The Black MCPS Advanced Placement Team is Getting Lapped

If the Advanced Placement exams were an Olympic footrace with four major Montgomery County Public Schools teams—a white team, an Asian team, a Latin team, and a black team—the black MCPS team would come in dead last. I’m sick of seeing the black team bringing up the rear.

On Feb. 8, MCPS released its AP results for the Class of 2011. Click here to review results.

MCPS wants the public to remember two basic AP exam performance takeaways:

• Half of MCPS graduates score college-ready on AP exams.
• MCPS graduates outperform their peers elsewhere in nation.

According to the College Board, an AP exam score of a 3, 4, or 5 (on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the lowest score and 5 being the highest score) is acceptable as college-ready. However, to be totally fair to the College Board, these are the descriptions they use to label the five scores:

5  =  Extremely well qualified.
4  =  Well qualified.
3  =  Qualified.
2  =  Possibly qualified.
1  =  No recommendation.

The College Board goes on to clarify that qualified exam scores of 3, 4 or 5 means a student receives college credit or advanced placement, a score of 2 leads to the possibility of credit or advanced placement, and a score of 1 leads to no recommendation to receive credit or advanced placement. Click here to read more about scoring.

But the above College Board exam score recommendations are only guidelines. In reality, there is no law that says if you score a 3 on your AP English Language Composition exam you automatically qualify for college English credit or advanced placement. In fact, at the University of Maryland, College Park, students must score a 4 or 5 on their AP English Language Composition exam to satisfy the CORE Fundamental Studies Freshmen Writing requirement (English 101).

Click here to view the full list of what is and is not possible with various AP exam scores at UMCP.

On the other hand, a score of 3 on an AP English Language Composition exam qualifies for credit and advanced placement at Montgomery College. However, if you want credit or advanced placement at MC for calculus or psychology, students must show proof of scores of 4 or higher on these AP exams.

Click here to view the full list of what is and is not possible with various AP exam scores at MC.

So, scoring a 3 on an AP exam does not automatically mean a students is college-ready at every U.S. college campus. There are variations—some being extreme (e.g., most top-tier highly competitive colleges only recognize AP scores of 5). But beyond the variations, one thing is extremely clear: Scores of 1s and 2s net you nothing in terms of credits or advanced placement.

Now, when MCPS says “half” its graduates score college-ready on AP exams, this is a true statement in the aggregate only. When you drill down and look, for example, at black MCPS graduates only, a completely different picture emerges. In fact, of the 25 MCPS high schools, only one—Walt Whitman High School—managed in 2011 to have half (52.9 percent) of its black graduates scoring college-ready.

The vast majority of MCPS high schools—17 out of 24, or 71 percent—have 25 percent or fewer of their blacks scoring college-ready on at least one AP exam. So, in a typical MCPS high school, most black graduates scored 1s and 2s on their AP exams. At the end of this blog post is the complete list of county high schools, showing the percentage of black graduates scoring 3 or higher and the percentage of black graduates scoring 1s and 2s.

It also is true that MCPS black graduates outperform their black peers elsewhere. That is a good thing. But that reality has nothing to do with the AP performance gap that remains a significant problem within MCPS. So while 23.2 percent of our black seniors scored 3 or higher on their AP exams, in contrast, nearly two-thirds of white (65.4 percent) and Asian (67 percent) seniors scored 3 or higher on their exams.

If the AP exams were an Olympic footrace with four major teams—a white team, an Asian team, a Latin team, and a black team—the black team would come in dead last.  The black team is so far behind it probably gets lapped by the white and Asian teams.

There was a time when MCPS could barely say it had a black team in the AP footrace. Black AP participation rates were horribly low. That is no longer the situation, and frankly, MCPS gets credit for jacking up AP participation rates for all students. But MCPS should not just be proud of getting the black team in the race. Nor should MCPS try to dupe the public into thinking that because the black MCPS team outruns black AP teams from Harlem, Prince George's County and Atlanta that the AP performance gap within our county has closed.  It has not closed and that must change. 

School

% blacks scoring 3s or higher

% blacks scoring 1s and 2s

All blacks:

23.2

76.8

Rockville

11.4

88.6

Watkins Mill

12.5

87.5

Wheaton

14.8

85.2

Clarksburg

15.9

84.1

Quince Orchard

16.9

83.1

Northwood

17.4

82.6

Northwest

17.6

82.4

Gaithersburg

18.5

81.5

Kennedy

19.6

80.4

Magruder

19.7

80.3

Blake

21.7

78.3

Springbrook

21.9

78.1

Seneca Valley

22.0

78.0

Sherwood

24.4

75.6

Blair

24.8

75.2

Einstein

25.0

75.0

Paint Branch

25.2

74.8

Bethesda-CC

32.4

67.6

Damascus

33.3

66.7

Walter Johnson

34.5

65.5

Richard Montgomery

38.8

61.2

Churchill

39.3

60.7

Wootton

41.4

58.6

Whitman

52.9

47.1

Poolesville

Too few black students

Too few black students

Source: Montgomery County Public Schools.