Alpharetta, Milton Schools Serve Fewer Free Lunches, More AP Courses

How good a job does the State of Georgia do in giving students equal access in public education? Access to advanced placement courses, advanced math courses and gifted programs?

The team at Pro Publica, decided to find out, using information collected by the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights. Pro Publica is a non-profit, independent news organization that does “investigative journalism in the public interest,” according to their website.

Released last week, this particular project finds that in many states, there’s a negative correlation between high-poverty public schools and the percentage of students enrolled in more rigorous courses. Many in education call the disparity between richer and poorer districts and access to higher level courses the "opportunity gap," according to Pro Publica.

At the high school level, Fulton County seems to have this relationship between gifted and talented programs and Advanced Placement (AP) courses. The larger the percentage of students qualifying for free or reduced lunch, the lower the percentage of students in elementary school gifted programs.

Only 9 percent of students and 5 percent of students qualify for the free and reduced lunch program. Forty percent of Alpharetta and 36 percent of Milton students take AP classes.

But at Tri-Cities High in East Point 74 percent of the students receive free or reduced price lunch and only 13 percent take an AP course. The numbers are worse at Banneker High in College Park, where 73 percent of the students are on free and reduced lunch, with 9 percent taking an AP course.

Tri-Cities isn't much better in math, with 23 percent of students enrolled in advanced math classes, compared to 38 percent at Bannker, 43 percent at Alpharetta and 45 percent at Milton.

has the highest percentage of students in Alpharetta and Milton on free and reduced lunch–21 percent–and 10 percent of the students in gifted or talented programs. has just 7 percent of students on the free and reduced lunch program, and 25 percent of its students in gifted/talented programs.

Pro Publica allows you to compare states, districts within states and schools within districts. Take a look.