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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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North Laurel High School

1300 E DANIEL BOONE, LONDON, KY., 40741 | Grades 9-12

Districts with 3,000 or more students
Students Total Teachers Inexp. Teachers AP Courses
This School
1,320
72
10% 9
District 9,175 541 11% 12
State 495K 30,276 11% 9
 
State Average
 
District Average

Percentage of relevant students who...

Get Free/Reduced Price Lunch

50%
56%

59%

Take at Least One AP Course

18%
27%

17%

AP Pass Rate

39%
57%

91%

Take Advanced Math

12%
7%

5%

Are in a Gifted/Talented Program

15%
17%

29%

Take Chemistry

17%
10%

18%

Take Physics

7%
1%

2%

Participate in sports

41%
0.0%

29%

Are

0%
0%

0% Am Indian
1%
0%

0% Asian
13%
1%

2% Black
4%
1%

1% Hispanic
81%
97%

98% White

North Laurel High School, part of the Laurel County district, is located in London, Kentucky. The school reports enrolling 1,320 students in grades nine through 12, and it has 72 teachers on staff.

North Laurel High School is above both the state and district averages in terms of the percentage of its students who are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. On average, 50 percent of students in Kentucky are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, whereas 59 percent of North Laurel High School students are eligible. At the district level, 56 percent of students are eligible.

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.

North Laurel High School offers nine AP courses, and 17 percent of students participate in those classes.

The school's pass rate for AP exams of 91 percent is higher than the district average of 57 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.

North Laurel High School has an enrollment rate of 5 percent for math classes, and 18 percent of students take chemistry. The enrollment rate for physics at the school is 2 percent, and the gifted and talented program has a participation rate of 29 percent.

North Oldham High School, in Goshen, Kentucky, is a lower-poverty school than North Laurel High School, with 5 percent of its students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch. The school offers 20 AP courses, and 39 percent of students are enrolled in those classs.

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