While test data provide some idea of what students are learning in high school,
information about course-taking and enrollment is also vital to gaining an understanding
of the nature of students’ educational experiences in the humanities. Section B
begins with data on credits earned by graduating seniors. The section then looks
at trends in the number of high schoolers studying one particular subject area,
languages and literatures other than English. Finally, the section examines how
schools are preparing students for the rigors of college-level study in the humanities
by tracking changes in the number and type of Advanced Placement (AP) exams taken
by students.
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Indicator I-6
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Credits Earned by Graduating High School Seniors
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This indicator focuses on trends in course-taking in public and private high schools
between 1982 and 2005. To ensure that totals are consistent over that time, enrollments
are reported in Carnegie units (one of which is equal to 120 hours of classroom
instruction). The data presented here were collected by the U.S. Department of Education’s
National Center for Education Statistics
(NCES) as part of the high school transcript studies it periodically conducts.
Studies associated with two separate NCES data collection efforts (High School and Beyond
and
The National Assessment of Educational Progress)
reveal that the two most prominent trends in secondary-school course-taking over
the period were: (1) an increase in the total number of courses taken by graduating
seniors;1
and (2) a sharp drop in the percentage of high school courses taken in vocational
fields. Consonant with these developments, course-taking in humanities subjects
increased (Figure I-6a). Course hours in languages other than English (LOTE)
increased most, rising from an average of just over one Carnegie unit per student
in 1982 to 2.1 units in 2005. Throughout the two decades, English was the most studied
subject among American high school students. But with English, like LOTE, all of
the growth in course-taking occurred over the course of the 1980s and 1990s. This
is in contrast to math and the sciences, which saw increases over the first half
of the 2000s as well.
While growth in English and LOTE course-taking ceased between 2000 and 2005, the
average number of social studies units grew from 3.9 to 4.1. Social studies, as
defined by NCES, includes history, as well as several subjects that are not treated
as part of the humanities for the purposes of the Humanities Indicators (for an
explanation of the way in which the “humanities” is conceptualized by the Humanities
Indicators, please see the
scope statement). The data presented in Figure I-6b suggest that this
upward trend in social studies course-taking has been driven, at least in part,
by a greater proportion of students taking world history. The share of students
taking classes in this subject increased approximately 16 percentage points over
the 1990s and early 2000s, so that by 2005 more than 75% of students graduating
from high school had taken world history.
Notes
1 The total number of credits earned by high school graduates was 21.9
in 1982, 23.6 in 1990, 26.2 in 2000, and 26.8 in 2005 (U.S. Department of Education,
Office of Educational Research and Improvement, National Center for Education Statistics,
The 1998 High School Transcript Study Tabulations: Comparative Data on Credits
Earned and Demographics for 1998, 1994, 1990, 1987, and 1982 High School Graduates,
NCES 2001-498 [Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2001]; and
U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for
Education Statistics, America’s High School Graduates: Results from the 2005 NAEP
High School Transcript Study, NCES 2007-467 [Washington, DC: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 2007]).
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Indicator I-7
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Language Course Enrollment in High Schools
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See the
Note on Language Course Enrollment Data.
For almost a century, the
Modern Language Association, followed by the
American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages
(ACTFL), has collected information about levels of LOTE course-taking in the nation’s
public secondary schools. This rich data set reveals that between 1960 and 2000
the percentage of public high school students taking LOTE courses first dropped,
reaching a low point in the late 1970s, but then rose steadily for a net increase
of 17 percentage points over the four decades (Figure I-7a; see the
Note on Language Course Enrollment Data).
The observed rise in LOTE enrollments since the late 1970s is almost entirely attributable
to increased course-taking in one language: Spanish. Spanish enrollments more than
doubled over the last two decades of the 20th century. By 2000, Spanish enrollments
accounted for approximately 70% of all LOTE enrollments among public high school
students.
The other languages traditionally taken by public high school students have not
fared as well. German saw an increase in enrollments between 1960 and 1970 but then
experienced a decline that by 2000 had brought enrollments back down near the 1960
level. French rebounded from a sharp dip in enrollments in the 1970s but then saw
its numbers drop again throughout the 1990s. Latin enrollments, which dropped steadily
between 1960 and the late 1970s, were stable over the next two decades, holding
at approximately 1.5% of all high school students.
