The way the article is written, it glosses over the interest in bringing more black students into the STEM fields and shifts to the subject of a non-STEM AP course that seems designed to be especially appealing to black students. I have no idea if it is more appealing or if it's perceived as pandering or channeling them away from STEM courses.
March 23, 2023
"Fifteen percent of high school students in the U.S. are Black, but they are only 9% of students enrolled in AP courses...."
"In a 2020 survey, 40% of Black students said they were interested in pursuing science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, fields in college, but no more than 2% of Blacks students were enrolled in AP biology, chemistry or physics.... 'Why do we think that white kids are so much further ahead than Black kids when they go to college?' [said Daarel Burnette, a senior editor for the Chronicle of Higher Education]. 'Because they had access to AP courses. Why are their GPAs so much higher when it comes to admissions? Because they had access to AP courses. It’s all interconnected, and it’s just so unfortunate.' Sasha Rabkin, the president of Equal Opportunity Schools, which works with schools to break down barriers to advanced classes, said the disparity is not due to the 'question of lacking talent or genius.' 'It’s really a fundamental question of segregated access, as we think about the barriers that are placed, visible and invisible, in front of young people, particularly Black students as they try to navigate the upper echelons of public education,' Rabkin said."
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The barriers in place are socioeconomic, not racist.
Out public education system has divided students perfectly by socioeconomic status as designed.
The correlation to race lies with black people being more poor than white people.
We need to eliminate the public education system and give poor and black kids the same opportunities as the rich kids.
It Couldn't Possibly BE.. That less black students are AP material, could it?
I mean.. It Couldn't Possibly BE.. Could it?
Hahahahaha. AA courses designed to “ boost” GPAs is the point of this charade. Years ago in the LA Times there was a story of 2 black kids who got into the same UC school. Same GPAs. One failed everything EXCEPT the black studies course which gave him a lifeline to another semester ( it was quoted he actually could not write a complete sentence in an essay). The other did fine.
Grade inflation explodes when it hits the real world.
The key is in two words in the last sentence: 'Public Education'. It doesn't work. Allow school choice. Get parents involved with the kids education instead of leaving it to union employees.
You want better outcomes? Change the input.
But my guess is that they'll make getting into AP courses a lower bar, thereby getting more kids of color into these courses. Then they'll have to dumb down the courses to make sure they pass and get credit so that they can go to a college that does not require SATs to enter and is looking for a Few Good People of Color to admit.
Or, we could change how we educate the kids, teaching them actual needed and useful information at the K-12 levels. It won't happen in the same old schools with the same old Principals and teachers. There has to be competition put into the education system. There has to be school choice.
Why would you worry about Black kids and their percentage in AP classes when way too many get out of grade school and high school unable to read, write, or add?
AP course for African American Studies?
Any program that has "Studies" in its title/name drips with political correctness.
As for the main point of the posting - Blacks have made choices and those choices have consequences. Black culture is simply toxic to the well-being of blacks. Nevertheless, it's what they've chosen.
You don't need AP courses to pursue STEM degrees. You just need competent high school education.
NO, NO, NO! The author should look at education patterns among those cultures that stomp all over White USA academic achievement. The USA isn't that great. Start by looking at European/Ashkenazi Jews, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese students. Review the hours in the classroom, the amount of homework, and the length of their vacation periods.
A STEM student or doctor or hardcore professional career requires an early start and focus for as much as 20 years in school. One must live the lifestyle of a STEM professional to expect the same achievements. This is tautological.
Early education varies by race, as do cultural expectations for achievement by race. These expectations are 1,000 times more relevant than AP courses and access -- any Black, Hispanic, or Native American student who shows potential will be instantly snapped up by existing diversity programs.
AP courses are a nonissue. Different cultural standards and imagining impossible shortcuts to success are huge issues.
Why are Asians so far ahead of Whites in AP Science and STEM? what are we going to do about that? And what about Hispanics? Don't we care about them?
I get so tired of this crap. Its not about "achieving equality" because when Whites are less than equal, than that's OK. And if Jews or Asians are massively overrepresented that's OK too. Its only when whites are doing better on average that we have a problem.
Its just class warfare by other means.
Loury says that black people have something to prove, that they're not all criminals, and that they're as smart as everybody around them. There's no slavery excuse or racism excuse, put up or shut up.
Loury and McWhorter
The AP African American Studies program and others like it is the intellectual gutter into which these students are being steered. It is a way to put "Advance Placement" descriptors on the résumés of more students without actually teaching them anything particular difficult. Were I a parent of a child being steered into this program, I would find it insulting.
You know how you get into and succeed in AP Stem courses? You do it by studying and working hard, but you also do need something beyond a 100 IQ, and you have to have the interest in the subjects. These sorts of courses really aren't for average intelligence and below children. If the children aren't getting into these programs and succeeding, it is all but certain that the explanation is one of two things: (1) there are no such programs in the schools, or (2) the children aren't capable of doing the work- such programs are not remedial in nature or, at least, they were ever supposed to be.
