Advanced Placement Gatekeeping and Racialized Tracking

Racialized tracking is central to sociological explanations for racially stratified educational outcomes. However, school officials’ decision-making is of debated importance for explaining racialized tracking. We contribute to this literature by examining the effects of schools’ enrollment policies...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sociology of education 2023-07, Vol.96 (3), p.190-210
Main Authors: Hirschl, Noah, Smith, Christian Michael
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic achievement
Advanced Courses
Advanced Placement
Advanced Placement program
Barriers
College Attendance
College students
Decision making
Difficulty Level
Education policy
Educational attainment
Enrollment
Equal Education
Low Achievement
Minority Group Students
Minority groups
Pacific Islander people
Participation
Policy
Racial differences
Racial Factors
Racial inequality
Racialization
Racism
Selection Criteria
Selective Admission
Student Participation
Track System (Education)
Tracking
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Summary:Racialized tracking is central to sociological explanations for racially stratified educational outcomes. However, school officials’ decision-making is of debated importance for explaining racialized tracking. We contribute to this literature by examining the effects of schools’ enrollment policies for Advanced Placement (AP) courses. Using a unique combination of school survey data and administrative data from Wisconsin, we examine what happens to racial inequality in AP participation when school officials enforce performance-based selection criteria, which we call “course gatekeeping.” We find that course gatekeeping has racially disproportionate effects. Although racialized differences in prior achievement partially explain the especially large negative effects among students of color, course gatekeeping producesBlack-white and Hispanic-white disparities in participation even among students with similar, relatively low prior achievement. We further find that course gatekeeping has longer-run effects, particularly discouraging Black and Asian or Pacific Islander students from attending highly selective four-year colleges.
ISSN:0038-0407
1939-8573
DOI:10.1177/00380407231161334