While enrollment data reveal how many students are receiving
at least some formal language training, they do not indicate what level of fluency
is being attained. Direct measures of young peoples’ competence in languages other
than English do not exist, but data from NCES supply information as to the number
of students pursuing advanced language study, a valuable indirect measure of their
language achievement (Figure I-7b; the data presented in this figure are
for all high school graduates, i.e., those who attended either public or private
school, while the enrollment figures cited above are for public school students
only1)
These data indicate that the share of the nation’s students pursuing more advanced
language study is increasing. In 2004, approximately 10% of graduates took a fourth-year
LOTE course, up from 4.5% in 1982. The proportion of graduates who completed an
AP LOTE course more than quadrupled over the same period. Still, only a small fraction
of high school graduates, 5.4%, took such courses in 2004.
Foreign-language competence was the focus of a significant
federal policy effort under the last presidential administration. In January of
2006, President George W. Bush launched the
National Security Language Initiative
(NSLI) and sought $107.7 million from Congress in fiscal year (FY) 20072 to increase the number
of advanced-level speakers of foreign languages, with an emphasis on “critical-need”
languages (such as Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Persian, and Russian).
In introducing the initiative, the president stressed that
“An essential component of U.S. national security in the post-9/11 world is the
ability to engage foreign governments and peoples in critical regions . . . to do
this we must be able to communicate in other languages, a challenge for which we
are unprepared."3
The NSLI continues under the Obama administration. Two key components of NSLI that
focus on the development of language proficiency in young people are
NSLI for Youth
and
STARTALK.
The data on foreign-language enrollments in the nation’s high schools for the year
2000 (more current data are expected from ACTFL in fall of 2010) suggest that “critical
need” languages are little studied by secondary students. Figure I-7c provides
enrollment figures for those languages on which data were collected and indicates
the states in which these languages were offered by public schools. Japanese was
the most commonly studied of these languages, with approximately 51,000 public high
school students enrolled and classes available in nearly every state. Just over
10,600 public high school students studied Russian, and, as with Japanese, these
classes were offered to students in most states. A much smaller number of public
high school students were enrolled in Arabic, Chinese, or Korean, and classes in
these languages were offered in only a handful of states.
Notes
1 The NCES estimates that private school students constituted
approximately 9%
of the total high school (9–12 grade) population in 2004.
2 The initiative was ultimately funded at a level of $65.5 million for
FY 2007. The administration requested $114.4 million for FY 2008, and Congress appropriated
$85.9 million. See NSLI Funding budget breakout (Graphic I-7a) for the amounts
received by each of the four participating federal agencies. More current funding
data will be available in the fall of 2010.
3 U.S. Department of State, “National Security Language Initiative,”
Fact Sheet (January 5, 2006); originally available at http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2006/58733.htm.
For more information about the Bush initiative, see the archived material located
at
http://www2.ed.gov/about/inits/ed/competitiveness/nsli/index.html.
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Indicator I-8
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Advanced Placement Exams Taken in the Humanities
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See the
Note on Advanced Placement Examination Data.
AP courses, which can count for college credit when accompanied by a passing score
on an AP exam, are acknowledged to be the most rigorous courses regularly offered
by high schools, and schools are under increasing pressure to expand their offerings
of such classes. The growing emphasis on AP courses has extended so far that Newsweek
magazine produces a ranking of high schools solely on the basis of the proportion
of graduating seniors taking AP exams.
Although national long-term trend data on AP course-taking that can be broken out
by subject are not publicly available, the College Board, the body responsible for
developing and administering the AP examination program, does publish data as to
the number of AP exams taken annually in different subjects. This information
reveals how students are apportioning their time and effort with respect to college-preparatory
humanities education.
From 1996 to 2009, humanities exams were the most commonly taken AP exams, outstripping
social science exams, the next most frequently taken type, by a wide margin (Figure
I-8a; see the
Note on Advanced Placement Examination Data
for a listing of the exam types included under the heading of “humanities” and other
broad subject areas, as well as an analysis demonstrating that the high levels of
humanities exam-taking noted here are not merely a function of the large variety
of exams offered in humanities relative to other subject areas). During this period,
growth in humanities test-taking was also significant, with the number of AP exams
taken in the humanities more than tripling. Not only the absolute number of exams
taken but also per capita exam-taking rose substantially over time among high school
students. The number of humanities exams taken per 100 students rose every year
during this span of years. In 2009, 8.8 such exams were taken per 100 high school
students, 2.8 times more exams than in 1996 (Figure I-8b). While increases
were observed in every broad subject area, the rise was most pronounced in the case
of humanities exams. Average annual growth in the humanities test-taking rate over
the time period was at least twice as great as that for every other subject area
in which AP exams were offered.
