Boston Globe teaches us what diversity really means
I love the “Advanced classes see dip in diversity” in the Boston Globe on December 19 (at least that’s the headline in the web edition).
The gist of the story is that the share of black students in the Advanced Placement Programs in the Boston Public Schools has decreased dramatically since the school district ended is racial quota program in 1997. Back then, 48% of AP students were Black, 20% Asian, 18% white, and 14% Hispanic. This year, the numbers are 29% Asian, 26% white, 25% black, and 19% Hispanic.
Let’s put it in a table:
| 1997-98 | 2005-06 | |
| Black | 48% | 25% |
| White | 18% | 26% |
| Asian | 20% | 29% |
| Latino | 14% | 19% |
How that is a “dip in diversity” I have no idea. What it is, is a dramatic reduction of the share of black students, while all other races are significantly better represented than they were 10 years ago.
This suggets that the Globe’s definition of diversity is “black” or “not white.” That’s a bizarre, if unsurprising, definition.
But the Globe’s beef isn’t really about diversity, but this:
”It’s not a true picture of what the city is,” said [Hennigan Elementary School Physics teacher Maureen] Costa, who presides over a majority white and Asian fourth-grade accelerated class in a school that is 85 percent black and Hispanic.
The “true picture” of Boston is that its school system is about three-quarters black and Latino (the city’s overall population is about 40% black and Latino).
What brings about the demographic imbalance between school enrollment and AP enrollment is that the AP students are selected based on standardized-test score.
However, there just isn’t much Boston can do about the many Asian and white students in AP programs. Courts have ruled racial quotas unconstitutional, and black and Hispanic test-scores aren’t likely to perk up anytime soon. The upside with the demographic imbalance in AP programs is, presumably, that is makes Boston’s heavily non-white schools more attractive to whites than it otherwise would be.
One ratio that the article didn’t mention is the distribution of AP students by sex. I’m guessing that there’s a significant surplus of girls in the AP programs.
