In the fall of 2009, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded a three-year project proposed by the International Baccalaureate (IB) to demonstrate the feasibility of increasing the participation of minority students and students in poverty in its Middle Years Programme (MYP) and Diploma Programme (DP) in selected school districts in the…

In 2002-2003, 1 million students participated in AP by taking at least one exam. Five years later, nearly 1.6 million did--a 50+ percent increase. But is growth all good? Might there be a downside? Are ill prepared students eroding the quality of the program? Perhaps harming the best and brightest? To find out, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute…

Graduates of the Mesa Public Schools Advanced Placement (A/P) program were surveyed to determine: (1) their attitudes toward their experience in the program; (2) college credits received for their A/P classes; and (3) their suggestions for A/P program improvement. A/P courses, offered within the regular curriculum, have grown significantly since…

Steele and Aronson (1995) found that the performance of African-American subjects on test items portrayed as a problem-solving task, in a laboratory experiment, was adversely affected when they were asked about their ethnicity. This outcome was attributed to "stereotype threat". Performance was disrupted by the subjects' concerns about…

Data on public and private secondary schools that offer advanced placement programs--that is, courses for which college credit is awarded--are provided in this survey report. information on school characteristics and the nature of the program offerings (information not included in College Entrance Examination Board publications) was collected by…

The Texas Education Agency's (TEA's) state GEAR UP project--Texans Getting Academically Prepared (TGAP)--has provided interconnected activities supporting early awareness of and preparation for higher education among low-income and minority students, their families, and schools in six South Texas school districts. Over its six years, the state…

In October 1999, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) received a GEAR UP state grant. TEA's project, Texans Getting Academically Prepared (TGAP), was originally a five-year grant. However, additional federal funding extended the project for a sixth year. TGAP begins at the middle-school level to prepare low-income and minority students for higher…