Native speakers ace AP language exams

In Maryland, Virginia and D.C., public school students identified as Mexican-American, Puerto Rican or “other Hispanic” passed Advanced Placement Spanish language and literature exams at a rate of nearly 80 percent, compared with less than 60 percent of their white peers and less than 30 percent of black students.

Hispanic students took 35 percent of the states’ more than 5,000 Advanced Placement tests for Spanish language and literature, but only 6 percent of AP tests overall, according to an analysis of data from the College Board. The same students accounted for 44 percent of all Spanish tests passed, but only 5 percent of AP tests overall.

Native speakers are packing college-level Spanish and Chinese language classes and acing their AP tests at rates far higher than their English-speaking peers.

In Maryland, Virginia and D.C., public school students identified as Mexican-American, Puerto Rican or “other Hispanic” passed Advanced Placement Spanish language and literature exams at a rate of nearly 80 percent, compared with less than 60 percent of their white peers and less than 30 percent of black students.

Hispanic students took 35 percent of the states’ more than 5,000 Advanced Placement tests for Spanish language and literature, but only 6 percent of AP tests overall, according to an analysis of data from the College Board. The same students accounted for 44 percent of all Spanish tests passed, but only 5 percent of AP tests overall.

“It’s consistent with the idea of ‘Go take AP Spanish language and get easy AP credits, because it looks good,'” said Kristin Klopfenstein, an education researcher at the University of Texas at Dallas who will publish a book in the spring about the AP program. “Anecdotally, students are told it’s an easy [high score], all of the incentives are there — why not?

“One of my concerns is that these same kids [taking Spanish] are not taking other AP courses,” Klopfenstein said. Instead, she worries, they’re taking a language class they don’t need for the sake of the AP brand, and at the expense of another class that may be more beneficial.

Montgomery and Fairfax counties, the largest school districts in their states, would not release breakdowns of tests taken by racial and ethnic groups. Montgomery’s Hispanic students make up more than half of the Hispanic test-takers in Maryland. Fairfax’s Hispanic students make up about 26 percent in Virginia. Data from Montgomery reveals, however, that about 58 percent of Hispanic students take only one AP test, compared with 48 percent of all students.

Far fewer students take the AP Chinese language test — only about 150 in Maryland and Virginia combined. But of those who do, 88 percent identify as Asian, and their pass rate is nearly 100 percent.

Brenda Willett, whose sons went through the Chinese immersion program at Montgomery’s Potomac Elementary School, said part of the trend can be attributed to inadequate preparation at the elementary and middle school level. By the time her now-college-age son reached his junior year in high school, when students would consider the AP course, only a handful of nonnative speakers had been able to keep up. Asian students — many of whom had been studying the language at home and outside of school since childhood — filled in the vacant seats, Willett said.

“The kids who were ethnically Chinese were favored,” Willett said. “The teacher felt that the immersion program had failed the other students.”

For students, a passing score on the test can be used for college credit at most universities. But students are hardly the only beneficiaries. Major high school ranking systems created in the past decade rely almost exclusively on AP participation rates. Achievement aside, the more students who take the tests, the higher the school and school district rank.

And in the Washington region, a whopping 77 percent of schools ranked in the top 6 percent of schools nationwide, as measured by a recent ranking based on AP and similar test participation.

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