The gap between the number of students of different races enrolled at Redwood and enrolled in Advanced Placement courses is apparent, a trend that is also visible throughout the Tam District, California, and the nation.
Although College Board reports indicate that the number of students of each race taking AP exams has steadily increased over the past decade, the racial breakdown of students in AP courses remains significantly uneven.
Throughout the district, AP classes contain disproportionately large numbers of white students and strikingly small numbers of Hispanic and black students.
According to the Tam District Department of Educational Services and the California Department of Education, white students represented 78 percent of the district-wide student body in 2011, but accounted for 84 percent of students enrolled in AP classes. Asian students make up 7 percent of the student population, and accounted for 8.5 percent of AP students.
Conversely, while three percent of the district student population is black, only seven black students throughout the district took at least one AP class last year, less than one percent of the entire population. Similarly, Hispanic and Latino students make up 7.3 percent of the general district population, but only 4.2 percent of 2011 AP students.
According to the 2010-2011 District Achievement Report, created by Assistant Superintendent Dr. Michael McDowell, students of racial minorities and of low-socioeconomic status [low-SES] are consistently underrepresented in AP classes.
McDowell said that students of racial minorities and students of low-SES are often one and the same, as minority students are often in the lowest socioeconomic bracket both locally and nationally.
In his 2011 report, McDowell specifically recommended the establishment of more consistent and accurate curricula to promote equal treatment and assessment among all students, as well as improved methods of anticipating and tracking students’ struggles throughout school. These measures could improve the diversity of AP students, he said.
“We have a mission statement at this district that says all students will master core content — all students will reach those levels of excellence,” McDowell said. “Part of it is shedding these beliefs that what happens after school, the color of your skin… is a barrier. We need to understand that race has no effect on your achievement within a school. However, the cultural context of that has an impact and is important for us to understand.”
Lopsided demographics in AP classrooms continue throughout California as well.
Although 51 percent of all California high school students are Hispanic, Hispanics accounted for only 34 percent of seniors who had taken at least one AP test in a California high school in 2010, according to the College Board’s Annual Report to the Nation.
However, in one of the most significant AP demographic trends, the percentage of Hispanic AP students in California has increased more quickly than AP students of other races over the past decade.
The number of Hispanic AP students surpassed the number of white AP students in 2009, after the number of Hispanic high school students increased beyond the number of white students in 2007.
On a state level, Asian students account for the largest gap between population and AP enrollment.
While the California Department of Education reports that 12 percent of high school students in the state are Asian, the proportion of Asian students in AP classes was nearly double that at 23 percent in 2010.
National demographics show similar imbalances to those in California.
The College Board’s 2011 Report to the Nation, which was released last month, admitted that while the organization is working to reduce those gaps, that goal has yet to be achieved.
Regardless, the discrepancies between race population and AP enrollment have incrementally decreased in recent years.
Similar to the Tam District and California, black students are underrepresented most significantly nationwide. While 14.6 percent of high school students in the nation are black, only nine percent of 2010 AP students are black.
The smallest discrepancy is in white students, as 61 percent of the national class of 2010 was white, and 62 percent of 2010 AP test takers throughout the nation were white, according to the College Board.
For Hispanic and Latino students, the 2010 proportions of student population and AP test takers were approximately equal at the national level, at 16.8 percent and 17 percent respectively.
