To many students, Advanced Placement (AP) and honors classes are the norm, natural progressions on one’s high school academic track. Amid the advanced and often labor-intensive coursework of these classes, many may fail to notice or consider the racial makeup of their peers.
“It’s a majority of white people [in AP and honors classes],” junior Kristian Eanes said. “ I know that during my first two years at Northwood, in my English I Honors and English II Honors classes, I was the only black person in the entire class. In many of my classes that are honors, I’m one of maybe three [people of color]. Three is a good number; we get happy when there are three of us in there, and four is phenomenal.”
In fact, although 56 percent of Northwood’s population during the 2014-2015 school year was white, the race distribution in this year’s Honors English II classes is 83 percent white. This lack of class diversity can make students of color feel singled out or isolated.
“I find that with every class I have, whether it be AP or honors… I feel a little bit like an outsider, not just because of the racial issue, but also I know that there are certain perspectives I have that others may not share because of background and where they grew up and all that,” senior Malia Hamilton said.
Minority students like Eanes and Hamilton often find it difficult to speak up in classes.
“Right now in American History, we are starting the unit on slavery and African American rights and women’s rights,” Eanes said. “I find myself a lot of times just being quiet…. When you’re already outnumbered, and you’re already on the opposite or ‘wrong’ side, then you just choose not to speak out sometimes.”
Some white students take notice of the racial disparity in their classes.
“When we have discussions, certain voices aren’t being heard, and it’s really important for those voices to be heard,” senior Isabel Bors said. “In AP Lang[uage], we talked about the Black Lives Matter movement, and there were no black people in the class.”
Students of color account for only 16 percent of this year’s AP Statistics classes and 13 percent of this year’s AP Environmental Science classes. However, Puerto Rican-American senior Jacqueline Helgans, like many others, believes that diversity has more of an effect on English and history classes rather than math and science-related courses.
“In a class like [AP] Lit[erature], with the ability to discuss things that are culturally relevant in our time, there is no new perspective to be had, because it’s homogenous, and everyone looks the same,” Helgans said. “We all have fairly similar experiences, not only skin color-wise, but also we grew up in similar financial situations; we’re all coming from a pretty generic place.”
Many teachers notice that diversity causes differences in the atmosphere of their classes.
“I think there is more enthusiasm about learning different topics in my diverse classes,” social studies teacher Melissa Hayden said. “Being a minority, [students of color] have a different perspectives of the world, and they like to learn things some kids might not be able to relate to…. I do notice that when you have a class that’s more diverse, discussion really is more willing to pick up.”
Students and teachers cite many reasons for the lack of minorities in high-level courses. Spanish teacher and Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) coordinator Henry Foust offered his perspective.
“It is such a huge issue, and there is everything from historical events to legalized racism to cultural norms to situational decisions to personality issues that cause all that to happen,” Foust said. “It could just be personal, but I also think there are institutionalized dynamics that discourage people who are fully capable of performing from signing up for those classes…. When they get in there, they start seeing that there’s nobody there like [them], or [they] don’t see anybody succeeding, and therefore they start almost talking themselves out of achievement…. To pretend that there’s not still racism, sexism, all of those kinds of things in a class, is naïve. Putting your finger on identifying it is just difficult.”
Foust continued.
“There is a fear among African Americans that taking a lot of high level classes makes you act white, or kids may be getting ready to have some study group, and the kid from some lower socioeconomic class goes to somebody’s home in Governors Club and thinks, ‘There’s just no way I can compete against this,’” Foust said. “Of course, some kids see this as a challenge, and they decide that they’re going to make it in spite of this.”
Helgans offered a slightly different viewpoint.
“The course that a lot of students of color have been set on for their entire educational career is society kind of telling them that maybe they aren’t well-equipped enough or they aren’t capable of taking those higher courses, even if that’s what they’re interested in,” Helgans said. “It’s almost like a conditioning that they’ve been experiencing for the majority of their upbringing and educational career.”
Eanes blamed the phenomenon on a lack of motivation.
“It’s not even that we don’t have smart African Americans here; I feel like it’s that they don’t push themselves, their parents don’t push them and teachers don’t push them,” Eanes said. “There are a lot of African Americans that can take honors classes here, but they choose not to because they think that they can’t do it.”
Due to the lack of minorities in AP and honors classes, many students of color feel more pressure to succeed.
“I push myself and work so hard just because I want people to see that we can do it just like white people can do it,” Eanes said. “We are just as capable of taking AP classes and honors classes and making good grades just like white people are. I really push myself to do well because of that.”
Many schools turn to programs like AVID and Upward Bound to promote minority involvement in more challenging classes. Both programs aim to address the achievement gap in performance by factors like race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status. According to Foust, AVID classes are typically more diverse than regular honors classes.
“Part of the goal of AVID is to make sure that people who have potential to achieve on a university level have the opportunity to do so,” Foust said. “[Our goal] is to give them opportunities, experiences and support that other demographics have by virtue of birth. People are born into a family that has means, that has education, that has the privilege that society has constructed over the last 200+ years.”
Foust discussed possible solutions to the issue.
“The main thing is exposure, people having exposure to other people who are not like them, and just the experience of interacting with people who are not in the same demographic groups,” Foust said. “That experience, although I think that sometimes it is subliminal, can have a profound influence on how people see the world. If people don’t see females in science classes, they don’t think of females being scientists. And it could be that, 10 or 20 years down the road, all the males in that science class, if they’re doing hiring, there might be some inherent bias when they see a female come in the room…. We know from research and from experience that people’s experiences in all kinds of avenues affect their viewpoints of different types of people.”
Foust believes that one solution may lie even before students enter high school. Only 24 percent of freshmen in this year’s Honors World History classes are students of color.
“There needs to be more attention paid to some of the information and statistics we have about how kids perform on EOGs in middle school and things like that,” Foust said. “One of my ideas is targeting kids who make a certain grade, and those kids should be pulled up and told to take honors. You can’t force kids to do that, but identifying and searching out those people and being proactive about it would be a good thing to do. I don’t know if that’s a realistic strategy, but I know that when I was in high school, I didn’t think that I could be in those classes, but somebody identified me and pushed me toward those classes, and that made a difference in what I thought about doing later on.”
Regardless of the causes of low diversity in high-level classes, Foust says change won’t be easy.
“[Class demographics will not change] unless there are systematic, intentional policies in place to change those things,” Foust said. “I think it’s tough work; I don’t think you can just wave a magic wand and make it happen. No matter what we say or do, people are still free to make their own decisions about whether or not they’re going to take advantage of the opportunities out there. I think we can do a better job of offering the opportunities.”
– By Becca Heilman