Washington Monthly - September/October 2021 - 34

an obvious way to close gaps between higher- and lowerperforming
schools and students.
In 2000, then Secretary of Education Richard Riley
paved the way for an explosion in AP enrollment when
he called on every American high school to offer AP. " Going
backwards to a time when we watered down the curriculum
for poor children is not an option, " he said. " We
do these children a great injustice if we allow the old tyranny
of low expectations to prevail, once again. " In 2002,
Congress added funding for AP expansion in its landmark
education reform legislation, No Child Left Behind, and
has invested billions more since. In fiscal year 2020, the
federal government provided $1.2 billion in grants under
Title IV, which states and districts can use to expand
AP access. Congress also allowed states to use pandemic
relief under the CARES Act to fund exam fees for lowincome
students, and many states provide additional funding
to train AP teachers and cover other related costs.
To date, AP has reached more than 46.5 million high
school students, including 2.6 million in 2020. Course offerings
have likewise expanded, with 38 different classes
now available in subjects ranging from music theory to
While the majority of AP
exams taken by white and
Asian students consistently
receive passing scores (3 or
higher on a scale of 5), the
majority of exams taken
by Black students do not.
U.S. history to calculus. Chester Finn and Andrew Scanlan
of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute report that fees
from AP exams and instructional materials now make up
nearly half of the College Board's revenues (an estimated
$466 million in 2016).
But if education reform was indeed the original driving
force behind AP expansion, that goal has remained elusive.
To be sure, minority participation in AP has improved
over the past 20 years. In 1997, Black students
took 3.8 percent of all exams. As of 2019, that figure is 65
percent larger. The raw number of exams taken by Black
students has also skyrocketed, from under 35,000 per
year to more than 310,000 over the same period.
Nevertheless, more than 20 years after Secretary Riley's
challenge, schools in poorer neighborhoods-which
also often have high minority populations-are still much
less likely to offer AP classes than schools where students
are mostly white and wealthy. In a 2018 report, the U.S.
34 September/October 2021
Government Accountability Office found that roughly 40
percent of " high poverty " high schools (where more than
75 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price
lunch) provided no AP at all. Of the high-poverty schools
that did offer AP courses, 70 percent offered fewer than
10. More than half of affluent, " low poverty " schools, on
the other hand, offered 16 AP classes or more.
In Detroit, Michigan, for example, where 83 percent
of public school students are Black and 86 percent receive
free or reduced-price lunch, 18 of 27 city high schools offered
no AP classes in 2017, according to the most recent
data available from the Department of Education's Office
for Civil Rights. Renaissance High School, which has the
city's most expansive AP curriculum, offered 12 AP courses
in 2017, while Martin Luther King Jr. High School and
Western International High School each offered seven.
Despite its name, the Benjamin Carson High School of
Science and Medicine offered just three AP classes in
2017, and only one in STEM.
The picture is vastly different, however, just a short
drive out into Detroit's suburbs. Affluent Northville High
School, about 11 miles west of the city, offered 31 different
AP classes in 2017 to its 2,400 students, 92 percent of
whom are white or Asian. Half an hour north and northwest,
Bloomfield Hills High School offered 25 AP courses,
while Novi High School offered 20. All three of these high
schools were among the top " feeder " schools to the University
of Michigan's 2019 freshman class, according to
an analysis by the University of Michigan's student newspaper,
The Michigan Daily.
Black students are also consistently under-enrolled
in AP even where the availability of classes is not an issue.
In a December 2020 study, the American Enterprise
Institute found significant racial disparities in AP participation
in the " vast majority " of school districts nationwide;
in some places, differences between Black
and white AP enrollment were as high as 50 percentage
points. One study by the University of Michigan found
that offering more AP classes actually increased Blackwhite
gaps in AP participation by bolstering withinschool
segregation.
While some of these decisions could be genuine assessments
of students' capabilities, bias and stereotyping
likely come into play. Research by the San Diego State
University professor Suneal Kolluri finds that minority
students are often " tracked " away from advanced course
work, including AP. These tracking patterns then " become
mutually reinforcing when African American students
who may be capable of AP work shy away from predominantly
White AP classes that make them uncomfortable, "
Kolluri wrote in 2018.
Seventeen-year-old " CT, " a Black student in Prince
William County, experienced this kind of steering. (CT
is identified by his initials to protect his privacy.) Unlike
Chloe Pressley, CT attends a school that is mostly white,
Washington Monthly - September/October 2021

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