<p>i think this is a good idea for ga, becuse it already has a small number of African American people participating higher level classes. In some cases, they even make it harder for them to participate. This goes on in my own county.</p>
<p>The aps in my school are not restricted tro either asians, whites, or blacks. There is truely a great variaty because in order to enter you need to have teacher recomendations, the grades and pass an interview.</p>
<p>I really don't see a problem with a lack of diversity in AP classes. Quite frankly, I believe in incentives so that all people can take more APs. The URMs simply don't have a good reason to take an AP course.</p>
<p>"I mean, if you refuse to read the textbook or at least AMSCO, then you deserve to fail."</p>
<p>That's funny - I thought the point of class was to learn the material. You shouldn't be expected to have to learn it on your own. In my AP US History class, people rarely read the textbook, and only a few religiously used a review book and went to the review sessions. However, most of those who took the test passed. </p>
<p>How did we pass? We had a great teacher. Having really difficult tests has absolutely nothing to do with how well you teach.</p>
<p>relating to the "insprational award" my school is mostly hispanic and black, in its recent years and my principal is trying a streched culuture, for other students who dont usually take ap classes to take them
for this year my schol was one of the three to win the $25,000 award
it surpirsing that we have to do this to get urm's to take the calss, but its also benificial to our school
besides the fact that a small amount of schools in ga have a large amount of urm's taking the exam.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Wait till you take a college course/get into college. You will out that in a big university setting (along the lines of 100+ kids in a single course), you will be learning the material largely on your own. Don't get used to amazing teachers. They are far and few in between.</p>
<p>Well, my school is porbably 90% white, so iit is excpected that there won't be too many minority students in any class. As such, I don't pay much attention to race, but, upon reflection, I think there is one minority student in 4 of my AP classes, and none in my fifth (but that one only has two people, so it doesn't count). </p>
<p>A bigger issue in my classes is gender balance. All of my classes, except AP Calculus and AP French have a strong female majority. APUSH and APES are around 66% girls, and APELAC is 75% girls. AP Calc., on the other hand, is slightly less than 25% girls (there are 5 of us this year. 1 year there was only one!). AP French is 50/50, but that's because it's just me and a guy.</p>
<p>I don't like the idea of forced diversity in AP classes. At my school, AP classes are open to nayone who wants to take them- no recommendations needed. I do not like this sometimes, however, because many people just take t for the label. I would much rather be surrounded by people who are willing to learn than those who are just there to get an AP class on their transcript. I do notice a lack in diversity in my classes however. I am the only black student in all of my AP classes and there is only one other Asian student in there with me (we have a VERY small minority population).</p>
<p>My APUSH teacher showed us a college board study or something that showed that black students who took AP classes/tests learned the material better and put forth more effort even if they failed the exam than if they had stayed in a regular US history course, I'll try to find it.</p>
<p>On the issue of gender balance, maybe one gender enjoys and understands one subject better than the other? Have you considered that females have a stronger vocational base while males are more logic based?</p>
<p>Not everyone is equal and we should not be forced to act like equals.</p>
<p>everyone who takes an ap in my class is chinese. or mixed.
