Part I. Primary and Secondary Education in the Humanities Section B. High School Course-Taking

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Indicator I-6 Credits Earned by Graduating High School Seniors

Indicator I-7 Language Course Enrollment in High Schools

Indicator I-8 Advanced Placement Exams Taken in the Humanities

While test data can 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. This section begins with data on credits earned by graduating seniors—data that indicate curricular changes and what percentages of students are meeting minimum standards in important fields such as English, history, and foreign languages. The section then looks at the changes in one particular subject, foreign language, which has nearly doubled in terms of hours studied in high schools in recent years. Finally, it examines how schools are preparing students for the rigors of college-level study in the humanities by tracking trends in the number and type of Advanced Placement (AP) exams taken by students.

Indicator I-6	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 2000. Consistent totals over that time are obtained by reporting enrollment by Carnegie units (one of which is equal to 120 hours of classroom instruction). The data on course-taking have been collected from high school transcript studies periodically conducted by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

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 units taken by graduating seniors and 2) a sharp drop in the percentage of high school courses taken in vocational fields. Against this backdrop, the humanities have fared quite well (Figure I-6). Course-taking in all humanities subjects increased. Course hours in foreign languages increased most, rising from an average of just over one year-long course per student in 1982 to 2.1 courses in 2000. Throughout the two decades, English was the most studied subject among American high school students.

Figure 1-6, Full Size Supporting Data

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Indicator I-7	Language Course Enrollment in High Schools
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For almost a century, the Modern Language Association, followed by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, has collected information about foreign-language education in the nation’s public secondary schools. This rich data set reveals that between 1960 and 2000 the percentage of high school students taking foreign languages 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 Foreign-Language Course Enrollment Data).

Figure 1-7a, Full Size Supporting Data

Observed increases in language enrollments since the 1970s are attributable almost entirely to growing student interest in one language: Spanish. Spanish enrollments more than doubled over the last two decades of the 20th century. By 2000, Spanish enrollment accounted for approximately 70% of all foreign-language 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 numbers 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 indicate how many students are receiving at least some formal language training, the question remains how many of them are taking enough in the way of such classes to become effective communicators in a tongue other than English. Data from the NCES reveal that the number of students pursuing advanced language study is modest but increasing (Figure I-7b). In 2000, just under 8% of high school graduates took a fourth-year course in a foreign language, up from 4.5 in 1982 (though the percentage fell slightly between 1998 and 2000). The proportion of graduates who completed an AP course in a foreign language more than quadrupled over the same period. However, in 2000, only a small fraction of high school graduates, 5.4%, had taken such courses.

Figure 1-7b, Full Size Supporting Data

Foreign-language competence is currently the focus of a significant federal policy effort. In January of 2006, President Bush launched the National Security Language Initiative (NSLI) and sought $107.7 million in fiscal year 2007¹ to increase the number of Americans learning “critical need” foreign 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.2

The data on foreign-language enrollments in the nation’s high schools for 2000 (the most recent year for which data are available) support the president’s contention that many such “critical need” languages have been little studied. 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.

Figure 1-7c, Full Size

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Notes

1 The initiative was ultimately funded at a level of $65.5 million for fiscal year (FY) 2007. The administration requested $114.4 million for FY 2008, and Congress appropriated $85.9 million (see NSLI Funding (Graphic I-7a) budget breakout for the amounts received by each of the four participating federal agencies).

Graphic gI-7a, Full Size

Indicator I-8	Advanced Placement Exams Taken in the Humanities
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Advanced Placement (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. The growing emphasis on AP courses has extended so far as to prompt Newsweek magazine to produce 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 do not exist, the College Board, the body responsible for developing and administering the AP examination program, does make data as to the number of AP exams taken annually in different subjects publicly available. This information reveals how students are apportioning their time and effort with respect to college-preparatory humanities education.

From 1996 to 2005, humanities exams were the most commonly taken AP exams, outstripping math and computer 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 fields). During this period, there was also marked growth in humanities test-taking, with the number of AP exams taken in the humanities increasing 133%. Not only the absolute number of exams taken but also per capita exam-taking rose substantially over time among 11th and 12th graders (students in these grades take the overwhelming majority of AP exams). The number of humanities exams taken per 100 of these students rose every year from 1996 to 2005, growing from 8.8 to 16.9, an increase of over 90% (Figure I-8b). This is a substantial percentage gain, particularly in light of the high baseline figure, and comparable to what was observed in math and computer sciences and the natural sciences. The most dramatic increase in AP test-taking in the sciences overall was in the social sciences, with the number of tests per 100 11th- and 12th graders almost tripling, though the number of tests taken in these subjects remains low relative to the humanities.

Figure 1-8a, Full Size Supporting Data

  

Figure 1-8b, Full Size Supporting Data

These comparisons must be approached with some caution, however, because the 1996 baseline figures differ greatly among subject areas. As described above, the percentage growth in social science test-taking, for example, is striking. But in absolute terms, the rise has been quite modest: between 1996 and 2005, it has amounted to an increase of 3.4 exams taken per 100 11th and 12th graders. This property of percentage growth rates—that the size of the gain is related to the magnitude of the initial rate—is important to keep in mind in light of the often substantial differences between fields or groups with respect to base rates.

This indicator also reveals nothing about the distribution of test-taking. Because students can take multiple tests, the proportion of observed gains is due to an increased number of students taking humanities tests (rather than high achievers in the humanities opting to take additional tests, e.g., a foreign language in addition to the usual English) is unknown. Publicly available data do not allow for an examination of these distributional issues. Future collaboration between the Humanities Indicator 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 composition and literature, history, and foreign languages—have shown increases between 1996 and 2005 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 2005, 7.6 English exams were taken for every 100 11th and 12th graders, up from 4.0 in 1996 (a 90% increase). More students have been taking the history exam as well, with the number of examinations doubling from 3.5 in 1996 to 7.0 in 2006. This growth has been buoyed by the popularity of the newly introduced world history exam (the number of world history tests taken has more than tripled, rising from approximately 21,000 to over 64,000 tests taken between 2002 and 2005). Foreign-language exams, while not nearly as commonly taken as other humanities exams, are also in increasing demand among students, with the number of such exams taken per 100 11th and 12th graders having risen from 1.3 to 2.3 over the same time period.

Figure 1-8c, Full Size Supporting Data

Figure 1-8d, Full Size Supporting Data

Note on Advanced Placement Examination Data Advanced Placement Exams Offered 1996-2005, by Field The Humanities Indicators employs the categorization scheme described below. Humanities exams are those administered in: English Language/Composition English Literature/Composition Art History European History U.S. History World History (first administered in 2002) French Language French Literature German Language Latin—Literature Latin—Virgil Spanish Language Spanish Literature Math & Computer Science encompasses exams in the areas of: Calculus Computer Science Statistics (first administered in 1997) Natural Sciences encompasses exams in the areas of: Biology Chemistry Environmental Science (first administered in 1998) Physics Social Sciences encompasses exams in the areas of: Economics Government & Politics (U.S. and Comparative) Human Geography (first administered in 2001) Psychology 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 levels the level of test-taking in a field cannot be attributed solely to the extent of the exam offerings in a field. For example, in 1996, although the number of exams offered in the natural sciences was similar 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 were quite 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. And 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: the two English exams are taken more frequently than all the exams offered in either the natural sciences or social sciences (by a substantial margin). Back to Content

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