Class Disparity

Advanced placement classes, designed to give a boost to high-achieving students, are not equally distributed throughout Ventura County schools. This, educators say, is placing hundreds of high school seniors at a disadvantage when they compete for admission to the nation’s most prestigious colleges and universities.

And too often, critics say, those who suffer are poor and minority students, whose schools don’t have enough instructors qualified to teach an advanced curriculum or enough students interested in signing up for the classes.

Simi Valley High School offers 14 AP classes, the most in the county, while Hueneme High School in Port Hueneme offers six. Moorpark High also offers 14, contrasted with Channel Islands’ seven.

“It’s not fair,” Ventura County schools Supt. Chuck Weis said. “It seems to me in this day and age that we should be able to get AP courses to the students who need and want them. We need to get more creative in making AP courses available.”

Developed by the College Board, a national nonprofit association, in 1955 to meet the needs of bright and motivated students, AP classes have long been recognized as a way to give high school juniors and seniors an advantage in the competition for admission to top schools, as well as a means of accumulating college credits.

Teachers use a college-level curriculum, and spend the year preparing students to take advanced placement exams. Students who pass enough tests can start college at a sophomore or even junior level, saving them--and their parents--thousands of dollars in tuition.

But despite the obvious benefits of advanced placement classes, some Ventura County high schools only offer a few classes. Rio Mesa High School in Oxnard offers six AP courses: studio art, Spanish, French, English, statistics and chemistry. Fillmore High School offers seven.

Class-Action Suit Filed by ACLU

Meanwhile, Westlake High School students have their choice of 14 AP courses, ranging from U.S. history to environmental science to an art portfolio.

Nationally, the typical high school offers six or seven of the 32 AP classes developed by the College Board, which administers the AP program, contrasted with nine in Ventura County. Statewide, 743 high schools offered the courses last year.

But 136 of those offered only between one and three AP courses, and 129 California public high schools did not offer any AP classes, according to the state Department of Education.

This summer, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a class-action lawsuit, contending black and Latino high school students are denied equal access to California’s prestigious public universities because their high schools don’t offer as many AP courses as schools with a majority of white students.

The suit, on behalf of four Inglewood High School students, says the state Department of Education and the Inglewood Unified School District violated students’ right to a free and equal education.

Trevor Packer of the College Board acknowledged that California schools need to do more to make the courses available to minority and poor students. Schools do not have to pay any registration fee to the College Board to offer an AP class. And while students have to pay about $75 to take an exam, most districts offer fee waivers.

“Since California colleges are so geared to accepting students who have passed AP tests, it’s not fair if all students don’t have the opportunity to take those courses,” Packer said.

Administrators at some Ventura County schools say they can’t find enough teachers to take on the extra burden of teaching college-level courses.

“We’re always trying to offer more AP courses,” Rio Mesa Principal Barry Barowitz said. “The more we offer, the better it is for kids. But it’s a rigorous curriculum and sometimes we don’t have enough qualified staff willing to do it.”

Other school officials say honors classes are just as good as advanced courses. In both AP and honors courses, students receive weighted grades, in which an A is worth five points rather than four. Honors students are also allowed to take AP tests after honors courses.

Few Choices Offered at Some Schools

Andrew Ho, 18, said he enrolled in the only AP class available to Rio Mesa juniors--chemistry.

“I would like more AP classes, because they go more in depth, give you more work and prepare you for the tests,” Andrew said. Students at schools that offer more AP classes, Andrew said, have a “better chance of getting into college and getting college credit.”

Next year Ho plans to enroll in three or four more AP classes--as many as he can, he says.

Teachers at Hueneme High School say they try to recruit students to sign up for the advanced courses, but are often unsuccessful. They need at least 18 students per AP class.

“It’s just really tough in this area to get kids to accept that challenge,” Hueneme Assistant Principal Sylvia Jackson said. “Many kids just don’t see themselves going on to a four-year college. Or it’s too hard, in their minds. Or they may be coming from a home environment where there is not a lot of encouragement to accept that challenge.”

Moorpark High School senior Omar Abed, 17, didn’t need any encouragement. Last year Omar took two AP classes--American history and physics--and passed both tests. This year he is enrolled in five--calculus, English, art history, calculus-based physics and statistics.

Omar is applying to Stanford, MIT, Cornell and UC-Berkeley. Although he has a 4.2 grade point average, Omar is worried.

“It’s like you’re going into an applicant pool where everyone has a four-point something GPA and a 1400 on the SAT [Scholastic Assessment Test]” Omar said. “So it’s harder to get in. And you have to make sure you take the hardest classes. It’s almost like the competitive colleges expect you to take some AP classes.”

Educators say he’s not far off the mark. The majority of students applying to college have good grades and high SAT scores, so colleges are looking for extra classes or activities that set students apart. AP classes do that. They also give the GPA a boost.

“It’s just so competitive to get into college now, so anything can help,” said Michelle Bergman, who teaches an AP statistics class at Moorpark High School. “And AP classes really prepare students for a college atmosphere because they are fast-paced and in-depth.”

Solution Suggested for Poorer Schools

Studies have also shown that students who complete AP courses do better when they get to college. The average student achieves at least a B average as a college freshman. And these students are much more likely to finish college and are twice as likely to proceed to graduate school, the College Board has found.

During his art history AP class Monday, Omar Abed reviewed material with two classmates.

“Georgia O’Keefe--isn’t she neoclassicism?” he asked them. Two girls responded with a laugh. “No--she’s neo-realism,” they said in unison.

Omar’s teacher, Kathi Kennedy, doesn’t use a textbook. Instead, she lectures, shows slides and assigns weekly essays--much like a college course. One solution to the problems facing poorer schools, according to Weis, the schools chief, is to break down district boundaries. For instance, a student at Fillmore High School--where there are eight AP courses--could take a class at Moorpark High if it’s not offered at his home school.

Weis acknowledged the cost of transporting a handful of students to another school 15 miles away could be prohibitive, but he said something must be done to equalize the educational opportunities in the county. He also suggested forming partnerships with local community colleges, or offering advanced placement courses online.

“Our whole idea today is that there should be access and equity--for kids with special needs and for kids who are gifted,” he said. “We need to rethink it, so there are more options for students.”