A headline in the Dallas News proclaims with apparent disapproval:
Inequities found in area Advanced Placement course choices
The gist of the story is that high school students in high income school districts are offered a greater selection of Advanced Placement college courses than students in less advantaged neighborhoods.
Surprise, surprise!
How is that different from any other aspect of life in the United States? Parents with large incomes are able to provide their children with more advantages than parents who earn barely enough to cover basic necessities.
Schools reflect the communities they are in.
According to the article, only 19% of the students in the schools with the most AP courses are low-income, compared to 62% low-income students in the schools with the fewest AP courses.
The article also quotes these facts:
Fifty-four per cent of the Texas students who took AP exams in 2009 failed them.
At a predominantly low-income school, 89% of the students who took AP exams failed them.
Getting worked up about the lack of advanced placement courses in low-income schools is ridiculous. It’s like complaining that a school for paraplegics doesn’t offer courses in ballroom dancing.
Instead of attempting to turn every U.S. high school into a college prep tank, reformers would do well to look at the actual needs of the school population.
AP courses are not a high priority in most U. S. schools. Basic literacy is.
Although all the political hype is about sending students to college, how many U.S. high school graduates actually go to college?
Statistics vary, according to the agenda of whoever is providing them, but from what I can determine, only about 33% of high school graduates go to college.
It would be nice to assume that those who go to college represent the most able of the graduates. However, according to various reports, 60-70% of college freshmen require remediation in basic subjects.
If the “cream of the crop” is so lacking in basic educational attainments, what must that say about the nearly 70% who don’t go to college?
I say stop worrying about providing a huge menu of AP courses until more students are brought to a level of literacy that will enable them to benefit from them.
And stop pretending that college should be the ultimate goal of every high school graduate.
Make high school graduation in itself mean something. Stop wasting time in the early grades.
In eight years of formal instruction, a young person is capable of mastering such basic skills as standard English and basic arithmetic. By the end of the tenth grade a student of average or better intelligence can be ready to benefit from what are called AP courses.
The last two years of high school should be a period of intense academic study for the students who are suited to it, and a period of practical training for those who want to pursue a non-academic course of learning.
A college-bound high school graduate should know how to speak, think, and write at a college level of literacy. Non-college-bound high school graduates should be able to enter a chosen occupation having mastered its basic skills. They should also be able to read well enough to continue their education on their own.