Families, especially those considering sending their children to a private four-year university, need all the help they can get in funding college. Annmarie Guzy's essay "AP, Dual Enrollment, and the Survival of Honors Education" in this issue powerfully spells out the financial benefits that accrue from using AP courses to satisfy…

A new admissions crisis has begun to emerge in the honors community. In an increasing number of states, legislatures are mandating uniform minimum AP and dual enrollment credits that public colleges and universities must accept, and consequently the honors students that have been admitted based in part on their willingness to take on challenging…

Will Summers has been farming since 2007 when he interned for a small community-supported agriculture (CSA) farm in Austin, Texas. His agricultural experience since then has primarily been with nonprofit organizations where he has cultivated vegetables, kept chickens, milked goats, and introduced young people to the wonders of farming and…

Advanced Placement (AP) Studio Art is an influential force in secondary art education as is evident in the 31,800 portfolios submitted for review in 2008. From the perspectives of a high school educator and AP Reader, this author has observed how the constraints of the AP program can be used to generate support for high school art programs and…

Rochelle Gutiérrez has spent 15 years researching effective, urban high school mathematics departments that served Black, Latin@ and low-income adolescents (see, e.g., Gutiérrez, 1996, 1999a, 1999b, 2000, 2002). These were schools where students took more mathematics than was required by their district; where English learners, recent immigrants,…

Most nations now administer standardized tests--for adult job seekers and young students alike--but the Chinese remain the world's preeminent practitioners. The nation's national college entrance exam, known as the "Gaokao", lasts for nine hours across two days. The author has seen the intensity of China's work ethic firsthand as…

Concurrent enrollment programs provide academic challenges for high school students and also provide a strong foundation for career and technical education programs. The state of Utah is one of the leaders in concurrent enrollments, providing funding for high schools to adopt such programs across the state, and Weber State University in Ogden,…

In most schools, the rush toward Advanced Placement (AP) courses goes on unabated. In 2006 the number of students taking AP exams increased almost 10 percent over the preceding year, according to the College Board. This is largely because of the growing intensity of the admissions game and the urge on the part of college applicants to seek out…

Superior high school business students should be given the same opportunity to participate in advanced placement programs as that given to those with more traditional academic interests. (JOW)

After two years of teaching English, history, and wilderness survival in the Inupiaq Eskimo village of Wales, Alaska, the author moved in Brazil to teach English and Theory of Knowledge in the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme. His four years of experience at the International School of Curitiba have confirmed his belief that…

Provides a report of committee activities and meeting minutes. Included is information on the development of the Advanced Placement Program in Economics, the use of foreign students as teaching assistants, the assessment of student learning, and the status of the "Journal of Economic Education." (JDH)

As a superintendent of the Bellevue School District, the author discusses the Bellevue School District's curriculum and its ongoing development. The mission of the Bellevue School District is to give every student the kind of education traditionally reserved for America's elite class or, stated another way, to give every student a first-rate,…

Discusses issues involved in the standardization of curriculum for high school computer science education, including the choice of programing language. The new Advanced Placement (AP) Program in Computer Science is also discussed, including its use of Pascal and the implications of introducing such a test at this time. (EAO)

The College Board's Advanced Placement courses are often the pride of secondary schools, but students' success in them is a function of the teachers' qualifications. (Author/MSE)

The efficiency and effectiveness of the nation's human capital pipeline has become a prime area of focus in the policy arena, spurred on by international data that show the U.S. lagging in high school and college completion. For policymakers, education leaders, and even students and parents, it is becoming increasingly clear that the transition…