Diversity in AP courses

Test Preparation AP Test Preparation
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<p>I think this is a wonderful policy. In my many AP classes in high school, I only ever saw... 3 black students, probably no hispanics, if I remember correctly. So this is about 3 urms out of enough AP classes to prepare me for 12 AP exams in my ~25% black high school. Everyone on this forum complaining about affirmative action should be happy about this policy, because this is a truly sensible way to at least make a stab at dealing with racial inequality in our society. </p>

<p>I understand why some people have reservations about the plan, but I think it's important to remember that this isn't binding, it's simply a award to create an incentive for schools to try to do this. I'm not even sure if there's any money attached, but it's pretty clearly not something that will force a school to fulfill this goal if they have good reasons not to. This won't be "forcing people to take AP tests," as Conker suggests, merely encouraging some people who might not ordinarily give it much thought to try them.</p>

<p>Yeah, I'm basically responding to conker, because I think (he? she?) has some reasonable, but flawed criticism, so let's address some other stuff in (his? her?) post. There certainly are deeper social problems that education policy can't directly address, but this at least does cut reasonably deep into the issue. Yes, many minority students do have bad influences growing up, and yes, some people do work 8 hours a day to supplement family income, but the latter are a minority, and bad experiences growing up should not disqualify someone from future success. It's tough to overcome a bad early grounding in academics, but it can be done, and it has to start somewhere. And with the way high school curricula are set up today, there are artificial barriers imposed by school administrations beyond just a lack of a strong understanding of basics. I don't mean to imply that schools have racist policies to prevent minorities from succeeding, but rigid tracks of classes do, in my opinion, have a de facto effect of limiting minority and poor white student access to higher educational opportunities. Students in higher performing tracks will have more academic opportunites. That's a necessity in any school system with varying levels of competency among students. The problem is that there's often very limited mobility between these tracks. Once a student is placed in the lower track, the administration often does not make it easy to get out. So who gets placed in the higher tracks? 1: people who were star students early in their lives and place into it, and 2: people who are willing and able to fight a little bit to get into them. 1 will by and large not be people with troubled backgrounds who might, by the time high school has rolled around, have matured, and developed a greater interest in academics. 2 will consist primarily of people who understand why these classes are important (generally, have educated parents), think they can succeed in these classes (generally, have educated parents or smart peers; I think people who could succeed in these classes are often scared away because they're so foreign and people make them out to be incredibly difficult), and, in some cases, have parents who are willing and able to fight against to school administrations to get their kids past arbitrary rules into the classes where they need to be. The realities of the socioeconomic situation of URMs in the U.S. are certainly the primary reason why so few URMs are in advanced classes, but some blame certainly does fall on the way public education is run as well. This policy will help encourage schools somewhat to allow and encourage mobility into these upper tracks, even if interested students may not seem very likely to receive top scores (hence only 30% pass rate required), which will help remove this artificial barrier to minority success in AP classes. It's a small step, but worthwhile. </p>

<p>And besides, even if it doesn't make a huge difference, what harm can it cause? I don't really see much in the way of drawbacks to what is essentially a pat on the back for some succesful schools.</p>

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<p>Interesting points, Rhapsody. Coming from a school with a high black/Hispanic population, I think you definitely have valid points about students feeling too scared of taking AP courses because of how foreign they seem. They simply don't have counselors or teachers that even consider motivating students to take a shot at these courses, and my school has a policy that actually makes it more threatening to take a stab at AP courses: if a student signs up for an AP course, they must sign a contract saying they will under no circumstances request to remove the course from that course from their schedule unless they have exhausted every possible resource, have Fs for the first semester, and have the teacher recommend it. The fact that a student has to hold out a full semester like that really will not be appealing for students who are scared to death of the course to begin with (regardless of whether or not they in reality have anything to fear).</p>

<p>Further harming the case, unfortunately, is peer pressure. I've definitely seen some students breaking out from what their friends who look quite lonely in AP courses. Some would be ostracized if their ability and interest in these courses were known (nobody wants to be a "sell-out"). I escaped it because, quite frankly, I never had any other Hispanic friends to begin with as I was too nerdy :) I can imagine if all my close friends were far from considering AP courses my life might have been different (at age 14 it's very easy to see why students make this bad choice, and after that they're already in the "bad track").</p>

