Posted on 01/16/2017 12:21:38 PM PST by EinNYC
City Education Department officials have launched a $1.6 million plan to bring more black and Hispanic students into Advanced Placement courses, the Daily News has learned.
The city’s new Lead Higher program aims to bring 1,400 of these students at two dozen public schools into AP classes that are often dominated by white and Asian students.
Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña said the program will help shrink the achievement gap faced by black and Hispanic students, who enroll in AP classes and pass AP exams at lower rates than their white and Asian peers.
“This is an exciting initiative that reflects our commitment to diversity and inclusion in our classrooms,” Fariña said.
“Equity and excellence means ensuring all students have access to rigorous AP courses, and are enrolled in those courses and reaping the benefits.”
Students who pass AP exams in a variety of subjects ranging from calculus to U.S. history may receive college credits or special consideration in college admissions.
But the valuable classes have been mostly available at schools that enroll more white and Asian students compared with those that enroll more black and Hispanic kids.
A 2013 report found that white and Asian students attended city high schools with twice as many AP courses, compared with schools attended by black and Hispanic students.
Mayor de Blasio outlined a plan to address the inequality in 2015, dubbed “AP for All,” that brought new AP classes to 63 high schools in 2016.
Under de Blasio’s plan, 75% of students will have access to at least five AP classes by fall 2018. By fall 2021, students at all high schools will have access to at least five AP classes.
The Lead Higher program builds on that effort by adding tutoring, teacher training and more AP seats targeted at black and Hispanic students at high schools across the five boroughs starting in September.
Another seven schools will roll out added AP resources under Lead Higher in 2019. If the program yields strong results it may be expanded further.
The city is splitting the cost of the effort and rolling out the program in partnership with a Seattle-based nonprofit called Equal Opportunity Schools.
The challenges faced by black and Hispanic students who wish to earn AP credits are severe.
Just 7,386 black and Hispanic students passed AP exams in the 2014-15 school year, compared to 14,323 white and Asian students. Black and Hispanic kids account for roughly 70% of all city school students.
Melanie Katz, principal of Franklin D. Roosevelt High School in Brooklyn, said she hopes the Lead Higher program will help her add another 60 black and Hispanic students to AP classes in 2017.
“We’re reaching out to students, their families and the community to let them know the classes are out there,” Katz said. “The message is, ‘you can do it and we will help you through it.’ ”
Well, just like a rising tide raises all boats, a falling tide lowers all boats.
Charter Schools. Oh wait, the left is against that.
The district eventually lost accreditation. KC public schools within the district are a lost cause and a huge waste of money.
It costs a million six to set quotas?
Lord, what a racket.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him think.
First - manufacture a problem, or cherry pick some existing issue. Next - spend money, distributed through your cronies, to “solve” the problem.
Its the leftist way.
Some of these kids, I’m telling you, you cannot get the bar low enough. You can lay it on the ground and try rolling them over it, but that’s about it.
And how. I have known more than one AP teacher who has left because of this forcemeat approach. It does not work, but it looks good to the gullible.
Good input. Thank you for posting about your experience.
Two fallacies achieved critical mass in the 1960's. First was the "everybody should go to college" nonsense. This led to the dumbing down of academic standards in many high schools so that poorer students could take nominally "academic prep" courses, and make grades. Of course, they graduated with a credential that wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. Colleges responded, for the most part, by reducing their own academic rigor to accommodate the new flood of pseudo-scholars drifting over from the high schools. Then racial angst got into the mix and magnified these tendencies.
This might have been manageable if traditional ability grouping had been preserved, but this became difficult in the brave new world of racial hysteria. In many cities, including mine, it was verboten for advanced classes to be too white or Asian, and for the remedial track to be overwhelmingly ... well, you know. The race police with their pigment meters took tracking off the table.
How then to sneak academic rigor back into the curriculum at the typical, non-elite high school? Gifted and talented programs were an earlier attempt. The problem there is simply the name. All parents want their kids to be gifted and talented, and the race police were on the case. Then AP and IB programs began to be popularized. The key for these approaches is that they opened recruitment with the pitch that "this is an opportunity to earn college credit by doing a whole lot more work!!!!" This pitch naturally led to voluntary adverse selection by the usual suspects, and voila! ... de facto tracking has sneaked back into the system.
As far as I know, there is no way NYC can undercut the grading rubric on AP exams. It's perfectly fine for NYC to try to increase minority enrollment, and NYC can teach these courses with as much rigor as the traffic will bear. But at the end of the day, the kids are going to have to sit for a national AP exam, scored on national standards, with colorblind judging on anything not reducible to an open and shut, right or wrong answer. (AP art, for example, where kids submit a portfolio.) NYC and the DeBlasio gang can try to treat AP enrollment as a racial entitlement, but they are no more able to influence exam scoring than they are able to control SAT or ACT scores.
Let’s also take small kids and put them in the NFL. What could go wrong when you put someone in that sort of position?
Take it you didn’t do so hot on you APs?
Sounds like Hartford, CT and the aftermath of Schef v O’Neil.
I've taught them. The advantage is that they offer college credit. The disadvantage is they control the curriculum. A gifted student can get college credit through online college courses or in many school districts options going to a local college and getting both college and HS credit.
Save the money. Lower the standards for AP courses. Teaching to the lowest common denominator seems to have graduated more of them for years.
Advanced Placement consists of collegiate-level classes in the sciences, math, and social sciences for high school students to take. While I disagree with affirmative action and agree there is an ambition gap for many students, I support AP classes because they do help more ambitious students out in areas that have a low budget for their wider curriculum. I would not have gotten my two-year degree nearly as quickly if I hadn’t slaved away at those classes in high school and earned AP credits in the core curriculum.
You would need a sea change in the culture. Not even sure money alone could address that.
Thank you for the explanation.
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