Trying to Hide Racial Differences in IQ

College Board no longer disclosing AP test results by ethnicity, state: Before last year, anyone could publicly view scores broken down by certain demographics. Not anymore.

The College Board used to annually publish granular breakdowns of how students scored on its Advanced Placement, or AP exams. And Jon Boeckenstedt, vice provost for enrollment management at Oregon State University, would painstakingly download each data set to translate into a more digestible format on his admissions blog.

The testing provider’s reports represented an in-depth dive into the assessments, which can earn K-12 students college credit if they receive a high enough score.

The College Board would share a state-by-state look at how high school students performed on the tests, as well as demographic data, so anyone in the public could see how students — based on their ethnicity — fared. So detailed were these summaries that one could look up, for instance, Black students’ average score on the AP Biology test for any given year.

That was up until 2021, when the College Board stopped releasing most of those data points. It still posts the number of students who tested, and how many scored in exams’ range of 1 to 5, a 5 being the highest mark. But the public could no longer sort test results by ethnicity.

Higher Ed Dive could find no evidence the College Board announced the change. It also appears to have scrubbed that type of data from its website archives.

It was a conspicuous absence to Boeckenstedt, one of Twitter’s most prolific admissions professionals. In February, he called out the College Board on the social media platform, urging his followers to tell the company to once again publish the data and arguing that walking it back did not match its professed commitment to transparency.

He reiterated his call this week as the College Board began to share top-level information on 2022 AP scores.

The College Board has come under fire for peddling products like the AP and SAT tests that critics perceive as disadvantaging marginalized groups in higher education. Underrepresented students, such as those who are Hispanic and Black, were generally scoring lower on AP exams compared to their White peers, according to prior years’ data. The testing provider has said the SAT is not a racist instrument.

The College Board in an emailed statement did not address why it removed demographic data. It said that it provides that information to schools, districts and state departments of education and that it has already sent it to the former two groups.

Researchers can also request AP data online, the College Board said.

Take Florida, which had the highest AP test participation rate in 2020. Although a quarter of all students in Florida public K-12 high schools took an AP class, only 15% of Black students did, according to a study this year from the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

And across the country, Black and Hispanic students aren’t scoring highly on the exams compared to their White peers.

Based on 2020 score data Boeckenstedt analyzed when it was still publicly available, only about 5% of Black students scored a 5 on one of the exams, versus about 15% of White students.

Meanwhile, the College Board points to its own research that it says indicates even earning a 1 or 2 on an AP test can improve college performance. The organization notes, however, that “these analyses do not make causal claims that AP course taking independently produces these results.” (read more)