Rigor restricted: Unequal participation in Advanced Placement 

To remain engaged in advanced study, young Black and Latino men at an urban high school need to feel connected to their teachers and the curriculum.

 

The Advanced Placement (AP) Biology class at Sunrise High School was brimming with teenage energy. The students had made it to the third week of the course, and they were in the lab room for the first time. They chatted excitedly and meandered to seats near their friends. When the class began, every lab stool was taken. Twenty girls and 16 boys had enrolled in the course. About half of those boys were Black and half were Latino. 

The playfulness in the room was quickly stifled by the no-nonsense tone of the teacher. Ms. Tyler, a 40-something Black woman with glasses and long braids pulled into a ponytail, told students to turn in an assignment and immediately reprimanded those who did not have it ready, reminding them that she would not accept late work, half-completed assignments, and wasting time. “You are in an AP Biology class, and we’re not going to have that foolishness,” she said. 

When she saw too many “blank” papers during work time, Mr. Tyler warned her students about the demands to come: “This is just the beginning, the basics,” she told them. “Some of these themes and topics . . . are brutal,” and students who are unable to handle the work may have to leave the class. During the lesson, she pulled a handful of unfocused boys outside the room to talk. After class ended, she told three of those boys — two Black and one Latino — they would have to transfer out of AP.  

Cedric resisted. Cedric was tall and Black with a bright smile and a high flat top tapered neatly along the sides of his head. He offered Ms. Tyler passionate assurances that he was trying hard, gesticulating animatedly while making his case. Cedric’s advocacy was successful at first. He remained in the class through the first semester, but after failing that first semester, he dropped out midway through the second semester. 

AP access and success 

The benefits of rigorous course taking through Advanced Placement courses are well established. Those benefits appear during school, with students in AP classes reporting that these classes are a “relief from high school boredom” and among the only courses where they felt “a genuine challenge” (Foust, Hertberg-Davis, & Callahan, 2008). And they continue beyond school, with research finding that participating in rigorous courses like AP and honors predicts a 5-8.8% increased likelihood of earning a bachelor’s degree (Long, Conger, & Iatarola, 2012).  

However, while AP participation has expanded rapidly across the United States in recent years, marginalized students in general, and boys of color in particular, continue to be underrepresented in those classes. In 2013, for instance, 29.1% of students whose parents did not finish high school took at least one AP class by graduation, compared with 54.4% of those whose parents earned a college degree (Malkus, 2016). Black students account for nearly 15% of all students in U.S. schools, but they take only 6.7% of all AP exams; Latinx students are closer to proportional representation, but this is in large part due to their substantial overrepresentation in AP Spanish (Kolluri, 2018). And among both of these groups, there is a significant gender gap: In 2019, Black girls took 72% more AP exams than Black boys, and Latina girls took 40% more AP tests than Latino boys (College Board, 2019). Given the value of these rigorous learning experiences, it should be a priority for education leaders and policy makers to understand the barriers to participation, and to engage more young men of color in taking AP courses. 

In my research at the urban high school I call Sunrise High, a school whose  student body  was roughly two-thirds Latinx and one-third Black, I observed that young men of color were reluctant to participate in AP courses or discouraged from continuing in them. This happened for two main reasons. First, while these young men appreciated and felt close to their teachers, they also heard (and internalized) negative, deficit-focused messages from those teachers, often about their academic dispositions. Second, and in spite of that criticism, many of these young men believed they were sufficiently prepared for college already. Thus, they assumed AP classes would be a needless waste of time and effort, not to mention that the subject matter would be profoundly disconnected from their lives and interests. Cedric’s story illustrates both of these dynamics.  

The question of connection 

The AP courses at Sunrise High School were largely open to anyone, and many teachers and staff made it their mission to increase participation rates. For example, one counselor, who told me that he did not want to be a “gatekeeper” (i.e., somebody who restricts access to advanced studies), urged students to sign up for AP, telling them that it would make them more prepared for college. Similarly, an assistant principal made it a priority to recommend the classes to students. Yet, while these efforts led to relatively high rates of participation in AP overall, enrollments were lopsided: In most classes, young men were outnumbered by young women nearly 2 to 1. 

The students who opted to take an AP course often cited a connection with the teacher as the main reason for their choice, while those who opted out tended to say they felt no connection to the curriculum. Thus, to understand why participation was so heavily skewed by gender, it’s important to begin by looking at the importance of connections, both to AP teachers and to the course content. 

Young men’s connections to their teachers 

At Sunrise High, the relationships between teachers and students tended to be quite warm. The teaching staff was composed almost entirely of Black and Latinx educators, many hailing from working-class backgrounds, and they spoke to students in a manner that reinforced and honored their racial and cultural identities. Seeing themselves in a parenting role, teachers often cultivated a familial relationship in their classrooms, joking readily with students and passing out food during lunch and in class. For example, the AP U.S. History teacher reflexively referred to all of her students as “sweetie,” and the AP Government teacher regularly hosted students for gatherings at his home. By and large, the students said that they appreciated these teachers’ efforts to care for them in a culturally sustaining fashion. 

