Conference season is in full swing, and our team has been out on the road.

Last week, you might have caught us in New York City at EdTech Week and the Grantmakers for Education conference. This week, we’re in Boston at the Council for Great City Schools’ fall convening on urban education. (If you’re also in town, don’t be a stranger. We’d love to connect!)

More to come. For now, on to Notes.

There is a pervasive narrative among high schoolers that optimizing your academic schedule is the key to setting yourself apart from your peers. Friends, parents, teachers, and older siblings all pile on with the same advice: The rigor of AP classes will impress college admissions officers and, thus, make a student more likely to get into a “good” school.

A few members of the Whiteboard Advisors team even remember building their class schedules with the assumption that certain AP classes would be more useful for college applications than others. Olivia steered clear of AP Psychology so she could cram AP Biology and AP Chemistry on her schedule. Ben Clatterbuck took nine AP classes his senior year, choosing AP Calculus AB over AP Statistics just because “it sounded better.”

It turns out, their high school selves were navigating with only half of the picture. Most AP classes don’t give you a leg up in college admissions, according to Empowerly’s new 2026 Course Premium Report. In their analysis of admissions outcomes for 11,764 students at 524 universities across 36 AP courses, only six were tied to a meaningful advantage:

This three- to five-point bump can make a meaningful difference in differentiating applicants, but taking more AP classes just to take more AP classes produces diminishing returns on college acceptance while increasing academic stress. Students may be just as well off, or better, from investing more deeply in their personal interests and extracurriculars.

Why it matters: The college application and admissions process is becoming more streamlined and transparent, but students and families are often left guessing as to how soon they should start preparing for it. As early as middle school, students begin making consequential decisions about their academic path that will impact their college readiness and competitiveness in admissions. Data like these enable students to make more informed choices, and help families and counselors encourage students to take courses aligned with their post-high school ambitions.

According to The State of Tutoring 2026, there’s often wild variability between the experience of students within the very same tutoring program. That means that looking at average outcomes, alone, can be seriously misleading.

This year’s report analyzed more than 800,000 tutoring sessions delivered to 64,000 students across 28 state-, district-, and vendor-led programs.  Among the findings is the fact that 91% of variation among weekly tutoring minutes occurred between students inside the same program.

Join us next Tuesday for a conversation about the report’s findings and what state and district leaders should do differently before next year’s budgets and contracts are set. 

🗓️ Tuesday, October 27, 2026 at 1 p.m. ET / 10 a.m. PT

Featured Panelists

On Wednesday, the Trump administration dropped two of its appeals of two June rulings that blocked its plans to restrict eligibility for Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), which offers student debt relief to borrowers who work in public service and make qualifying monthly payments for at least a decade. The U.S. Department of Justice, which represented the Education Department, did not provide an explanation for withdrawing the appeals. A third appeal is still pending, but is expected to be dropped as well. [Inside Higher Ed, subscription model]

Refresh your memory: In October 2025, the Trump administration finalized regulations aimed at tightening employer eligibility for PSLF. The final rule changed the definition of a “qualifying employer” to exclude organizations engaging in “unlawful activities,” such as providing certain healthcare services to transgender youth and facilitating the violation of federal immigration laws, among others. The rule, which was set to take effect on July 1, was blocked by court injunction. Read our full overview.

On October 19, the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) agreed to hear a case that will determine what legal standards parents or others challenging school admissions policies as racially discriminatory must meet to win their lawsuits. The case, Association for Education Fairness v. Montgomery County Board of Education, is expected to settle multiple lawsuits filed against school districts across the country regarding allegedly discriminatory admissions practices for K-12 schools. No date has been set for oral arguments, but the case is expected to be heard in this term.

Go deeper: In 2020, a group of parents sued Maryland’s Montgomery County Board of Education after the school district changed its admissions policies for a highly competitive magnet middle school’s STEM programs. The policy changes—in particular, a lottery system—were race-neutral on their face, but according to parents, they negatively impacted Asian American enrollment rates at the school and are therefore discriminatory under the 14th Amendment. Lower courts dismissed the case, arguing that the plaintiffs did not successfully prove that the policy change had a disparate impact on Asian American students, or that it was established with discriminatory intent. [Maryland Matters]

Sound familiar? This case is reminiscent of SCOTUS’ landmark decision on Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which ended race-conscious admissions policies for colleges and universities. It’s too early to tell if SCOTUS will rule similarly, but we’ll keep a close eye on how arguments proceed.

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