<p>What an awfully tough problem to try to fix.</p>

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<p>How stupid. I thought everyone was equal? Hispanics I can understand, especially if they can't speak good English, but black people? C'mon, asians can do it, so why not you? Let the black community rise to the occasion themselves.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
my classes, too, are all severely unbalanced gender-wise.</p>

<p>there are 3-4 male in each while 7-13 female.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>interesting. at my school, more guys are taking AP classes than girls.</p>

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<p>@ Zinokey: I don't understand your point. Are you suggesting that schools just ignore Hispanics and blacks because they aren't achieving on their own? Isn't it a school's job to do what it can to encourage students to do their best? I don't see the point in having them ignore the situation. It's a shame that these students haven't done their best, but that doesn't mean we just forget about them: it's better for everyone if we have more students putting more effort into their education. It's the reason we have public schools.</p>

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<p>At my school it is:
37% black (i'm one)
28% white
24% hispanic
rest is asian or other</p>

<p>There are almost no hispanics, but surprisingly, I would say almost 1/3 of all blacks in the school take AP classes. Strangely, we also have 1/3 of all asians taking AP classes, so we deviate from the stereotype. English and History classes are filled with girls but Science and Math are made up mostly of boys.</p>

<p>I guess we are not your everyday kind of school.</p>

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<p>lol, out of the 19 kids in my Chemistry class, there is only 1 white kid. The rest are Indian (including myself) and a few Asians.</p>

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<p>^haha, yeah that's pretty much like my AP Calc BC class. We have a grand total 3 white kids, our 30+, and their only seniors. My Physics class is even worse, only one white kid also a senior.</p>

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<p>I don't wanna show off, but currently, I am the smartest or at least hardest working hispanic at my school...sadly, thats not saying much, because out of 10% hispanics that are in my school about .05% actually take 1 or 2 AP classes. It's sad though, and I hate to be stereotyped. :(</p>

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<p>I am one of two Hispanic students on the AP track, yet my school's Hispanic population is ~20 percent. Even worse, there is not a single black person in any of the AP classes, but they make up ~25 percent of the school population. Because of this, I'm always stuck with the job of "speaking out" to my URM peers and such. I see an issue my district really needs to address. It's not that the other URMs are stupid, it's that the way to get into AP classes at my school is so specific and difficult, that the only way to get into them is to either kiss some teacher butt, and/or get your parents to personally advocate for you. And that's after you've achieved the initial prerequisite of a 90+ average in the honors course. There are about 15-20 spots per course, and they ALWAYS go to the SAME people who have the most invasive, annoying helicopter parents ever. And they're all white. It's so frustrating to see them slither their way into AP courses because their parents threaten to cause a ruckus at board meetings, or because they can afford tutors to successfully complete the 97+ average for automatic entrance into an AP course. Most of the URMs at my school, myself included, are economically disadvantaged (and I did a research project on this, so I'm not pulling this out of my rear end), and don't have parents who can sneak us into AP course. </p>

<p>So basically, they need to find a better solution than making me a motivational speaker. It's not going to work until they revise AP entrance requirements so that other URMs don't feel so disillusioned by my school's system of course allocation.</p>

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<p>Also, especially with Chinese and Spanish, a lot of native speakers take the tests. There's very little curve because native speakers are good, so non native speakers are sometimes encouraged not to take the tests, pushing up the passage rate. One of my friends who spoke 100% Chinese at home was actually afraid to try the AP Chinese exam and the Chinese SAT II because she didn't think she'd do well. She left China when she was really little, so maybe not.</p>

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<p>Check out the College Board report on racial parity (2/6/09) just posted by Dave Berry on CC main page. </p>

<p>Nationwide Hispanics have pulled statistically even with Caucasians in proportion of AP takers vs overall proportion in the high school population. Check it out.</p>

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<p>Lets see. I’m the only mexican in AP Bio and AP French. 1 of 4 in AP English and AP Chem.
… our school is 60% mexican… =(</p>