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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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Cicely L. Tyson Community Middle/High School

35 WINANS STREET, EAST ORANGE, N.J., 07018 | Grades 6-12

Districts with 3,000 or more students
Students Total Teachers Inexp. Teachers AP Courses
This School
835
70
13% 5
District 9,850 887 7% 7
State 880K 72,554 11% 12
 
State Average
 
District Average

Percentage of relevant students who...

Get Free/Reduced Price Lunch

35%
74%

64%

Take at Least One AP Course

14%
6%

6%

AP Pass Rate

62%
8%

0%

Take Advanced Math

16%
11%

5%

Are in a Gifted/Talented Program

12%
13%

39%

Take Chemistry

20%
46%

8%

Take Physics

9%
2%

1%

Are

0%
0%

0% Am Indian
10%
0%

0% Asian
19%
96%

99% Black
24%
4%

1% Hispanic
46%
0%

0% White

Cicely L. Tyson Community Middle/High School, part of the East Orange district, is located in East Orange, New Jersey. The school reports an enrollment number of 835 students in grades six through 12, and it has 70 teachers on staff.

Cicely L. Tyson Community Middle/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, 35 percent of students in New Jersey qualify for free or reduced-price lunch programs, whereas 64 percent of Cicely L. Tyson Community Middle/High School students do. At the district level, 74 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.

Cicely L. Tyson Community Middle/High School's enrollment rates in chemistry, physics and advanced math subject areas are 8 percent, 1 percent and 5 percent, respectively. Gifted and talented at the school has an enrollment rate of 39 percent.

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