toadstool

Check out the data on Hispanic student participation in AP exams. Dave Berry just posted the college board report (2/6/09) on the main CC page. They are with in .4% of parity with white students.


Huge gains in California and Florida.



Asians---watch out. Hispanics are hitting the books!!!!! and getting the grades!!!!

Youdon'tsay

I don't see it. Can you link to it?

entomom

Don't see one by Dave Berry, but here is a Featured Discussion from tokenadult with a link to the newest AP results:

5th Annual AP Report to the Nation Released

BigWeight

thats because most of them take ap spanish language and ap spanish lit.

entomom

^^^I don't see that data in the report, what's your source?

welldad

Why do people automaticly ASSume that it must be in Spanish related subjects? My sons tets have been in all but Spanish, including 5's on Physics and Calculus.

BeKindRewind

And FYI, many Latinos in this country are only fluentin English, and even if they are bilingual, it may be in another language like Portuguese. Not all Latino cultures are based around the Spanish language. Besides, most Latino kids that you would classify as Spanish speakers only have a conversational command of the language and are very weak in grammar and vocabulary. And Spanish isn't the only AP foreign language...

entomom

It depends on the definition you're using. Check out the thread:

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/...o-defined.html

College admissions use the US Census Bureau definition which does not include people from Portuguese speaking nations:

"Hispanics or Latinos are those people who classified themselves in one of the specific Spanish, Hispanic, or Latino categories listed on the Census 2000 questionnaire -'Mexican, Mexican Am., Chicano,' 'Puerto Rican', or 'Cuban' -as well as those who indicate that they are 'other Spanish/Hispanic/Latino.' Persons who indicated that they are 'other Spanish/Hispanic/Latino' include those whose origins are from Spain, the Spanish-speaking countries of Central or South America, the Dominican Republic or people identifying themselves generally as Spanish, Spanish-American, Hispanic, Hispano, Latino, and so on."

While the NHRP definition includes people from Brazil (but not Portugal):

"To qualify for this program, you must be at least one-quarter Hispanic/Latino. Hispanic/Latino is an ethnic category, not a racial category, and you may be of any race. For purposes of the NHRP, you must be from a family whose ancestors came from at least one of these countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Spain, Uruguay, or Venezuela."

Son of Opie

Like the movie "Stand and Deliver" with Edward James-Olmos (sic.)?

BeKindRewind

To me, Latino is of Latin America. Simple enough right? I don't know why people would want to exclude Brazil and others. There are many non-Spanish speaking communities throughout Latin American countries with Spanish as their official language.

haikumarukuchan

True!

I took AP English Lang, AP English lit, AP Bio, AP Gov and Politics

and AP Spanish Lang

and did very well

justchuck

I don't know if there is that much difference in "hispanics" anymore. Unless the family is central american laborers, all the "hispanic" kids I know are very mixed i.e. Puerto Rican and Cuban, Cuban and Mexican, Mexican and Irish, Puerto Rican and Italian.

I think many of these kids are self identifying as hispanic because their parents told them to, for any benefit they may recieve for being "hispanic".

I also agree that Spanish AP tests will skew the results.

I believe that the SAT scors for hispanics are still about 100 pts. per section lower than whites (450 vs 550). This is why my wife and I told our hispanic son with the Irish first name and German last name to self identify as hispanic.

BeKindRewind

^ That's probably the case with most 'Hispanics' on this forum, but still most of the Hispanics in the US as of now are not of mixed nationality and were actually born and raised Hispanic and didn't have to be told what to mark.

jessiehl

What, being a mixed kid warrants scare quotes? Or assumptions about one's motives in identifying with parts of one's own background?

justchuck

Everyone needs to learn how to work the system to their best advantage. It's part of life, and applies to many things beyond college.