In 2013, Tennessee counted nearly 7,000 students in the senior cohort whose academic skills when they entered high school suggested they were on track to earn college credits through Advanced Placement (AP) exams. Yet just over half of these students actually graduated with an AP credit, and less than a third of the economically disadvantaged students made the grade. What happened? This report details real issues schools encounter when moving academically prepared students along the AP pipeline, from access to success. This is not a story of student performance declines. Rather, it is one of missed opportunities for school-level interventions, in the form of additional course offerings, more targeted student counseling, or greater financial support for AP students. By using student-level data to highlight particular issues that schools face, it is the hope to create a framework that allows schools and districts to design targeted solutions to their individual challenges. While AP is only one of several options for allowing high school students to earn post-secondary credit, the framework applied to AP in this report could serve equally well for considering other options such as dual credit, dual enrollment, or International Baccalaureate programs.