Many high school students who qualify for advanced coursework never take it because they aren’t aware they’re eligible. A new study by Megan Austin and colleagues at the American Institutes for Research finds that automatically notifying high school students of their eligibility for advanced classes increases their likelihood of planning to take them in 11th grade.
Partnering with a student information system (SIS) provider, the researchers embedded an automatic notification tool into the digital course planner used by school counselors, parents, and students. The tool screens each student’s standardized test scores and grades against a performance threshold. When eligible students log into the course planner, they see a message indicating that they qualify for advanced classes.
To assess the tool’s impact on course planning—and whether the message content makes a difference—the researchers conducted a randomized control trial across 11 high schools serving over 37,000 students. At the beginning of the 2023-24 school year, 9th grade cohorts were randomly assigned to one of three groups. In the first treatment group, students received a short, simple note confirming their eligibility for advanced coursework. In the second, the message also emphasized how advanced coursework supports college and career success. In the control group, no notification tool was embedded in the course planner.
The researchers followed the students through the end of 10th grade in 2025, tracking their scheduling behavior for both 10th- and 11th-grade classes. While neither version of the notification impacted plans to take advanced courses in 10th grade, both increased the likelihood that students planned to take at least one advanced course in 11th grade. The short message increased this likelihood by 22 percentage points, while the longer message did so by 24 percentage points. The researchers suggest this pattern may reflect the structure of course offerings, as advanced courses such as Advanced Placement (AP) are typically geared toward 11th and 12th grade students.
Because the tool integrates into existing SIS platforms, the researchers argue that it is a low-cost, highly scalable alternative for increasing participation in advanced coursework. Follow-up surveys and interviews with guidance counselors support this conclusion: more than two-thirds reported that the tool prompted them to initiate conversations with students about advanced classes.