Racial Bias and Opportunity Gaps: When and How Bias Affects Disparities in the Advanced Placement Participation

Abstract

Opportunities to develop and demonstrate academic potential and excellence are often unequally distributed across racial groups, exacerbating disparities later in life. This dissertation seeks to understand the role of racial bias in shaping these “opportunity gaps.” In the first chapter, I examine whether county-level pro-White/anti-Black implicit and explicit biases are associated with Black-White disparities in AP program participation. I find that greater disparities in AP course enrollment are observed in counties where White residents exhibit higher levels of bias; this relationship is, in part, explained by an interpersonal route (i.e., White teachers in these counties also exhibit higher levels of bias themselves). The second chapter builds on this finding by testing whether White teachers’ implicit and explicit biases predict differential evaluations of Black and White students applying for AP courses. Two experimental studies do not support this hypothesis, highlighting the need for future research on whether and when teachers’ biases affect enrollment disparities. In the final chapter, I examine whether the very nature of opportunities like AP—valuable and scarce—amplifies the link between implicit bias and disproportionate outcomes. I show that White individuals’ implicit bias predicts worse placement outcomes for Black students only when opportunities are described as both valuable and scarce, but not when either attribute is absent. Together, this dissertation advances research on racial excellence and opportunity gaps by providing insights into when and how racial bias contributes to these disparities.