Black people make up 13.2% of the U.S. population. 42% of black children are educated in high-poverty schools. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Make it visible to everyone. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, approximately 69 percent of public high schools offer Advanced Placement courses or the International Baccalaureate program. And 82% of schools offer a dual credit program – often a partnership with a local college – that allows students to earn college and high school credit at the same time. Yet the students who actually take college prep courses and pass them are disproportionately wealthy, white, or Asian. According to the Department of Education, Black and Latino students make up 37% of high school students, but only 27% of students who take an AP course and 18% of students who pass AP exams. According to the College Board, in the class of 2012, there were 300,000 students whose preliminary SAT test scores indicated they were ready for advanced placement courses. But overall, white and Asian students were more likely to take AP courses. 60% of Asian students with strong math skills took AP math, compared to 30% of Black students with strong math skills, “You can… look in a class and know if it's an upper level class or a lower class based on race." class composition” A New Jersey parent, Walter Fields, describes observing the effect of tracking firsthand with his African-American daughter when she was denied entry to an advanced freshman mathematics course. He had the middle school grades and standardized test scores to take the upper-level math course, Fields says, but did not receive the required recommendation from a teacher to take the course. That didn't change until Fields and his wife petitioned the principal to allow their daughter to attend the upper-level class. Fields is part of a complaint that the American Civil Liberties Union and the UCLA Civil Rights Project filed against the South Orange Maplewood School District, arguing that tracking unfairly holds back African-American and Latino students. “Now we get to the point – in 2014 – where you can literally walk down a hallway at Columbia High School, look into a classroom, and know whether it's an upper-level class or a lower-level class based on the racial composition of the class. in the classroom,” Fields tells Quartz. Fields, the editor of the website North Star News, says tracking is a racial issue, not just a class issue: There are many middle-class black students, like his daughter, who find themselves tracked in lower-level classes. South Orange Maplewood has a racial disparity problem in its upper-level classes, its school board president, Beth Daugherty, acknowledged in an interview with Quartz. Please note: this is just an example. Get a customized document from our expert writers now. Get a custom essay The diverse borough, a short drive from New York City, has a well-educated, upper-middle-class population, including professors, lawyers and journalists, he says, but about a quarter of high schoolers also receive free lunch and reduced, underlining its socioeconomic diversity. As of June 2013, the district had 6,622 students, of whom 38 percent were black and 49 percent white. But at all levels they come"..”