Regrettably, publicly available data reveal nothing about the distribution of test-taking.
Because students can take multiple tests, the proportion of observed gains attributable
to an increased number of students taking humanities tests (rather than high achievers
in the humanities opting to take additional tests, e.g., a European history exam
in addition to the usual English exam) is unknown. Future collaboration between
the Humanities Indicators Project and the College Board will perhaps yield data
that can answer the important question of whether increasing numbers of students
are engaged in rigorous humanities education or whether the United States is instead
experiencing a growing concentration of humanities expertise in a relatively small
number of students.
Looking more closely at exam-taking within the humanities, all three types of humanities
AP exams — English language and literature, history, and LOTE — have
shown increases between 1996 and 2009 in the number of tests taken (Figure I-8c
and Figure I-8d). Every year since 1996, more students have taken the English
than any other exam, humanities or otherwise. In 2009, 4.0 English exams were taken
for every 100 high school students, up from 1.4 in 1996 (a 186% increase). Students
were also more likely to take history exams, with the number of exams per student
almost tripling between 1996 and 2009. One driver of this growth is the popularity
of the newly introduced world history exam (the number of world history tests taken
rose from approximately 21,000 in 2002, the year the exam was first offered, to
over 140,000 in 2009).
Exams in LOTE, while not taken nearly as commonly as other humanities exams, are
also being taken with increasing frequency. The number of such exams taken per 100
high school students rose from 0.47 to 1.0 between the mid-1990s and 2009. This
increase has been fuelled by growth in the number of exams taken in Spanish and
the relatively new Chinese and Japanese exams (introduced in 2007), which has offset
declining test-taking in most other languages.
Note on Language Course Enrollment Data
School enrollments refer to students, while language course enrollments refer to
class registrations. The collector of the data on which this indicator is based
assumes that a one-to-one relationship exists between these units—that is, each
student is taking only one language course—although this is not always the case.
However, multiple course registrations are a rare enough phenomenon that the data
collector feels it is appropriate to equate school enrollments with course enrollments
for the purpose of its calculations.
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Note on Advanced Placement Examination Data
Advanced Placement Exams Offered 1996–2009, by Broad Subject Area
“Humanities” encompasses exams in the areas of
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English Language and Literature
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English Language/Composition;
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English Literature/Composition;
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History
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Art History;
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European History;
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U.S. History;
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World History (first administered in 2002);
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Languages and Literatures Other than English
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Chinese Language and Culture (first administered in 2007);
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French Language;
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French Literature;
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German Language;
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Italian Language (first administered in 2006);
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Japanese Language and Culture (first administered in 2007);
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Latin—Literature;
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Latin—Virgil;
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Spanish Language; and
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Spanish Literature.
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“Math and Computer Science” encompasses exams in the areas of
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Calculus;
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Computer Science; and
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Statistics (first administered in 1997).
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“Natural Sciences” encompasses exams in the areas of
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Biology;
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Chemistry;
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Environmental Science (first administered in 1998); and
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Physics.
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“Social Sciences” encompasses exams in the areas of
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Economics;
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Government and Politics (U.S. and Comparative);
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Human Geography (first administered in 2001); and
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Psychology.
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As the above inventory reveals, more exams are offered in the humanities than in
any other field. While this disparity must be considered as a possible cause of
the high levels of AP test-taking in the humanities described here, the data reveal
that the level of test-taking in a field cannot be attributed solely to the extent
of the exam offerings in that field.
For example, in 1996, although the number of exams offered in the natural sciences
was equal to that offered in the social sciences, considerably more exams were taken
in the natural sciences. However, by 2005 the number taken in each field was similar,
a fact attributable not to a dramatic expansion of offerings in the social sciences,
but instead to a large increase in the number of students taking a single exam,
U.S. government and politics, which represented no less than 40% of all social science
tests taken in any given year.
Even though the humanities encompasses a larger number of exams than either the
natural or social sciences, most of the humanities exams are taken by relatively
few students (e.g., in 2005, only 3,530 students took the Latin literature exam,
while close to 80,000 took the chemistry test). The high levels of humanities test-taking
are largely driven by the popularity of a handful of the exams offered in the field:
by a substantial margin, more exams are taken in a single humanities subject, English,
than are taken in either the natural or social science fields.
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