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Is Your State Providing Equal Access to Education?

This database was last updated in January 2013 and should only be used as a historical snapshot of data from the 2009-10 school year. For more recent data on public and charter schools, check out Miseducation.

ProPublica analyzed federal education data from the 2009-2010 school year to examine whether states provide high-poverty schools equal access to advanced courses and special programs that researchers say will help them later in life. This is the first nationwide picture of exactly which courses are being taken at which schools and districts across the country. More than three-quarters of all public school children are represented. Read our story and our methodology.

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Mt Pleasant High School

2110 N EDWARDS AVE, MOUNT PLEASANT, TEXAS, 75455 | Grades 9-12

Districts with 3,000 or more students
Students Total Teachers Inexp. Teachers AP Courses
This School
1,375
108
12% 10
District 5,380 427 9% 5
State 4.01M 269,017 14% 15
 
State Average
 
District Average

Percentage of relevant students who...

Get Free/Reduced Price Lunch

48%
78%

66%

Take at Least One AP Course

20%
19%

19%

AP Pass Rate

48%
53%

53%

Take Advanced Math

10%
2%

3%

Are in a Gifted/Talented Program

8%
5%

6%

Take Chemistry

26%
33%

34%

Take Physics

14%
10%

11%

Are

0%
0%

1% Am Indian
4%
1%

1% Asian
15%
13%

12% Black
50%
63%

59% Hispanic
29%
23%

27% White

Mt Pleasant High School, in Mount Pleasant, Texas, is part of the Mount Pleasant ISD. The school reports enrolling 1,375 students in grades nine through 12, and it has 108 teachers on staff.

Mt Pleasant High School is above the state average but below the district average in terms of the percentage of its students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. On average, 48 percent of students in Texas qualify for free or reduced-price lunch programs, whereas 66 percent of Mt Pleasant High School students do. At the district level, 78 percent of students qualify.

ProPublica's analysis found that all too often, states and schools provide poor students fewer educational programs like Advanced Placement, gifted and talented programs, and advanced math and science classes. Studies have linked participation in these programs with better outcomes later in life. Our analysis uses free and reduced-price lunch to estimate poverty at schools. We based our findings on the most comprehensive data set of access to advanced classes and special programs in U.S. public schools — known as the Civil Rights Data Set— released by the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights.

Mt Pleasant High School offers 10 AP courses, and 19 percent of students participate in those classes.

The school's pass rate for AP exams is the same as the district's, both at 53 percent.

A school's AP pass rate is determined by the number of students who both sat for AP exams and passed some or all of those exams.

Mt Pleasant High School has an enrollment rate of 3 percent for math classes, and 34 percent of students take chemistry. The enrollment rate for physics at the school is 11 percent, and the gifted and talented program has a participation rate of 6 percent.

Highland Park High School, a lower-poverty school than Mt Pleasant High School, does not have any students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The school enrolls 56 percent of its students in AP classes. It is located in Dallas, Texas.

These data points were reported by schools and districts to the Office for Civil Rights. For more information about the data, see our full methodology.

— Generated by Narrative Science