The Advanced Placement program stands as the foremost source of college-level academics for millions of high school students in the United States and beyond. More than 22,000 schools now participate in it, across nearly forty subjects, from Latin and art to calculus and computer science. Yet remarkably little has been known about how this…

Despite their better-than-average preparation, former dual credit and advanced placement students have placed into developmental education upon entering higher education. In this phenomenological study, six students were randomly selected to be interviewed from a group of 562 who placed into developmental education at one Texas university during a…

High school students enroll in Advanced Placement (AP) courses and take AP exams for a variety of reasons. However, a lack of information about the extent to which there are incremental benefits associated with taking multiple AP exams has fostered a perception that students must take many APs to be prepared for college. Conversely, many American…

This study examined the perceived educational barriers and academic and college-going self-efficacy beliefs of a diverse population of high school students. The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the relationship between learning program and student self-efficacy (both academic and college-going), while also exploring the presence…

This article presents a new measure of curricular intensity that is objective, parsimonious, clearly defined, replicable, and comparable over time for use by researchers interested in examining trends, causes, and outcomes of high school course taking. After proposing a reduced-form version of Adelman's curricular intensity index comprised of…

This book walks readers through the stages of the high school college prep pipeline that introduce interlocked structural barriers to student achievement. The author shows how these barriers reinforce segregated structures that unfairly distribute the public good of education to some students and not others. Price argues that the college prep…

The aim of this paper is to look at the impact of recent reforms to the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) and Advanced Subsidiary (AS) curriculum in the UK, which included the teaching of literature in the language classroom in an attempt to make the study of languages more attractive and to better prepare students for university.…

This quantitative study examined factors that determined if economically disadvantaged and English language learner students graduating from traditional or early college high school were college and career ready. Effective data was collected from campuses in the Region One educational service center in South Texas. The study was guided by the…

Although several studies have reported Advanced Placement (AP) growth, little attention has been paid to school- and classroom-level strategies that encourage students to enroll into AP courses and complete AP exams. This study focused on determining goals emphasized, and strategies used, by science and math teachers (N = 143). Results indicated…

Employers in today's global economy value a range of postsecondary credentials--industry-valued credentials, postsecondary certificates, associate degrees, bachelor's degrees and advanced degrees-- because they can each signify whether an applicant has the skills employers need. While debates in the past have dwelled on college vs. career, today's…

The AP Capstone Diploma ™ program was launched in 2014 to offer high school students an opportunity to learn interdisciplinary critical thinking and collaboration skills and complete college-level academic research by means of two Advanced Placement® (AP® ) courses: AP Seminar and AP Research. In these early years of the AP Capstone program,…

Exacerbated by the pandemic, the decline in Indiana's college-going rate for recent high school graduates has accelerated. This presents stark challenges which must be addressed with urgency and thoughtfulness. Fewer Hoosiers are pursuing education or training after high school. The state's college-going rate fell from 59 percent for the high…

The purpose of this study was to explore 11th- and 12th-grade students' expectations in the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program (IB DP) at a high school in the Western United States. Study participants included 92 of 94 high school students currently enrolled in the IB DP. Each participant completed a researcher-created, paper survey with…

Students of color in the United States have historically been denied access to a college-preparatory mathematics education largely due to tracking policies and practices. To address this historical injustice, a partnership was developed between a highly diverse high school and higher education to initiate a collaborative process to detrack the…

Today, millions of high school students are taking the opportunity to gain higher education credits as well as a sample of the college experience through dual or concurrent enrollment, Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB), or middle and early colleges. Essentially, dual or concurrent enrollment, as well as AP and IB courses,…