Assuming IQs of 100 vs 86, advanced placement happens where whites are somewhat rare and blacks are extremely rare, owing to how the tail of the bell curve falls (it falls fast).
Loury says the IQ might be true or it might not, we don't know, and wants blacks to stop whining and get working. I say we do know pretty well, with a long history of psychometics behind it.
Doing your best is a good idea though; and develop good character because it's an asset and assets are good to have.
Well the curriculum matters black queer studies doesnt get you anywhere
Whenever there is a disproportion between the percentages of people who possess or enjoy a desirable thing, and their representation in the general population, it can be used as an accusation of discrimination, or more recently, a violation of "equity". We have created the quota-centric dystopia that the George Wallaces and Strom Thurmonds predicted back in the 1960's when they fought against civil rights.
Racial discrimination is wrong, but it can't successfully be fought against with tools that normalize racial discrimination.
Reminds me of a conversation overheard at a trailhead.
"Is that even the right map?"
"No, but it's better than nothing."
Well, when you have cities like Baltimore with predominantly black public school students, and next to none of them are proficient in math, let alone, English; and you have a culture among the students themselves that says doing well is "acting white"; and you have "educators" lowering test-score standards so that more POC are given passing grades; and you have adults like Ibram Kendi telling black kids that the whole thing is rigged against them anyway so what's the point, you're going to get outcomes like this.
It is not opportunity, it's ability. Horrible to have to say it, and I'd be okay with a world where people mostly knew that or at least suspected it but didn't breathe a word of it for kindness' sake. I only mention black crime rates myself when people start trying to compare US crime rates to European ones with an eye to gun control, and only mention black test scores when people are attempting to change the schools for bogus reasons. But the number of people who can say this without consequence is small.
Maybe start with why they are already several years behind, in the average, when they start high school.
It doesn't matter if you have access to AP courses in high school if you can't read in fourth grade yet keep being passed along.
Back in the day (cue harp music) I don't remember anything like AP courses.
A perfect GPA was a 4.0, not the 4.8 nonsense you see these days.
We (a bunch of poor white kids) did just fine in life.
But schools in CA were actually quite good then...
Does the "bulls**t" tag apply here? If a kid isn't cutting it by 4th or 5th grade, then she/he needs remedial attention at that point, not coddling down the road.
In undergrad I went to a school that was 80% Engineering. That provided some friction that prevented people from changing majors. Most people change to psychology but I guess now some change to black studies. For us, there were no other majors to go to. Perhaps engineering management. So if you got out of stem, you had to leave the school. We thought of this as a purification process.
Wow 9 percent is pretty good considering so many students are in AP that don't belong there. I mean it's just another gimme these days.
"Because they had access to AP courses."
Alternative hypothesis: because of differences in ability.
"Why are their GPAs so much higher when it comes to admissions? Because they had access to AP courses."
More difficult courses produce higher GPAs. Logic!
"It’s really a fundamental question of segregated access, as we think about the barriers that are placed, visible and invisible, in front of young people, particularly Black students as they try to navigate the upper echelons of public education"
Cries of "racism" function as both a crutch and an excuse.
I'd love to have some examples of the so-called "barriers".
"40% of Black students said they were interested in pursuing science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, fields in college, but no more than 2% of Blacks students were enrolled in AP biology, chemistry or physics.
Offering AP African American Studies was considered one measure the College Board would take to bridge the gap."
So while the article describes lack of AP biology, chemistry, and physics as a barrier to more black students getting into STEM fields, the proposed solution is to get them into a useless, factually inaccurate, and fully politicized AP African-American studies class. Some ideas are so dumb only an professional educator can believe them (or at least pretend to believe them)
An Advanced Placement course where the answer to every question is the same? What next, AP Home Room?
Approximately 12% of black students have the mental competence to successfully complete an AP course. But, of course, this cannot be discussed.
How did white kids get into AP Chem without first taking White American Studies?
School board members like Blair Mosner Feltham are the reason why black students are underrepresented in STEM classes and AP courses. There are people who say the same things she does and believe the same things she believes on nearly every school board in the country. She complains about white supremacy, but deep down inside she assumes that black kids are inherently inferior to whites and Asians, both in terms of raw intelligence and in terms of self-discipline. So never challenge blacks to do their best (except in music classes and in athletics). Just punish white and Asian children for being willing to stretch themselves academically. Much, much easier.
What percentage of black students are reading at grade level and doing math at grade level? If it's 60% or less, then the AP enrollment gap is explained. Would we want any students ready for AP classes in Biology, English, Government, History, Calculus, Chemistry or Physics to take an AA Studies class instead?
AP courses are meaningless and a joke. 9 of the nations top universities no longer accept AP credits. Brown did a deep dive a few years ago and found the freshmen who took the AP courses high school did not have enough understanding of the subject to pass the actual college course.