but tahts because i live in hong kong</p>
<p>my AP lit class is like, 90% girls. calc is a little more balanced, but it's still about 75% girls. government was about 70%, too. i never really thought about it until now, but geez.</p>
<p>our top ten is all girls, too, so maybe we just have smart girls this year, haha.</p>
<p>my classes, too, are all severely unbalanced gender-wise.</p>
<p>there are 3-4 male in each while 7-13 female.</p>
<p>i think girls (at least most of the ones in my classes) just have a better work ethic.</p>
<p>i think its more than just having smart girls one year.</p>
<p>My school is probably 50% black and Hispanic, the rest white (there are like 4 Asians). APs tend to be maybe 10-15%, 20% tops, black and Hispanic, though: if you compare regular level courses to AP courses you wouldn't at all think it was the same school, or even country. Interestingly enough, I've taken the most tests, and I'm Hispanic. Sometimes we do achieve :)</p>
<p>Gender-wise, #1 in our class is a guy, next two girls, then a guy, then mostly girls for a bit. Girls tend to work harder, and I definitely wouldn't say it has anything to do with them just being smarter than the guys. I'm sure they're of comparable intelligence, it's just the guys tend to not care nearly as much about school in the traditional sense. At the risk of sounding sexist, there are more girls in my AP courses that don't like the classes at all, they just know it will look good for college, whereas the guys are less likely to care about that so they don't bother with the course. That could be a negative for either sex, though :). The guy that has passed the second highest number of APs in our school is lower in class rank because he doesn't do much, he just scores (relatively) highly on the AP exams. I'm not sure how well schooling is structured for male learning styles, but that's for another thread.</p>
<p>My school is about 5% asian, 40% black and the rest white, but in all my AP classes it is about 30% asian and maybe 2% black. I'm the only hispanic in any of my AP classes.</p>
<p>
[quote]
My school is probably 50% black and Hispanic, the rest white (there are like 4 Asians). APs tend to be maybe 10-15%, 20% tops, black and Hispanic, though: if you compare regular level courses to AP courses you wouldn't at all think it was the same school, or even country. Interestingly enough, I've taken the most tests, and I'm Hispanic. Sometimes we do achieve.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Wow, do we go to the same school?</p>
<p>lol, that's pretty much exactly like my school. Lots of hispanics and blacks, and a lot of the AP classes are comprised of minorities, except for physics and calc.</p>
<p>i have only seen 2 black ppl in all of my ap's..1 in apush & psych</p>
<p>the only hispanics i've seen are in spanish lang & 1 in calc bc</p>
<p>the majority at my school who take aps are asians & whites</p>
<p>my school: 99% asian
AP: 100% asian
IB: 100% asian</p>
<p>go asians!</p>
<p>My school: </p>
<br>
<p>50% Black and Hispanic 1-2% Asian (I'm one of them) The rest are Caucasian.</p>
<br>
<p>In my Spanish Lang AP there were 8 people, 5 of whom were Hispanic.
In my Latin Lit, 7/8 were Caucasian.</p>
<p>Our Honors English class had a discussion about uneven racial distribution in higher-level classes. My teacher says that it's because Caucasians who should be in lower levels won't take those classes because they don't want to be with the Black and Hispanic students, and Black/Hispanic students who should be in higher levels won't take those classes because they don't want to be with the Caucasian students. Needless to say, most of our class disagreed with him and we gave him the silent treatment until he stopped making generalizations and changed the subject.</p>
<p>This policy really doesn't make any sense to me. Only 30% have to pass? They're practically begging schools to cheat the system! Shuffle underqualified black and Hispanic students into AP courses to meet the 30% quota -- even if they all fail, at least enough of the other students who are actually supposed to be in these classes will pass to bring the overall pass rate over 30%. (That's assuming the school is competent. On most AP exams, getting a 40% will earn you a 3. So why are schools being rewarded for sending 70% of their students into a test knowing less than 40% of the material?)</p>
<p>The reason there are so few black and Hispanic students in AP classes is not that theeir schools aren't encouraging them to take AP classes. It is a much deeper social problem that extends beyond the reach of education policymakers. Black and Hispanic students tend to be lower on the socioeconomic ladder, and they cannot afford to focus on academics -- not to mention that they often grow up in bad neighborhoods where they are subject to bad influences. Thus, they are already at a disadvantage in primary school, and the gap only widens as they get older -- some need to get jobs to supplement the family income. When you're working 8 hours a day after 6 hours of school, is it any surprise that you're not concerned about "challenging yourself academically" and taking AP classes? And yet, the lawmakers' proposed solution is to force these people to take AP classes. Brilliant.</p>