By Steve Sailer
04/26/2011
From the Boston Globe:A lesson in Advanced mis-Placement
By Junia Yearwood
THE AP English test in May, 2009 marked the end of a tortuous journey. We teachers served breakfast, gave a rousing pep talk, and the students trooped into the English High School auditorium to battle the exam.
"What the hell am I doing in AP?'' Veronica (all students' names have been changed) cried the next day when the class reconvened.
The outburst shattered the stillness of my 12th grade classroom, and all heads turned in Veronica’s direction at the back of the class. Her eyes blazing red and her face taut with anger, she continued to vent her frustration at her forced retention in an assigned Advanced Placement class despite her repeated requests for a transfer. …
Nevertheless, the majority voiced varying degrees of Veronica’s anger. She railed against the injustice of being denied a transfer from the class and her total lack of preparation for the academically rigorous course. She believed that the D for English on her last report card in 11th grade was a clear indication of her ongoing struggle to achieve proficiency in standard English. Haitian Creole was her first language.
For the four years I taught the AP English and composition course at English High, many of my students were victims of the AP mania that had invaded the system. Suddenly, officials had recognized the dearth of faces of color in AP classes and the drive to augment the AP minority population went into high gear.
The College Board and sympathetic philanthropic rescuers rushed in to solve the problem by dangling the carrot of grant money, and the feeding frenzy was on. AP classes sprouted and multiplied across all disciplines. AP scouts scoured students' report cards hunting for qualifying scores; teacher recommendations were solicited for students with the "potential'' to do AP work, and the nominees were summarily conscripted.
Even though students had marked deficiencies in basic reading and writing skills, and little desire to work hard, and even though they made repeated requests for transfers, the dragooning of students into my AP course persisted.
… I often wondered what parents would say if they knew that many of my AP graduates were placed in no-credit, remedial reading and writing courses their freshman year in college, and that, in spite of our school’s "underperforming status,'' as designated by the state Department of Education, our AP enrollment was second only to our city’s prestigious exam schools.
I wonder if an impartial jury would hold me, the teacher, solely responsible for my students' failure to conquer the AP test and side with one of my colleagues who said that, if my students were not performing well in my course and on the test, then I needed to check my classroom practice.
But mostly I worry about Veronica’s rage at being used in an AP numbers game.
Junia Yearwood is a retired Boston Public Schools teacher.I looked into AP trends a couple of years ago in VDARE. Among Asians, 64% scored 3 (out of 5) or higher on 2008 AP tests. Among whites, 62%. Among Hispanics (excluding the Spanish AP test), 35%. Among blacks, 26%. (Hmmmhhmm, Asians > whites > Hispanics > blacks … where have we seen that pattern before?) But Asians take almost three times as many AP tests as whites. Judging from the regional differences in white AP test-taking, I suspect whites could double the number of tests they take and still stay above 50% passing. My general impression is that in Red States where there aren’t many Asians to get the AP ball rolling, more whites should take more AP tests. And Red States haven’t hit complete diminishing returns among non-Asian Minorities yet, either. On the other hand, in Boston, of all places, pretty much everybody who could pass an AP test has heard all about AP by now, so these kind of programs to shove even more NAMS into AP classes and tests are predictably just a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.