When a whole generation (or more) has been told that excellence in school is indicative of "acting white," which is a "bad" thing, and when joining a gang has substituted for the emotional support of a stable, nuclear family, why would anyone expect a different outcome than poorly educated students who cannot achieve even a modicum of success (as generally defined) in our technological and industrial society? And, more importantly, who see no positive motivation in even trying? Their black leadership (other than King - I'm thinking of men like Sharpton and Jackson) has done and said nothing that would encourage young blacks to explore a world beyond race-based victimhood and "white oppression is holding me down."
So, the liberal solution is to lower expectations and academic standards. Oh goody: a whole tranche of society composed of illiterates and professional incompetents. That'll solve our nation's problems, now, won't it?
Re: "acting white": https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2052&context=student_scholarship
"The key is in two words in the last sentence: 'Public Education'. It doesn't work. Allow school choice. Get parents involved with the kids education instead of leaving it to union employees."
School choice is anathema to the teacher unions and the teachers are one of the Democrat Party's most important veto groups. Not going to happen, sadly.
Students of Black (SoB)
The philosophy of diversity denies individual dignity, individual conscience, intrinsic value, normalizes color blocs (e.g. "people of color"), color quotas, and affirmative discrimination.
DIEversity ideology. Pro-Choice ethical religion.
For every Urkel I had as a student I had 10 Snoop Dog wanna-be's. People aspire to what they want.
as for the main point of the posting - Blacks have made choices
========
are they choosing from the same menu?
Oh no! Systemic racism rears its ugly head again!
It can't have anything to do with the poisonous black culture Democrats work so hard to conceal and preserve, can it?
Black culture is simply toxic to the well-being of blacks.
@gspencer, may I offer a modest correction? There is a black culture that features numerous pathologies, from children who act out in school to gang-bangers to children born to unmarried girls who are teenagers themselves (and who expect their mothers, in their early thirties)l to do most of the child-raising). But there are also blacks like my neighbor who get up early in the morning and drive a long distance to work a challenging job, but if he lived any closer to Washington his wonderful children would be steered away from challenging classes and discouraged from having white friendships. People are — or st any rate can be — a lot more than their skin color.
So until EVERY black student is enrolled in and getting passed through AP courses then the race mongers will not be satisified?
15% are black, 9% are enrolled in AP classes. AP classes "Advanced Placement" classes.
These folks would twist a screw into being racist.
For every Urkel I had as a student I had 10 Snoop Dog wanna-be's. People aspire to what they want.
The problem may be a paucity of AP classes available due to budget limits. Public schools in school districts populated entirely or mostly by lower income families and with lower local property values will typically receive less in tax funds, such that even rudimentary necessities may be lacking, much less funding for AP courses.
Taking AP classes is "acting white". The thugs will diss them.
Or perhaps the black family culture of women with baby daddies absent from their children's lives, the idea that studying and working hard to get ahead is racist and/or white supremacy in some terrible stretch of the definition, or that the "hood life" is easier than buckling down to study and gain entrance to AP classes by having solid grades in regular, not remedial, courses might be the problem?
(When my daughter was getting "A"s in her AP classes over a decade ago, I discovered that all the "approved newspapers and magazines" for classroom assignment/discussions were Leftist rags. She rarely voices any political positions out loud, but I fear she has that mindset -- her silence more a result of two parents that are conservative.)
MarcusB. THEOLDMAN
The visible barrier to taking AP biology, chemistry, or physics is first doing well in basic biology, chemistry of physics.
'Why do we think that white kids are so much further ahead than Black kids when they go to college?' [said Daarel Burnette, a senior editor for the Chronicle of Higher Education]. 'Because they had access to AP courses. Why are their GPAs so much higher when it comes to admissions? Because they had access to AP courses. It’s all interconnected, and it’s just so unfortunate.'
This is tangential at best.
The rich white kids had better schools because the public education system is specifically designed to provide rich kids with better schools than poor kids.
There is also the cultural angle and parental support.
"As for the main point of the posting - Blacks have made choices and those choices have consequences. Black culture is simply toxic to the well-being of blacks. Nevertheless, it's what they've chosen."
You betcha! Let 'em eat cake!
"the disparity is not due to the 'question of lacking talent or genius.'"
Oh, if only that were true. It would solve so many problems. But comparing the SAT scores of black high school seniors and white high school seniors is shocking and depressing.
In a survey I saw, asian high school students did 2 hrs homework per night, white students 1 hr and black students essentially none. Lots of black kids come from single mom homes in which no one really encourages study, black kids in AP are "acting white", and there are no books in the home. If you put such kids in AP, they will flunk. If you lower the standards, it is no longer AP.
Seriously, reddit math teachers say they're getting students in AP calculus who can't do multiplication (much less fractions) because EQUITY.
Eight private schools around here in the Washington DC area have gotten rid of AP courses, in the name of equity.
It is in fact a perversion of equity, because they're instead counting on the privilege of their schools' name recognition to carry their students through college admissions.
