This memorandum provides information on Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) course enrollment, exam participation, and exam performance during the 2023-2024 school year. During the 2023-2024 school year, 136 AP or IB courses were offered across high schools. Among the 25 comprehensive high schools, all offered AP courses,…

The "South Carolina Higher Education Statistical Abstract" is a comprehensive, single-source compilation of tables and graphs which report data frequently requested by the governor, legislators, college and university staff, other state government officials, and the general public. The 2024 edition of the Statistical Abstract marks the…

This memorandum provides information pertinent to the participation and performance of Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) examinations for 2023 graduates in Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS). In 2023, 59.3% of MCPS graduates took one or more AP exams; 17.3 percentage points more than graduates in Maryland and 24.6…

The usefulness of college admissions test scores and high school GPA for predicting college success, particularly in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), has been widely debated. As colleges across the country face challenges in STEM student retention and achievement, understanding the factors that contribute to college…

In 2016, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) released an analysis of school policies regarding Advanced Placement (AP) credit. Despite being one of the few ways students could seek to graduate in fewer than four years, PPI discovered that the vast majority of the nation's top schools restricted students from applying AP coursework toward degree…

Men significantly outnumber women in physics, engineering, and computer science (PECS) majors, with a recent male-to-female ratio of approximately 4:1, a stark contrast to the near parity in other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines (1). This gender disparity in PECS carries wide-reaching implications for equity,…

The Fall 2022 Enrollment Fact Book details current fall enrollment data including on- and off-campus enrollment by ethnicity, gender, residency, degree program level, and program category. [For the Fall 2021 Enrollment Fact Book, see ED617838.]

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international comparative study that assesses how well 15-year-olds, who have nearly completed compulsory schooling in most participating educational systems, can use their knowledge and skills to meet real-world opportunities and challenges. In each cycle of PISA, students are…

This memorandum provides information pertinent to the participation and performance of Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) examinations for 2022 graduates in Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS). In 2022, 63.2% of MCPS graduates took one or more AP exams--21.9 percentage points more than public school graduates in…

This memorandum provides information on Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) course enrollment, exam participation, and exam performance during the 2021-2022 school year in Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS). The College Board shifted their testing procedures in 2019-2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. During the…

The Fall 2021 Enrollment Fact Book details current fall enrollment data including on- and off-campus enrollment by ethnicity, gender, residency, degree program level, and program category. [For the Fall 2020 Enrollment Fact Book, see ED617836.]

This memorandum provides information pertinent to the participation and performance of Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) examinations for 2021 graduates in Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS). In 2021, 66.6 percent of MCPS graduates took one or more AP exams, a rate that was 23.0 and 31.7 percentage points higher…

The pivotal role of Algebra in the educational trajectories of U.S. students continues to motivate controversial, high-profile policies focused on when students access the course, their classroom peers, and how the course is taught. This random-assignment partnership study examines an innovative district-level reform--the Algebra I…

Among students in the 2024 ACT-tested graduating class, over 374,000 took the PreACT 8/9® or PreACT test before taking the ACT. This issue brief compares the ACT scores and college enrollment rates for students who took a test from the PreACT Suite of Assessments versus those who did not. The brief also examines average PreACT-to-ACT gain scores…

Does student-teacher match quality exist? Prior work has documented large disparities in teachers' impacts across student types but has not distinguished between sorting and causal effects as the drivers of these disparities. I propose a disparate value-added model and derive a novel measure of teacher quality--revealed comparative advantage--that…