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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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Penn Hills Shs

12200 GARLAND DR, PITTSBURGH, PA., 15235 | Grades 10-12

Districts with 3,000 or more students
Students Total Teachers Inexp. Teachers AP Courses
This School
1,170
96
8% 6
District 4,470 396 6% 6
State 1.2M 85,389 11% 10
 
State Average
 
District Average

Percentage of relevant students who...

Get Free/Reduced Price Lunch

34%
49%

35%

Take at Least One AP Course

16%
12%

12%

AP Pass Rate

62%
75%

75%

Take Advanced Math

19%
15%

15%

Are in a Gifted/Talented Program

5%
6%

8%

Take Chemistry

21%
21%

21%

Take Physics

11%
6%

6%

Participate in sports

45%
0.0%

42%

Are

0%
0%

0% Am Indian
4%
1%

1% Asian
19%
60%

54% Black
10%
0%

0% Hispanic
67%
39%

44% White

Penn Hills SHS, part of the Penn Hills district, is located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The school reports an enrollment number of 1,170 students in grades 10 through 12, and it has 96 teachers on staff.

Penn Hills SHS is above the state average but below the district average in terms of the percentage of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. On average, 34 percent of students in Pennsylvania are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch programs, whereas 35 percent of Penn Hills SHS students do. At the district level, 49 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.

Penn Hills SHS offers six AP courses, and 12 percent of students participate in those classes.

The school's pass rate for AP exams matches the district's, each of which is 75 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.

Penn Hills SHS has an enrollment rate of 15 percent for math classes, and 21 percent of students take chemistry. The enrollment rate for physics at the school is 6 percent, and the gifted and talented program has a participation rate of 8 percent.

Central Bucks HS-East, in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, is a lower-poverty school than Penn Hills SHS, with 2 percent of its students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch. The school offers 19 AP courses, and 36 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