Of course, because "glossing over" and "shifting discussion" are hallmarks of deception, the number one goal of journ-0-lism today. If their goal was, say, to transmit news and information that is true and useful then they would be shut down by woke progressives worried about "malinformation," which is defined as true reporting that harms Democrat plans for world domination.
There is a not so fine line separating affirmative action and affirmative discrimination. DIEversity (e.g. racism, sexism, class-disordered ideologies) breeds adversity. Lose your Pro-Choice ethical religion.
I suspect the problem is partly due to a lack of teachers who are smart enough. Any moron can become a public school teacher (and a lot of them do), but to be an effective AP teacher in a STEM subject, you really have to know your stuff. And if you're smart enough to be an effective STEM teacher, you can usually make more money doing something else. Even if you want to teach for whatever reasons, you can probably get a job in a nice, safe suburban school with lots of resources. Put simply, if you're capable of teaching an AP STEM course, you have a ton of better options than teaching in a majority African-American inner city school where your car gets broken into on the regular. And most places, any African-American students with the desire and ability in those schools are trapped there without any real options. As with most things, competition (school choice) is the answer.
The solution, obviously, is to eliminate AP courses. Cant have whitey taking advantage of the privilege. Equitize the ignorance.
The whole premise fails to stand up to rational thought. But the premise is race based.
Cui bono? The fog clears, and the answer becomes obvious. Do the right thing. Reason has its limits.
If you can successfully negotiate this process, you may have a future in the managerial professional class in 2023.
What really needs to be examined is the whole basis of AP classes. I am not objecting to the idea of more demanding classes for students capable of advanced work. But why are we pushing so many high school students who are not (yet) capable of college level work to devote an inordinate amount of time to a class that will not in most cases yield them college credit?
Schools consider it prestigious to have more students enrolled in AP classes as proof of their success at teaching. But at most schools I suspect that only a small percentage of the enrolled students actually earn college credit. This means that most of the students struggle through material that they cannot master. In most cases I suspect they master nothing of the subject matter.They would be better off with a course geared towards high school students, which would then prepare them for the college level class in the same subject.
Moreover, it seems like a disproportionate amount of AP classes are geared to learning how to take an AP exam. My daughter spent 9th grade at a private high school, and her Western Civilization course seemed to be designed to prep for later AP classes, with a special focus on writing the special essays used on the AP history class. Mastering material about the history of Western civilization seemed an afterthought.
We returned to homeschooling, and in her senior year I foolishly enrolled her in an online AP Statistics class because she had to have a fourth year of advanced mathematics to maintain eligibility for admission to the elite public university in our state (she had already done a non-AP calculus class as a junior). It was a huge drain on her time, although she did get a 1 on the test, and so did get college credit. But even in this case, much of the homework and tests were designed to prep the students for the format of the AP Statistics exam. It drained all joy of learning statistics from the class.
Similarly, a good friend of my daughter attends the elite public school in our city, although this is not saying much. Still she was encouraged to load up on AP classes. Judging from how my daughter was drained by a single AP class, I cannot believe that many high school students are actually able to give the material in multiple AP classes the attention it deserves.
"Why are their GPAs so much higher when it comes to admissions? Because they had access to AP courses." AP courses are more difficult than regular courses, aren't they? So, you'd expect taking AP courses to make it more difficult to keep your GPA higher. Or is that referring to a college GPA you get from taking AP courses?
I don't know any of this because I have no direct experience with AP courses. I moved to a rural area during high school, and there were no AP courses offered. As near as I can tell, that didn't hinder me from getting an advanced degree in a STEM field. I wonder if there are any studies showing how things shake out between cohorts of kids who did and did not take AP courses. Adjusted for race, of course.
There are two causes of why there are fewer Black kids in AP courses, neither of which the educational bureaucrats, MSM or the political Left are willing to acknowledge or deal with.
First of all there is the IQ gap. In California, in order to qualify for Special Education (extra help for those with learning disabilities) or Gifted education programs you have to take an IQ test. Unless you are Black, and then it is prohibited. Why? Because too many Blacks were being disqualified for special education because there was no discrepancy between their predicted performance based on IQ, and their actual performance in school. The IQ gap is real and it matters.
The second is Black culture. Black culture today is dominated by thug culture. It's Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars. It's the Black murder rate doubling over the last three years. It's the BLM, DEI and CRT replacing Dr. King's legacy.
Who created and uses the term "acting White" to describe successful Black people? Who created the poster in the Smithsonian Museum describing the characteristics of successful people as "Whiteness"? Who is arguing that 2+2=4 is racist? Why are 75% of Black children being raised without a father?
I have young Black men in my U.S. History class. No one has told them about the opportunities they have because of Affirmative Action. They are convinced that the system is working against them instead of for them. When I tell them that colleges and universities are fighting to admit young Black men and give them money and resources to be successful in college, they don't believe me.