Ms. Tyler was no different. When students got off task, she would playfully but firmly redirect them to their work with an exasperated smile. And because, as one counselor explained, young men of color had a good relationship with Ms. Tyler, many of them signed up for her AP Biology class. Indeed, at the outset of the year, Cedric credited Ms. Tyler for his decision to take AP Biology. He had studied with her previously, and he assumed she would make sure he would not fail. “She on you,” he explained, and he believed she trusted him to meet her expectations. “Ms. Tyler, I know she trusts me.”  

Ms. Tyler seemed to trust Cedric’s girlfriend more than him, though. After reluctantly agreeing to let Cedric remain in the class, she explained to me, “He’s got the girlfriend in there, so he should be fine.” While she had supportive interactions with the young men in AP Biology, Ms. Tyler believed, as did many of her colleagues, that male students were uniquely susceptible to social pressures that would keep them from participating fully in advanced programs. She said: 

When you’re going to AP, you’re actually going to class. You’re doing homework? You’re carrying a book? Well, that’s a big deal. That ridicule is too much and they can’t take it. Boys are socially cool and tough and macho, and girls are socialized to do a little bit more. Our girls are much more successful, and for boys it’s just like street credibility is more important. 

Ms. Tyler believed that boys took her class not because they wanted to be there but because it was a “dumping ground.” “Whatever kids had a hole in their schedule, they put them in,” she said.  

Other teachers at the school were similarly pessimistic about young men’s academic dispositions. “They don’t take it serious,” another AP teacher told me. “Some of them have the ability to do it, but they don’t want to do it because they don’t want to seem like they are smart. They’re trying to impress their homies. They would rather be a class clown.” Another doubted their academic confidence, noting, “they look at the AP book, which is a college-style book, and just get defeated.” 

Indeed, many of the young men seemed to see themselves in the same way that their teachers did. Cedric, for example, viewed himself as “goofy” and labeled the mostly female students who took part in advanced classes as “bookworms.” He believed that the differences in academic focus between young men and women at his school were a “natural thing.” Cedric didn’t lack ambition — he wanted to graduate and planned to attend college after high school — but he did not see the academic rigor of AP classes as part of who he was. Even as a student in an AP class, he explained, “I don’t care about all the AP honor stuff. I just want to get my grades, graduate, and enjoy my life.”  

While she had supportive interactions with the young men in AP Biology, Ms. Tyler believed, as did many of her colleagues, that male students were uniquely susceptible to social pressures that would keep them from participating fully in advanced programs.

In the end, Cedric found that he was not enjoying AP Biology. As the year progressed, his relationship with Ms. Tyler deteriorated, and so did his academic performance. Conflicts bubbled up as Cedric resisted the work Ms. Tyler assigned, loudly and repeatedly announcing to her that it was “too much.” Cedric grew increasingly frustrated and was no longer convinced Ms. Tyler was on his side. He believed they did not “see eye-to-eye” and remarked, “I can’t do nothin’ when a teacher got something against me.” The frustration was mutual. After one combative exchange, Ms. Tyler said, “Ooh goodness, I’ll be glad when it’s over. . . can’t happen quick enough.” Summer break, however, was still months away. Although his counselor wanted Cedric to remain in AP, Cedric eventually convinced the counselor to let him leave the class. 

As the experience with Cedric shows, even strong relationships between students and teachers can deteriorate when young men are seen as deficient. Cedric’s quarrels with his teachers are likely not an anomaly: Research has highlighted the  particularly contentious nature of young men’s relationship with school personnel (Ferguson, 2000; López, 2003). Though some have argued that Black and Latinx students are culturally “oppositional” to education (Ogbu & Simons, 1998), more recent scholarship has shown that young men of color’s willingness to engage in schools is affected by the negative beliefs (or deficit frameworks) teachers adopt about these students’ academic potential (Harper, 2015; Musto, 2019). Teachers’ beliefs about students have powerful impacts on student outcomes (Weinstein, 2002), and scholars have emphasized how important it is for teachers to counter deficit frameworks by designing learning experiences and interacting with students, including young men of color, in ways that consider their cultural strengths (Howard, 2013; Yosso, 2005). 

Young men’s connections to the curriculum 

Despite a sharp intellect and a deep commitment to attending college, Cedric resisted the level of academic diligence required from AP Biology, expressing irritation about the irrelevance of the class. “I feel like I don’t even need the knowledge that they’re throwing at me. What do I need that for?” he asked me one afternoon. Teachers, counselors, and administrators argued that the AP content would help Cedric and his classmates in college, but Cedric was already confident in his ability to succeed. “I know I’m gonna get the job done,” he told me about his college future.  

Among Cedric’s male peers at Sunrise, this lack of concern about their preparedness for college was common. For example, a close friend of Cedric’s assured me that college would be “easy,” and another explained that “I have family that is in college and it don’t seem like they doing anything hard to me.” The students knew they would have a lot of work to do, but they assumed their adjustment would be fairly seamless. If, as these young men believed, they were already prepared for college, the extra effort being asked for in AP classes was unnecessary.  

