<p>Interesting points, Rhapsody. Coming from a school with a high black/Hispanic population, I think you definitely have valid points about students feeling too scared of taking AP courses because of how foreign they seem. They simply don’t have counselors or teachers that even consider motivating students to take a shot at these courses, and my school has a policy that actually makes it more threatening to take a stab at AP courses: if a student signs up for an AP course, they must sign a contract saying they will under no circumstances request to remove the course from that course from their schedule unless they have exhausted every possible resource, have Fs for the first semester, and have the teacher recommend it. The fact that a student has to hold out a full semester like that really will not be appealing for students who are scared to death of the course to begin with (regardless of whether or not they in reality have anything to fear).</p>
<p>Further harming the case, unfortunately, is peer pressure. I’ve definitely seen some students breaking out from what their friends who look quite lonely in AP courses. Some would be ostracized if their ability and interest in these courses were known (nobody wants to be a “sell-out”). I escaped it because, quite frankly, I never had any other Hispanic friends to begin with as I was too nerdy 
I can imagine if all my close friends were far from considering AP courses my life might have been different (at age 14 it’s very easy to see why students make this bad choice, and after that they’re already in the “bad track”).</p>
<p>What an awfully tough problem to try to fix.</p>