The teacher who plans on teaching the AP African Studies course at my school is an openly avowed Marxist and BLM supporter who wants to create more social justice warriors. He is upset with the proposed changes in the course that have been announced.
The war on merit continues apace. Meanwhile China graduates thousands of competent engineers.
How about within schools?
If a school is 10% black, are ~10% of its AP students black? The problem could be lack of AP programs in majority black schools, which would be a very different problem than blacks being tracked into less rigorous curricula than whites in the same school.
Any kid who comes from a stable, two parent family has a leg up in the world. If those parents monitor his homework and encourage study, then that kid has an immeasurable advantage over the other kids. There are lots of Asian kids from poor families in advanced programs, and lots of haute WASPs who aren't.....I don't know that much about the kingdoms of Dahomey, Benin, and Buganda, but the little I know is not inspiring. Ethiopia was never colonized. Mussolini claimed that he invaded that country to outlaw the slavery that was still widely extant there. Western historians write critically of the Ancien Regime in France. What are the chances that an African-American historian would write critically about the privileged, insanely sexist courts of the old African kingdoms? I don't know, but I'm dubious. History and injustice did not begin in Africa with the arrival of the white man although it's pretty to think so.
Bell, a Westlake High School student, needs nearly all of her fingers to count all of the AP courses she has taken since 10th grade.
This sentence made me laugh. All those AP classes and she still needs her fingers to count?
It is kind of unfair that so much of the money wasted on ineducable black people ends up going to unmentionable white people. Maybe we should just hand the $12K directly to the student, instead of using it to pay the salaries of a bunch of Communist groomers.
How does an AP class in Black Studies help with STEM admission? It is not going to help with calculus. You know what does help (since I am a STEM person) - STUDYING. Practicing your math, studying your math and science.
AP classes are based on standardized test scores, grades and teacher reccommendations. You need to get good grades, show profficiency in your subject, and pass a standardized test.
Asians are a minority in this country, yet make up a majority in many scince and engineering fields. How do they do it?
'Why do we think that white kids are so much further ahead than Black kids when they go to college?' [said Daarel Burnette, a senior editor for the Chronicle of Higher Education]. 'Because they had access to AP courses.
Way too simplistic an answer.
I had friends who were Air Force recruiters 15 years ago, they tried to recruit in inner city schools. While they had young, willing applicants the recruiters couldn't meet their quotas because the kids couldn't pass the ASVAB test. They were functionally illiterate.
And I bet the majority of the "2% of Black students" who were enrolled in AP classes attended magnet or racially mixed suburban schools.
Garbage article.
The bait and switch the writer of the article plays with STEM courses and then AP African American studies suggests how little academic merit she thinks that course holds and how little merit she suspects her readers might believe that course holds.
Most High School students that take AP courses start taking them in their Junior or Senior year of High School. There is very little if anything a High school system can do to get a student prepared to eventually take AP courses if that student wasn't already on track to take those courses when they entered high school. There is probably very little a school system can do to prepare an 8th grader or 7th grader to eventually take AP courses in High School if that student wasn't already on track to do so. When you start getting to 6th grade, 5th grade, and earlier there is more room for movement.
Trying to 'create opportunities' by making courses that are significantly less academically rigorous isn't going to prepare these student to succeed in college and then after that. Now, my presumption about the academic rigor may be incorrect, but again, I suspect the writer of the article shares the same presumption. The problem with the ideas that are constantly offered by the Left to address disparities like this, is that they always seem to start at the ultimate or penultimate step and try force their desired outcome there. If you want kids to have a good shot at taking AP courses you need to make sure those kids are capable of reading children's novels by 2nd or 3rd grade.
If you think this sounds too pessimistic take a look at the German school system. In that system parents have to decide their child's academic track between 5th and 7th grade.
Blacks are 15% of enrolled students.
How many actually attend school? That piece of datum may help you understand the problem.
And it's not because of white privilege.
And FJB
There are various white ethnic groups whose proportion in the AP courses is less than their proportion in the general population. They don't even have the consolation of being over represented on glamour teams. But still they make do and muddle on. I have always felt that it would be absurd for someone of my extraordinary sexual magnetism to begrudge the children of other groups for their superior intelligence or athlectism. Black people should strive to emulate my moral grandeur....I think the ideal to strive for is that everyone feels that they have received fair treatment and their (more or less) just deserts in this world. I can understand and to some extent sympathize with the grudges of Black people, but those grudges are themselves a form of bigotry that holds them back.. I don't have a problem with a lot of Asian and Jewish students in the elite schools. I just want them to cure cancer and invent super cool new stuff. That will make my life a whole lot better than equal representation in the AP courses.
"Why are their GPAs so much higher when it comes to admissions? Because they had access to AP courses."
Taking harder courses raises your GPA? Who knew!
We need to eliminate the public education system and give poor and black kids the same opportunities as the rich kids.
No, *we* need to make the same opportunities available to black kids WHO WANT TO DO THE WORK THAT THE OPPORTUNITY REQUIRES. *We* shouldn't 'give'then anything they don't earn.
