Widespread Racial Disparity Among the States on Advanced Placement Tests

Among the 50 states there are wide discrepancies on how well black high school students are performing on Advancement Place tests. In Hawaii, for example, blacks were 1.9 percent of all members of the 2010 high school graduating class. And blacks were 2.1 percent of all 2010 seniors who successfully passed an AP examination. Black students also fared well in South Dakota, Idaho, and New Mexico.

In contrast, blacks made up 13.9 percent of the 2010 graduating high school class in Pennsylvania. Yet only 2 percent of the students in the class of 2010 who were successful on AP tests were black. Black students also fared poorly on AP tests compared to their percentage of the graduating class in Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri, Rhode Island, and New Jersey.

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