New U.S. high school transcript data show stark and growing racial differences in which students progress to the most advanced math subject in high school: calculus. It appears from this first release of data that, among black students who started high school in 2009, a slightly smaller proportion took a calculus class than four years earlier. And even in the earlier cohort, only about 6 percent of black high school graduates took calculus.
Meanwhile, growing numbers of Asians, whites and Hispanics are taking the subject.