"talent or genius"
The obvious answer is to do away with any AP courses...
If I recall correctly, the critique of the previous AP African American Studies program was not that it was considered a bad idea, but instead that as it existed is was little more than a CRT race-grievance indoctrination class.
In my opinion, an African American Studies class should be designed and encouraged to be taken by all races, not just blacks. It would be well for all cultures in America to understand more about the history of all blacks in the country (including both those who did and those who did not arrive here as slaves), to learn about the vibrant black communities that arose in the 1900's, to learn that African American cultural history encompasses so much more than hip-hop, drug dealing, single parents and high-falutin academics spouting CRT nonsense. This is valuable for all Americans to understand, and should not be pitched as a class for blacks only.
This is all backwards. AP courses let you skip a few freshman year courses, basically the Intro courses for one subject or another. There is nothing more to AP courses that you wouldn't get through a rigorous high school course. If the schools are unable to offer rigorous courses now, there is nothing that slapping an AP label on the class and teaching towards a test will fix.
If there is some extra funding for teaching AP courses, then go ahead and seize that extra funding. If this is a pitch to try to force schools to offer AP courses when the school doesn't have the wherewithal or fastidiousness among faculty and students to offer rigorous classes, this will end in a disaster. It will be much worse for students to have a bunch of 1 or 2 scores on AP tests, which all colleges will see, than to have never taken the course at all and just learn the subject their freshman year.
Our family found dual-enrollment/college credit classes to be a better deal. You don’t have one test at the end that determines who will accept your score (different colleges have different standards for accepting and giving credit for AP courses). And usually the college credit classes in high school give higher weighted grades. AP classes are good if you are a good test taker……
AP classes are out of a 5 grade point average instead of a standard 4, but when applying to college, most applications require an unweighted GPA so AP classes shouldn't affect college admissions.
I would guess the other stuff is do to stereotypical cultural preferences. What percentage of Asian students are in AP classes compared with their percentage of total students? Hmmm...
It took a while for me to discover that AP stands for "Advanced Placement" - whatever that is - in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics). Is that a course that teaches how to pass the Advanced Placement exams? If so, I would expect such courses to be available online for everybody.
Of course, if colleges are eliminating entrance exams altogether, as some have already done, this is suddenly not newsy.
AP classes are dumb anyway. High schools help their students more by coordinating with community colleges to take classes in which they'll be guaranteed college credit if they pass the class. I got A's in AP Biology class, but didn't get a high enough score on the AP test to get college credit. Nevertheless, I got so bored in my biology class at Marquette that I stopped going. I showed up for the final and still got a B.
Perhaps skin color is not the best measure of people's similarities and differences. Perhaps something less hereditary and more environmental could be a bigger factor in success or failure in academics and employment. My dad used to talk about that, while sending his 6 kids to parochial school instead of public schools, and taking us to church on Sundays, and letting us read any books we wanted as soon as we got our library cards in 4th grade, and making sure we had time to do homework and so on and so on and so on. Mom did the same things, only without working 10 hours a day outside the house. Maybe that had more to do with how their kids did as students and as adults than the color of skin we have.
The excerpted portions seem to say at first that the the kids don't have access to AP courses, as in the classes don't exist at their schools (which was the case in my high school). But then later excerpts say or imply that the classes exist but the kids don't take them, and that's the fault of the usual hierarchies of power and oppression.
I guess that's possible, at one or two removes: the black kids grow up not believing that studying is important or, worse, that studying is actively bad, and/or they register for the classes, do a week and discover they can't hang because their preparation prior to that was lacking (because of the same pervasive prejudice against studying), and they switch to "academic."
Yet the implication is that the white kids in the same schools DO take the AP classes successfully.
I have to join with other comments and point the finger at a "doing good [sic] in school is acting white" problem. The resources are there, and the teachers and white students are not the barriers. Physician, heal thyself!
But I know lots of black moms and grandmothers (and I'm sure fathers too, when present - but the kids with present fathers are probably not, by and large, the ones struggling like this) try to tell their kids that studying and doing well is their ticket out. It's a big ask to get teenagers to listen more to their moms and grandmothers than to their charismatic friends. This is a hard nut to crack.
"Why do we think that white kids are so much further ahead than Black kids when they go to college?' [said Daarel Burnette, a senior editor for the Chronicle of Higher Education]. 'Because they had access to AP courses. Why are their GPAs so much higher when it comes to admissions? Because they had access to AP courses. "
That's a claim that's really easy to support, if it's actually true.
You simple get the stats from schools that have AP courses, and "white", "Asian", and "Black" students.
If "access" is the issue, then the "black" students will be taking AP Math just as much as the "white" and "Asian" students.
It's shocking (as in "I'm shocked, shocked!") that they didn't include this data to prove their hypothesis.
it's almost like even they know their claims are complete garbage
Too many Jews.... NOW (pun intended), People of Yellow (PoY) exceeding diversity quotas, too. What's a progressive liberal to do?
