Bias Suit Targets Schools Without Advanced Classes

Tens of thousands of black and Latino high school students are deprived of equal access to California’s most prestigious public universities because their schools do not offer as many Advanced Placement courses as schools with predominantly white students, according to a class-action lawsuit filed Tuesday.

The American Civil Liberties Union, acting on behalf of four Inglewood High School students, charges that as a result of this disparity blacks and Latinos are being disproportionately rejected from top universities such as UCLA and UC Berkeley.

Although the lawsuit zeros in on Inglewood, it is designed as a test case to force a change in school practices throughout California.

“This is a two-tiered educational system,” ACLU attorney Mark Rosenbaum said. “One is designed to intellectually challenge students and prepare them for college. The other offers least-common-denominator courses that disadvantage its most promising students.”

Students without AP access “have no shot at competing with kids in more affluent white high schools,” Rosenbaum said.

Wade Curry of the College Board, the national nonprofit association that administers the AP program, conceded that “minority-dominant schools are where most of the work has to be done.”

“A lot of people with low expectations of their students think it’s impossible to mount an AP offering. It’s not,” he said. “It just requires some commitment and a few thousand dollars, which doesn’t sound like a lot.”

The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, charges that the state Department of Education and the Inglewood Unified School District have violated students’ right to free and equal education by marginalizing them in the competition for the state’s most desired public universities.

The suit seeks to force schools to provide “an equal and adequate program of AP studies.”

“For sure we need more AP courses,” said Inglewood Acting Supt. Rhuenepte Montle. “We need to begin today to rebuild the public education system . . . so that taking an AP class at Inglewood will be comparable to taking one at Beverly Hills.”

Doug Stone, a spokesman for the state Department of Education, said it was premature to comment, given that education leaders in Sacramento had just received the lawsuit and had yet to read it.

The lawsuit lays some of the blame on the University of California’s admissions policy, which rewards extra grade points for AP and honors courses.

Ward Connerly, the UC regent who led the campaign to ban affirmative action in admissions and government hiring, applauded the ACLU’s lawsuit, saying he “would almost like to personally join it myself.”

“Many of these schools do not offer AP courses because they feel the students wouldn’t take them and succeed academically,” he said. “It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Advanced Placement classes allow students an opportunity to earn college credit; honors classes do not. Both give five points instead of four to students who earn an A.

That can weigh heavily in favor of a student trying to enroll at UCLA, where last year’s applicants had an average high school grade point average of 4.19--a feat achievable only by taking AP and honors classes. Last year’s students had taken an average of 16.8 AP and honors courses, Rosenbaum said.

Yet 129 California public high schools, with 80,000 students, do not offer any AP classes, according to state Education Department data. An additional 333 high schools--which teach 21% of the state’s high school population--offer four or fewer AP classes.

Many of the schools with few or no AP courses, the ACLU points out, serve predominantly black and Latino student.

Inglewood High School, for instance, offers only three AP courses, none of them in science or math, and a dozen honors courses.

Plaintiff Rasheda Daniel, 17, a straight-A student at Inglewood High, wants to take AP courses in science and math.

“I feel cheated,” she said Tuesday. “There are a lot of bright kids at my school who will work hard and succeed, if only they had the AP courses to prove it.”

In contrast to Inglewood High, Beverly Hills High School offers 14 AP courses, including six in science and math. Its student body is 8.8% black and Latino.

Overall, 144 public high schools in California offer more than 15 AP classes, and 65% of their students are white or Asian American.

The ACLU believes that any school can successfully offer AP courses, citing Garfield High School in East Los Angeles as a noteworthy example.

The school enrolled 30 students in its first AP calculus class in 1977. A decade later, charismatic math teacher Jaime Escalante encouraged his academically undistinguished students to “stand and deliver” on the AP calculus test. Only three high schools in the nation had more students take the exam.

The AP program, developed by the College Board in 1955, was created amid growing concerns over the educational needs of high-achieving students.

Over the past four decades, the program has grown exponentially. Today, the average high school offers seven of the 32 AP courses. More than 14,000 high schools offer AP exams, and about 3,000 colleges and universities award advanced standing or course credit for students who score a 3 out of 5 on an AP exam. (Most private universities, such as USC, do not use the test.)

On Tuesday, the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute in Claremont reported that about 10% of the state’s 1.4 million high school students attend schools with “extremely limited AP offerings.” The center, which assisted the ACLU by analyzing data, showed that larger school districts on average offer nearly two more AP classes per school than smaller districts.

Many of the smaller districts are located in low-income rural areas, also putting whites in those schools at a disadvantage when it comes to preparing for university-level work.

The questions about unequal access to Advanced Placement courses has risen with the concern over UC admissions since Californians voted in 1996 to ban affirmative action.

The number of black students admitted to UC Berkeley has dropped by half since the law changed, and the number of Latinos has fallen by 41%. UCLA also has seen precipitous declines in its admission of these minority students.

Earlier this year, eight black, Latino and Filipino American students filed a class-action lawsuit against UC Berkeley, arguing that they were denied admission because, among other things, they didn’t have the same access to AP courses as students in wealthy, suburban schools.

UC Berkeley vigorously defends its admissions policies, saying that--like all UC campuses--it adjusts academic scores to take into account the unequal access to AP and honors courses.

University officials note that students can earn extra grade points--and college credit--by taking equivalent courses at local community colleges. They concede, however, that it’s a burden for high school students to squeeze such courses into their busy schedules, or even get to a community college campus.

The faculty recently recommended that the university cut the extra grade point in half, from a maximum five points for an AP or honors course to 4.5. The UC regents shelved the idea.

It was the University of California’s decision in 1984 to begin rewarding extra grade points that stimulated such demand for Advanced Placement and honors courses.

Jeannie Oakes, associate dean of the graduate school of education and information studies at UCLA, suggested that “enlightened school districts will welcome the pressure to upgrade the quality of their curriculum.”

“The most tragic thing is that many schools do not believe they have kids who are smart enough to take AP classes,” she said. “What’s criminal is that when we give students rigorous academic opportunities and provide them with well-trained teachers, students learn.”

UCLA had already initiated an “outreach partnership” in the wake of the ban on affirmative action to help three high schools--including Inglewood High--enhance their AP offerings.