The opportunity gap for white and black students in AP classes is shrinking, but it still exists. 12.7% of Americans are black, yet less than 9% of students who take AP exams are black. I love teaching AP history, I believe it offers an excellent educational opportunity to students. However, until black students make up at least 12.7% of test takes, the AP program, and AP teachers are perpetuating the widening of America’s opportunity gap. I had the opportunity to hear Nate Bowling, an expert AP Government teacher speak on this issue. Simply put, “if our classrooms don’t look like our hallways, we are perpetuating racial inequality.” We must stop limiting access to our AP classes and we must explicitly invite students of color to register for AP classes. Nate Bowling also says that if our main focus is on our AP score average, we are perpetuating racial inequity. It is far better for our community to have 100 students exposed to AP rigor and only have a passing rate of 30%, than having a passing rate of 100% for a class size of 30. Once we have invited all students to participate in AP, we must then ensure a safe, welcoming, relevant class for all students.
At East Kentwood, our AP opportunity gap is shrinking. These are the strategies that are working :
STEPS TO SHRINK THE AP OPPORTUNITY GAP
1. Explicitly invite students of color to enroll IN AP COURSEs
2. Remove prerequisites for AP History
3. Inform students early about AP opportunities & benefits
4. Eliminate summer work
5. Create a welcoming environment*
*This means creating a safe place for class discussions that elevates the opinions of students of color and also prioritizing the use of class content that is welcoming to all students: If your course content is based on the latest research of actual historians, your class will be on the right track to pursuing antiracist history.
Also, a test every history teacher should conduct in their classroom: If there are more images of human-traffickers on the wall than there are images of people of color, the classroom is not welcoming.
Our APUSH invitation table at Open House