Am I missing something, more than half of the black students enrolled in Highschool are taking AP courses. 9% vs 15%. That is bad?
“Why are their GPAs so much higher when it comes to admissions? Because they had access to AP courses.”
Every high school kid knows that you raise your GPA by taking the dumbest courses available. So an AP course in Black studies seems like a step in the right direction.
How are you going to get them into STEM AP when it will just get them beaten unconscious by fellow students?
"The family of a ninth-grade Shroder High School student says he was beaten unconscious in a school hallway March 15 by fellow students, who were angry that he wouldn’t share the answers to a biology assignment."
https://youtu.be/Exqgqs3xAkQ
And nothing -studies prepares a student for success in college. All the AA, Women, LGBTQ+ -studies majors are not real scholarship or academic except as a way to extract money for indoctrination. Those who started the areas have stated clearly they are not investigators or researchers, but indoctrinators. Yet their fellow faculty lounge members protect them from accountability and let the fraud continue.
Ironic, this. Around here, misbehaving black kids provide the incentive for white kids to get into AP.
(It) sparked a culture war instead
Doesn't everything?
What's the percentage of non-black students that take AP courses? Something tells me that the percentage of Asians in those courses are going to be way higher than their percentage of the population. And white kids, bet their percentage is going to be smaller than their percentage in the population.
Also, if this is a problem, looks like it is already being addressed.
"AP Computer Science Principles (AP CSP) exemplifies how underrepresented students are taking advantage of expanded access and opportunity. In 2016, the AP Program, with significant support from the National Science Foundation, launched AP CSP to address a well-documented shortage of women and people of color studying science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) in high school and college, and in STEM careers. This foundational course was designed to expand the invitation to computer science education and engage traditionally underrepresented students.
Over the last 5 years, AP CSP participation by underrepresented minorities has more than doubled.
Recent research shows that students who take AP CSP in high school are more than 3 times as likely to major in computer science in college, compared to similar students who did not take AP CSP. Differences are similarly large for female, Black, Hispanic, and first-generation college students."
https://reports.collegeboard.org/ap-program-results/2021
How many Black kids really want to learn and how many think studying is just "acting White" and do just the bare minimum? Culture matters. Asian kids and their parents buckle down to study hard, White kids not as dedicated as the Asian kids and parents.
Perhaps the schools should get the Black parents into the classroom to provide discipline and focus to the Black kids so they take schooling seriously. It takes work do well in school, and kids who don't do the work won't have the skills necessary for AP classes.
I was in AP classes years ago (HS class of '73). A lot of those were math classes, algebra and calculus. Those classes allowed me to skip some of the freshman classes and attend sophomore classes as a freshman.
STEM classes require discipline. Kids who'd rather goof off in class are never going to succeed in STEM.
So, Are we SURE? That the problem is: Not enough Black Kids taking AP classes??
Not One Student Was Proficient In Math In 23 Baltimore Schools
An additional 20 schools in the district had no more than two students proficient in math, Project Baltimore reported.
Approximately 7% of third through eighth graders at Baltimore City School met grade level expectations in Math in 2022, according to the Maryland State Department of Education.
As i asked.. Are we SURE that lack of AP classes are the problem?
Of 93% of kids can't meet grade level.. What good are AP levels?
In order to achieve "equity" in AP classes, schools should remove the top 50% of the highest scoring students (regardless of race) and replace them with persons of color from the lowest scoring students. That should just about even everything out. Do we need to assign a "handicapper" to each public school? Or, would that be a part of the D.I.E. department's duties.
Are we allowed to look at the past four millennia of mathematics and engineering and conclude that maybe, maybe, whites, Jews, East Asians, Indians are more likely to be capable of higher end mathematics and science?
What percent of Indians make it into the top tier of high school students running the 100 meter dash? Is there a problem with the result?
How many people from the bottom half of Charles Murphy's Bell curve are in AP courses?
'You betcha! Let 'em eat cake!'
You can lead a student to water...
As the first person in my family to graduate college, I can only say that my parents (plural) made education a priority.
My father is the smartest man I know, but had to work to help support his family growing up, so college was out of the question for him.
And he did very hard work. He always told me to 'Work with your brain, not your back."
Taking harder courses raises your GPA? Who knew!
I went to a HS that used a 1-5 grading system with "1" being the best grade. Honors, Advanced Honors/AP classes were graded normally by the teachers, but for your GPA, they multiplied the grade by .8 (Honors) and .5 (Advanced Honors).
If you received a "1" in the AP class, it was represented as a ".5" for your GPA.
I have no idea if that system continues to this day. You know, equity and all that.
You have to qualify for the AP courses. At least you used to.
If you want to learn math or programming you can simply go to the internet.
