Asians Outscore Whites on SAT and Meeting Benchmarks and AP

Asians outscore whites in getting a 3 on AP (usually means college credit)
Asians now outscore whites in Critical Reading as well as Mathematics and Writing as of 2017
More Asians than whites meet both reading and writing and math benchmarks in 2017

from https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/09/27/scores-new-sat-show-large-gaps-race-and-ethnicity

For SAT scores, a particularly striking figure relates to the performance of Asian-Americans who took the test.

In the last year before the College Board started to switch to the new version of the SAT, white students outscored Asian students in one category, critical reading. 

Here are the numbers from this year:

Mean SAT Scores by Race/Ethnicity, 2015

Group	Critical Reading	Mathematics	Writing
American Indian	481	482	460
Asian-American	525	598	531
Black	431	428	418
Mexican-American	448	457	438
Puerto Rican	456	449	442
Other Hispanic	449	457	439
White	529	534	513

In the new version of the SAT, Asian students scored higher on average on both parts of the test than did all other student groups. Experts on admissions know of course that colleges admit on the basis of more than test scores, and typically on a wide range of factors.

But critics of affirmative action -- perhaps including the U.S. Justice Department -- have focused on test scores to argue that elite colleges are discriminating against Asian applicants. The new data not only show Asian students earning top scores, but also that Asian students were significantly more likely to have met what the College Board calls "benchmark" scores indicating that students have a 75 percent chance of earning a C or higher in various college courses. The table below shows the percentage of students who met the benchmark for both the mathematics and the reading and writing sections of the test.

2017 Mean SAT Scores, and Percentage Meeting Benchmarks, by Race and Ethnicity

Group	Reading and Writing	Mathematics	Met Both Benchmarks
American Indian/Alaska Native	486	477	27%
Asian	569	612	70%
Black	479	462	20%
Latino	500	487	31%
Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander	498	488	32%
White	565	553	59%

Read more by 

Scott Jaschik

Asians also outscored on AP exams: 

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/09/03/sat-scores-drop-and-racial-gaps-remain-large

SAT Scores Drop

Declines take averages down to lowest point in years.

By Scott Jaschik September 3, 2015

AP Exams

The College Board also released new data on Advanced Placement exams, noting that 1.5 million students this year earned a score of three or higher on an AP exam. (That score frequently qualifies a student for college credit.) That is a gain from 1.4 million students in 2014.

But on the AP tests as well, there is a clear racial and ethnic gap, with

[Asians outscore whites]

72 percent of Asian test takers earning at least one three, compared to 

66 percent of white students, 

50 percent of Latino students, 

46 percent of Native American students and 

32 percent of black students.