Advanced Placement Tests Where Black Students Perform Well

Nationwide only 26.7 percent of all African Americans who took an Advanced Placement test in 2006 received a grade of 3 or above. A grade of 3, 4, or 5 on these tests allows a student to become eligible for college credit.

There was a wide discrepancy in the success ratio for black students on the different subject tests in the Advanced Placement program.

It is encouraging to report that the AP course in which blacks achieved the most success was one of the two calculus tests. Nearly 58 percent of all black students who took this AP exam received a score of 3 or above. This is more than double the success ratio for blacks on AP tests generally. It must be noted that nearly 81 percent of all white students who took this AP calculus examination received a qualifying grade.

Blacks also fared well on the studio art design tests. More than half of all black students who took these two tests received a qualifying grade of 3 or above. More than half of all black test takers received qualifying grades on the electrical and magnetic physics test and one of the two computer science examinations. Blacks also fared well on the Spanish literature and French language tests.

On the studio art drawing AP test, 46.9 percent of black students received a qualifying grade. This is the only AP course where there is no examination. Students are graded by an assessment of their drawing portfolios. More than 69 percent of white students received a grade of 3 or above on their drawing portfolio.

At the other end of the spectrum, only 389 of the 2,097 black students, or 18.6 percent, who took the AP environmental science test received a qualifying score of 3 or above. Less than 25 percent of all black students succeeded in qualifying for college credit in the subject areas of macroeconomics, physics, English language, statistics, U.S. history, comparative politics, English literature, and the more widely taken of the two computer science tests.

Copyright © 2007. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.