Biased Opportunities: The Role of Implicit and Explicit Bias in Advanced Placement and Dual Enrollment.

This article examines the relationship between community-level implicit and explicit racial biases and disparities in participation in Advanced Placement (AP) and Dual Enrollment (DE) programs among Black and Latinx high school students in the United States. Using data from Project Implicit’s Race Implicit Association Test (IAT) aggregated at the county level and linked to school district data, the study finds that higher implicit bias favoring White over Black individuals is associated with larger Black–White gaps in AP participation, while explicit bias shows suggestive evidence of a relationship with Black–White gaps in DE participation. Additionally, communities with greater explicit racial bias tend to have lower overall AP participation rates. The findings highlight that these biases reflect systemic and structural inequities rather than solely individual attitudes, suggesting that interventions focused only on implicit bias training may be insufficient without broader systemic changes to address educational stratification and opportunity hoarding.