FastTrack Advising My FastTrack

Research ยท By

Acceleration for All? Mapping Racial Equity in Access to AP and Dual Enrollment

Save to My FastTrack

On this page

CCRC took federal civil rights data covering every school district in the country and mapped who was actually sitting in AP and dual enrollment courses. The headline is the variation. In about a quarter of districts, White students participate at rates seven to ten points above their Black and Hispanic classmates or worse. In another quarter the gap is under two points, and roughly one in five districts has no gap at all. Overall participation rates run from under 4% of students to over 20%, sometimes between neighbouring districts in the same state.

Who published it
CCRC, 2019
Authors
John Fink, Di Xu, and Sabrina Solanki
What it is
Data reference
Where the data comes from
National

What it found

  • About a quarter of districts show gaps of 7 to 10 percentage points or more between White students and their Black and Hispanic classmates.
  • About another quarter of districts show gaps of less than 2 percentage points.
  • Roughly one in five districts has near-zero gaps or higher participation among Black and Hispanic students.
  • District dual enrollment participation ranges from under 4% of students to more than 20%.

What it does not show

  • Civil rights data count who participates. They cannot say why, and they cannot separate what a school offers from what students take up.
  • The figures come from the 2015-16 school year.

How the study was done

An analysis of U.S. Department of Education Civil Rights Data Collection records for the 2015-16 school year, mapped by school district and metro area.

Why this matters to a family

How much dual enrollment a student can reach depends heavily on which district the family lives in, which is worth checking before assuming the program is the same everywhere.

Sources

Rules change. These were checked September 2026. Confirm the current version with your school before you act on any of it.

About FastTrack Advising

. FastTrack Advising works on dual enrollment and nothing else. We help families choose college courses a high schooler can take now that will still count toward the degree later, we check every course against the transfer rules of the colleges they name, and we stay in the picture through registration so the plan gets used. When the answer for a student is to wait a term, we say that too.

Reading the evidence before a decision?

Save this page and it sits on your own My FastTrack page alongside your state's deadlines and the tools. Deciding which of these findings apply to one teen, in one state, aiming at particular colleges, is what a roadmap engagement settles.

Save to My FastTrack