Overcoming Inertia with a Nudge: How the AAIMS Program Increased Advanced Placement Participation in Arkansas

The Arkansas Advanced Initiative for Math and Science (AAIMS) is program with the goal to increase Advanced Placement (AP) participation and increase the passing rate of AP exams. The program offers monetary incentives and support to students and teachers for one year, effectively creating a natural experiment. This paper exploits the one year treatment to empirically show that the program is effective at increasing a school’s AP participation rate by nudging the schools to increase AP offerings and satisfying a latent student demand for AP classes.