Like other young men , Cedric wondered why the curriculum at Sunrise High School (in both AP and non-AP courses) could not relate more to his life and the issues he cared about. In particular, he worried about the violence in his community and wished his teachers would connect material to this urgent community concern. “I feel like we should talk about it everywhere until it gets solved,” Cedric told me. “Because the more it happens, the more we die.” Other students lamented a lack of a focus on race, racism, and social equality in the curriculum. When young men perceived the curricula as irrelevant to their lives and communities, they disengaged. Indeed, research has confirmed that culturally relevant approaches are important for engaging young men of color in school (Bristol, 2015) and are perhaps more important to academic success for young men than for young women (Dee & Penner, 2017).  

The College Board’s AP program, tirelessly focused on college readiness, has struggled to address concerns of cultural relevance for marginalized groups and has faced some criticism for how it has negotiated questions of curricular representation (Strauss, 2018). Given the large amount of content in AP’s standard curriculum, teachers have scant time to bring in issues of local concern. And when the College Board has attempted to revamp some curricula to elevate marginalized narratives, the revisions have been stalled by fierce protests from groups opposed to any such change (Kamenetz, 2015). Perhaps unsurprisingly, the AP class that speaks most powerfully to the cultural strengths of a marginalized group, AP Spanish Language and Culture, represents a robust pathway to AP for Latinx students. In most AP classes, however, the stories and cultural knowledge of Black and Latinx students are largely invisible, and for young men, this reality has likely discouraged their participation in the program.  

Closing the gender gap 

In recent years, the College Board has made commendable efforts to attract greater numbers of marginalized students to AP. To date, though, while participation rates by young women of color have increased dramatically, the participation of young men of color has grown more slowly. No doubt, Black and Latino boys’ access to and enrollment in AP are shaped by numerous forces, but in my research, I found that young men’s participation in AP classes lagged behind mainly because they felt only a tenuous connection to their teachers and to the AP curriculum. From both, many young men at Sunrise High received the message that AP was not for them. 

Unfortunately, deep inequities in educational attainment by race and social class remain, and much work in AP and beyond has focused on these gaps in academic opportunity. While such a focus is necessary, an additional lens on the way gender intersects with other marginalized identities can illuminate important gaps in AP access that may have gone unnoticed. In Advanced Placement courses, we can see that young men of color are uniquely excluded. For these students, Cedric’s question of  “What do I need that for?” needs a better answer.   

References 

Bristol, T.J. (2015). Teaching boys: Towards a theory of gender-relevant pedagogy. Gender and Education, 27 (1), 53-68. 

College Board. (2019). National summary report for 2019. New York, NY: Author. https://research.collegeboard.org/programs/ap/data/participation/ap-2019 

Dee, T.S. & Penner, E.K. (2017). The causal effects of cultural relevance: Evidence from an ethnic studies curriculum. American Educational Research Journal, 54 (1), 127-166. 

Ferguson, A.A. (2000). Bad boys: Public schools in the making of black masculinity. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. 

Foust, R.C., Hertberg-Davis, H., & Callahan, C.M. (2008). “Having it all” at sleep’s expense: The forced choice of participants in Advanced Placement courses and International Baccalaureate programs. Roeper Review, 30 (2), 121-129. 

Harper, S.R. (2015). Success in these schools? Visual counternarratives of young men of color and urban high schools they attend. Urban Education, 50 (2), 139-169. 

Howard, T.C. (2013). How does it feel to be a problem? Black male students, schools, and learning in enhancing the knowledge base to disrupt deficit frameworks. Review of Research in Education, 37 (1), 54-86. 

Kamenetz, A. (2015, August 15). The new, new framework for AP US History. National Public Radio.  

Kolluri, S. (2018). Advanced Placement: The dual challenge of equal access and effectiveness. Review of Educational Research, 88 (5), 671-711. 

Long, M.C., Conger, D., & Iatarola, P. (2012). Effects of high school course-taking on secondary and postsecondary success. American Educational Research Journal, 49 (2), 285-322. 

López, N. (2003). Hopeful girls, Troubled boys: Race and gender disparity in urban education. New York, NY: Routledge. 

Malkus, N. (2016). AP at scale: Public school students in Advanced Placement, 1990-2013. Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute. 

Musto, M. (2019). Brilliant or bad: The gendered social construction of exceptionalism in early adolescence. American Sociological Review, 84 (3), 369-393. 

Ogbu, J.U. & Simons, H.D. (1998). Voluntary and involuntary minorities: A cultural‐ecological theory of school performance with some implications for education. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 29 (2), 155-188. 

Strauss V. (2018, June 15). AP world history is dropping thousands of years of human events — and critics are furious. The Washington Post.  

Weinstein, R.S. (2002). Reaching higher: The power of expectations in schooling. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 

Yosso, T.J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race, Ethnicity, and Education, 8 (1), 69-91. 

Note: The school, teacher, and student names in this article are pseudonyms.