Minorities Not Taking as Many Advanced Classes or Exams

The Boston Globe reports that there has been a dramatic decline in the number of miniority students taking accelerated classes and AP exams.

Prior to 1999, black students filled about half of the seats in the advanced classes. Now, all students are admitted to the classes based only on their score on a national standardized test. School district leaders feared lawsuits if they kept racial quotas for the program; a 1998 federal court ruling banned racial quotas in exam school admissions. Since then, black and Hispanic enrollment at Boston Latin, the most competitive exam school, has declined.

Rachel Skerritt, 27, who is black, went through advanced-work classes in Boston Public Schools, got into Boston Latin, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. Now a published author and an English teacher at Boston Latin, Skerritt sees only a handful of black students in her classes.''If I hadn't been in advanced work I definitely wouldn't have gotten into Latin," she said. ''I feel like my whole educational career was made when I was 7."

So how do you solve the problem of getting more minority students to take advanced courses? Use multiple criteria for pupil selection to these advance classes or offer them to all. My concern is that advanced courses are quality education and everyone should be asking for it; however, many families are not aware of the courses or if they are what type of committment is needed to take such classes. I have always felt that all families need to be aware of the advantages of taking these courses. Families of high economic status already know why these type of classes are important just like Rachel's family did. Knowledge and information is power.