The College Board decries preparation gap

Black Issues in Higher Education, Sept 17, 1998 by Karin Chenoweth

Washington -- The College Board released the profile of the 1998 college freshmen who took SAT and AP (Advanced Placement) exams, saying that the number of well-prepared students of all ethnicities is increasing -- as well as the number of poorly prepared students.

The stark contrast led Dr. Donald Stewart, head of the College Board, to decry the "widening gap in preparation."

More than one million of today's freshmen took the SAT and they took more than one million AP tests, so the data collected from those students allows an intimate look at the high school preparation of a huge cohort of students. The SAT and AP are used by many of the selective colleges in the country as a way to sort through applications for admissions.

Almost 20 percent more African Americans took the SAT in 1998 than in 1988 -- and the number of Mexican Americans almost doubled during those ten years. But while there was a slight rise in the average math scores for population as a whole, for those two groups.

Although The College Board cautions against using its data as a surrogate for school accountability, the SAT is widely used as a measure of school performance, and average scores are eagerly studied to give some idea of where the nation stands educationally.

The most striking differences the College Board found in average SAT scores was between suburban schools and schools in both urban and rural areas. Suburban schools logged in average scores that were 15 to 20 twenty points above the average, whereas urban and rural schools had average scores that were between 9 and 17 points below the average.

According to College Board data, between 40 and 50 percent of African American and Hispanic Americans who take the SAT are clustered in the urban and rural schools.

This gap is also reflected in the schools that offer AP exams which are now offered in more than 50 percent of all high schools. However, those high schools tend to be either in the suburbs or urban magnet schools, rather than in rural areas or run-of-the-mill urban schools that serve many African American and Hispanic students.

Even so, the number of African American students taking AP exams has more than doubled in the last ten years -- from 10,448 in 1988 to 27,054 in 1998. African Americans now make up 6 percent of all students who take AP exams, although they are only 3 percent of those achieving a grade of 3, 4, or 5 (3 is considered passing).

"Some people may think AP is only available to students of privilege," said Wade Curry, director of the Advanced Placement program. "Not true. AP teachers are raising the hopes and potential of an increasingly diverse population in 55 percent of all high schools. Eighty percent of those schools are public, 12 percent are religiously affiliated, and 8 percent are independent."

Curry said that the fact that the AP program is not available in 46 percent of schools is a "social injustice."

Thirteen states now subsidize AP exam fees for students, and nine other states provide some other kind of support. This is particularly true in the South, where some governors have promoted the AP, which has been seen as a tool of school reform. In addition, federal grants are subsidizing exam fees for low-income students in thirty-two states.

Although they are both administered by The College Board, the SAT and the AP are very different kinds of tests. The SAT, says The College Board, is a measure of abstract reasoning skills that are only loosely tied to the high school curriculum -- although students who take a strong academic curriculum tend to do better than students who do not.

The AP tests, however, are tests of particular curricula that are developed by the AP program and taught by teachers trained to teach the curricula. Tests are administered in such subjects as American history, calculus, physics, and foreign languages.

Some high schools have recently been found to use the SAT -- or its preparatory analog, the PSAT -- as a filter to keep students from taking AP courses.

"We are concerned about this issue," said Howard Everson, vice president for teaching and learning at The College Board.

Everson said that The College Board had recently surveyed tens of thousands of students and found that AP courses benefitted all students, no matter what their PSAT scores were.

Stewart agreed, saying, "We don't want one test to be a barrier for another."

One of the more disturbing findings of The College Board, according to Gretchen Rigol, vice president of guidance, access, and assessment services for The College Board, was that African American and Mexican American students who take the SAT continue to take fewer years of core academic courses than other students. And that gap holds even when the students are from high-income (above $80,000-a-year) households.

"I think that's so dangerous," Rigol said. "In some cases, [the students are] getting good advice. But sometimes they're getting stereotypical advice. What we can do is point out the data and ask why this is."

Number of Students Taking the SAT, by Race/Ethnicity