Whether racial disparities in enrollment in advanced high school coursework can be attributed to differences in prior academic preparation is a central question in sociological research and education policy. However, previous investigations face methodological limitations, for they compare race-specific enrollment rates of students after adjusting for characteristics only partially related to their academic preparedness for advanced coursework. Informed by a recently-developed statistical technique, we propose and estimate a novel measure of students’ academic preparedness and use administrative data from the New York City Department of Education to measure differences in Advanced Placement (AP) mathematics enrollment rates among similarly prepared students of different races. We find that preexisting differences in academic preparation do not fully explain the under-representation of Black students relative to White students in AP mathematics. Our results imply that achieving equal opportunities for AP enrollment not only requires equalizing earlier academic experiences, but also addressing inequities that emerge from coursework placement processes.

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高级高中课程入学的种族差异是否可以归因于之前学术准备的差异，是社会学研究和教育政策的一个核心问题。然而，之前的调查面临方法上的局限性，因为他们在调整了与高级课程的学术准备部分相关的特征后，比较了学生特定种族的入学率。根据最近开发的统计技术，我们提出并估计了一种衡量学生学术准备情况的新方法，并使用纽约市教育部的管理数据来衡量具有类似准备的学生中大学先修课程 (AP) 数学入学率的差异。不同的种族。我们发现，学术准备方面先前存在的差异并不能完全解释黑人学生相对于白人学生在 AP 数学方面的代表性不足。我们的结果表明，实现 AP 入学的平等机会不仅需要平等早期的学术经历，还需要解决课程安排过程中出现的不平等问题。

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