Poster #81 - Pathways to Success: Trajectories and Timing of Advanced Course Taking for Ethnically Diverse Students

• In Event: 2-110 - Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Section - Education, Schooling

Integrative Statement

Advanced courses (i.e., honors, Advanced Placement), are an increasingly important aspect of American students’ education. Advanced courses are not only considered to have a higher quality teaching and learning environment, but they are also an important component of college admissions. Although research highlights racial and income disparities in advanced course enrollment, little work examines longitudinal progressions through advanced courses over time and how this varies by ethnicity and income.

Using large-scale, longitudinal, cohort-sequential data from an ethnically diverse and predominantly low-income sample from the Miami School Readiness Project (N= 32,885; 57% Latino, 32% Black, 6% White/Other, and .5% Asian; 81% free/reduced lunch), we examined the timing and trajectories of advanced course taking in public middle and high schools. Students were assessed for school readiness in preschool and followed longitudinally, and administrative data were provided by the school district. The district defines their standard advanced course taking pathway as “advanced” to “honors” to “AP”. Math was chosen as the subject due to its progressive nature, and it was required for all students for all grades. The majority of students in this low-income sample (67.91%) enrolled in some sort of advanced course, with fewer enrolled in each later course type “Adv” (61.73%), “honors” (45.03%), and “AP” (21.57%). Five possible trajectories through these courses were defined and frequencies and chi2 analyses were used to assess differences along ethnic and income lines in timing and progression through the courses.

The majority (74%) of students who took an advanced course of some kind in middle/high school took their first one in sixth grade, suggesting that early enrollment in advanced courses is a key piece in taking them at all. Next, we looked at entry to the advanced course trajectory broken down by ethnicity and income level. Black students were significantly less likely than the sample as a whole to take their first advanced course in sixth grade and more likely to start in 7th or 8th grade. The reverse was true for White and Asian students (Figure 1). A similar pattern emerged for advanced course entry by income, such that those in poverty were less likely than the sample as a whole to start advanced math in sixth grade (more likely to enroll for the first time in 7th or 8th grade (Figure 2).

Significant ethnic and income differences were found in the trajectories. Black students were more likely to belong to trajectories that terminated before taking AP courses, while White and Asian students were less likely to be in this trajectory group, and more likely to be members of trajectories that made it all the way to AP. Similar findings emerged for poverty which suggested that those from low-income backgrounds were frequently not progressing as far through the advanced course trajectory as non-low-income peers. There is clearly more work to be done in targeting the racial and income differences in advanced course taking.

Authors

• Courtney Ricciardi, George Mason University
  Presenting Author

• Adam Winsler, George Mason University
  Non-Presenting Author