The Highs and Lows: Black Scoring Performance on Selected Advanced Placement Tests

Last week JBHE reported on the dismal performance of black students on Advanced Placement examinations. The mean score for black members of the high school class of 2010 was 1.88 on a scale of 1 to 5, with five being the highest score, equivalent to a grade of A.

But there are some AP tests where black students performed much better than the national average. For example, blacks scored 3.14 on the Italian test. But very few blacks nationwide took the test.

On widely taken AP tests, blacks did the best on the physics test of electricity and magnetism, computer science, and one of the two calculus tests.

In contrast, blacks scored poorly on the AP tests for biology, environmental science, statistics, and world history.

Copyright © 2011. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.