Black people make up 13.2% of the United States population. 42% of black children are educated in very poor schools. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Make it visible to everyone. About 69 percent of public high schools offer Advanced Placement courses or the International Baccalaureate program, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. And 82 percent of schools offer a dual credit program – often a partnership with a local college – that allows students to earn college and high school credits simultaneously. Yet students who take and pass college preparatory courses are disproportionately affluent, white, or Asian. Black and Latino students make up 37 percent of high school students, but only 27 percent of students taking an AP course and 18 percent of students passing AP exams, according to the Department of Education. In the class of 2012, there were 300,000 students whose preliminary SAT test scores indicated they were ready for advanced placement courses, according to the College Board. But in general, white and Asian students were more likely to take AP courses. Sixty percent of Asian students with strong math skills took AP math courses, compared to 30 percent of black students with strong math skills: "You can... look in a class and know if it's a higher level class or a lower level class depending on race. class composition » A New Jersey parent, Walter Fields, describes observing the effect of tracking firsthand with his own African-American daughter, when she was denied entry into an advanced first-grade math class year. She had the college grades and standardized test scores to take the upper-level math course, Fields says, but she did not receive the required recommendation from a teacher to take the course. That didn't change until Fields and his wife asked the principal to allow their daughter to take the higher-level class. Fields is part of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Civil Rights Project at UCLA against the South Orange Maplewood School District, alleging that tracking unfairly holds back African American and Latino students. “Now we're getting to the point – in 2014 – where you can literally walk down a hallway at Columbia High School, look into a classroom and know if it's an upper-level class or a lower level, depending on the racial composition of the class. classroom,” Fields tells Quartz. Fields, editor of the North Star News website, says tracking is a racial problem, not just a class problem: Many middle-class black students, like his own daughter, find themselves stalked in classrooms. lower level. South Orange Maplewood has a problem with racial disparity in its upper grades, its board of education president Beth Daugherty acknowledged in an interview with Quartz. Keep in mind: this is just a sample. Get a personalized paper from our expert now. The diverse neighborhood, within commuting distance of New York City, has a well-educated, upper-middle-class population, including professors, lawyers and journalists, she said, but about a quarter of the high school's students also receive free lunch. and at a reduced price, highlighting its socio-economic diversity. The district had 6,622"..”