"Teacher participation in the audit was a tremendous success. In fact, less than 10 percent of AP® teachers felt the audit requirements constrained their individuality, which attests to the successful balance the auditors found between mandating high standards and respecting teachers' and schools' autonomy," said Tom Matts, who headed the AP Course Audit at the College Board. Teachers whose syllabi were not initially approved were given recommendations for improvement and invited to resubmit their course outlines.

For some experienced longtime AP teachers, the audit served the purpose of raising understanding of their courses among higher education faculty, but it was otherwise "just a relatively painless hoop to jump through." Eighty-four percent of the AP teachers participating felt that the goal of ensuring consistency in labeling courses "AP" was appropriate, and 67 percent felt that the audit provided them with a valuable opportunity to reflect on their course and its relationship to colleges' expectations.

The audit also provided a number of powerful benefits by giving educators the authority to improve existing or new programs and retain sufficient instructional resources. A survey of 26,000 teachers who participated in the AP Course Audit provided a statistically significant sample size for justifying the claims about the impact of the audit. Hundreds of thousands of high school students will benefit from the increased resources they now receive, making the following projected results possible:

• 17,000 teachers preventing reductions in lab time and instructional time that were scheduled to affect their courses;
• 16,000 teachers obtaining more current college textbooks for their students;
• 22,000 teachers incorporating advances in the discipline that had not yet been added into their curricula; and
• 16,000 teachers receiving increased funding from their school or district for professional development.