A few links found using search phrases such as "I want to learn math how do I start" and "I want to learn computers" on youtube.com.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHw8ReqH968
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-GQ_T_0dgU&t=6s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5gD82nqtnw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mybYCf4Mov4&list=PL4316FC411AD077AA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VDXBHLU8q4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXV3zeQKqGY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGMecZ_aERo
The problem is that in order to take advantage of the resources available, you have to have a basic education first, which, as others have pointed out, many kids are not getting. Anyway, since even the so called elite schools are rapidly becoming degree mills and indoctrination factories college degrees are going to be devalued, and quite soon.
With respect to AP students having a higher GPA, there is some truth to that. In my kids’ high school, there are two GPA’s, one is the straight GPA with a max of 4.0 and a weighted GPA where AP course grades are scaled by a factor of 1.1 let’s say, so a B in an AP class is worth 3.3, rather than 3.0. AP students, like my two older kids, have a straight GPA and a weighted GPA whereas a non-AP students only have a straight GPA.
Once you accept the facts on the ground, your whole perspective changes.
Good luck changing reality.
As for the main point of the posting - Blacks have made choices and those choices have consequences. Black culture is simply toxic to the well-being of blacks. Nevertheless, it's what they've chosen."
You betcha! Let 'em eat cake!
As long as somebody else is paying for, baking and delivering the cake, they're fine with that.
For those unaware:
Normally an A is worth 4 pts when computing your GPA.
An A in an AP course is worth 5 pts
A B is 4. And so on.
So taking more AP courses is necessary to get a higher "college application adjusted" GPA
I have young Black men in my U.S. History class. No one has told them about the opportunities they have because of Affirmative Action. They are convinced that the system is working against them instead of for them. When I tell them that colleges and universities are fighting to admit young Black men and give them money and resources to be successful in college, they don't believe me.
This is related to the fact that most of my black medical students were immigrants.
cfs seems to have been reading Harrison Bergeron. Old Kurt Vonnegut was not always right....but he had a decent batting average.
Then there's leaders like this one...
https://www.rightjournalism.com/video-school-bus-driver-suffers-heart-attack-13-year-old-does-the-unthinkable-and-saves-the-rest-of-the-kids-lives/
Makes it tough for mere mortals everywhere.
gadfly said...
It took a while for me to discover that AP stands for "Advanced Placement" -
Usually, i laugh at gadfly; and think: Jeeze, is he an idiot!!
But times like This, i just feel kinda bad for him.. Must be sad, to be So Out To Lunch
"Why are their GPAs so much higher when it comes to admissions? Because they had access to AP courses."
Many schools weight course grades when it comes to computing Grade Point Averages. For example, an A in a regular course might be worth 4 points, an A in an Honors course worth 4.5 points, and an A in an AP course worth 5 points. So a person who loads up on Honors and AP courses can have a GPA substantially greater than 4.0
"Am I missing something, more than half of the black students enrolled in Highschool are taking AP courses. 9% vs 15%."
Yes- you are missing something.
Acting white, Bell Curves, inferior intelligence - meh = above all the usual go-to's what's needed are parents who value their kids enough to pay attention to schoolwork every day - making it a priority, you know, parents who are on their ass.
Most universities are interested in unweighted GPA's, so that is a non-issue. However, if you are taking lots of AP classes you will also very likely have higher SAT and ACT scores. Correlation, not necessarily causation, of course.
AP classes keeps the bright kids engaged in school. The non-AP classes are BORING to the bright kids and do not challenge them.
I'll be honest, my first reaction was that 9% in AP courses suggests schools are actively pushing Black students into AP courses where possible, given the other gaps in achievement. E.g., in San Francisco:
About 82% of Black students in SFUSD did not meet proficiency standards for English, compared with 46% across the district.
(i.e. 18% were proficient in English)
Math scores showed an even greater disparity among racial and ethnic groups, with just 9% of Black students meeting the math proficiency standard. By comparison, 66% of Asian students and 64% of white students scored proficient in math in the 2021-22 school year.
The overlap wouldn't be 100% (some people proficient in English won't be proficient in math, and vice versa), but let's say we have 18% of Black SFUSD students proficient in math or English. San Francisco is, I suspect, exceptionally bad for Black students, but if those numbers applied across the country, 9% of AP students being Black vs. 15% of the total school population, when ~35% of high school students take at least one AP exam, would be quite remarkable:
9% of 35% = 3.1% of students being Black + taking AP courses
18% of 15% = 2.7% of students being Black + meeting proficiency in at least one category
Again, California has unusually bad public schools, so the real comparison isn't quite as stark. But that is the numerical comparison that ran through my head and made me think "wait a minute!"
Gahrie said:
"I have young Black men in my U.S. History class. No one has told them about the opportunities they have because of Affirmative Action. They are convinced that the system is working against them instead of for them. When I tell them that colleges and universities are fighting to admit young Black men and give them money and resources to be successful in college, they don't believe me."
Well, there's your problem: You think "affirmative action" is meant to help blacks. It manifestly is not. It's meant to do precisely what reparations will put the capper on, which is to stir up racial animosity and hatred.
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