportunities for students. We know through our grant work with national and state initiatives to expand access to AP, that the benefits of taking an AP course extend far beyond the AP exam score and college credit. Research has shown that exposure to the rigor of an AP course itself is a predictor of future success, even when students do not earn a passing score. Taking just one AP course can significantly increase first-year college GPAs and four-year degree completion rates (College Board). While our AP scores are consistently strong, we also recognize the value of AP for students to explore their interests, develop more advanced skills, engage with peers in rigorous work, and develop confidence, regardless of their grade or score. For these reasons, we continue the hard work alongside our experienced and passionate AP teachers, to maintain and grow our AP program and offer new opportunities for our students.