Teaching students to use news and information media ("information literacy") is an important aspect of civic education, especially now that news sources are rapidly changing and fragmenting along ideological lines. Information literacy is required in several state standards, and it is also frequently defined as an important "21st…

In 2002, the Stark County Preschool through College (P-16) Compact set the goal of achieving an 80% college going rate. Such a goal seemed both audacious and daunting for a community where in 2001 only 17.9% of the adults held a Bachelor's Degree, or higher, and where only 49% of all high school graduates went directly to college. Nine years have…

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact on undergraduate college admissions decisions at selective U.S. colleges and universities of student enrolment in the Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB) programs of international schools. A total of 30 interviews were conducted by the researcher with admissions personnel…

This article posits that world-class education is international education, as defined by UNESCO, and presents International Baccalaureate (IB) programmes as examples of this phenomenon. It begins with the IB's 1960s origins in international schools, which educated the children of globally mobile parents who worked principally in the UN and its…

Over the last four decades, International Baccalaureate (IB) schools have become increasingly important in the global market of international education. This is especially evident in Asia Pacific, which has evidenced the fastest growth in IB schools, as well as international schools more generally, across the world over the last decade. Despite…

Our study analyzes the impact of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme, a college-preparatory educational program designed for higher-achieving students, on high school academic achievement in Chicago Public Schools. We exploit exogenous variation in the offering of the program across schools over time with a difference-in-differences…

The Advanced Placement Psychology exam is one of the fastest growing exams offered by the College Board. The average percent of change in the number of students taking this exam over the past five years is 12.4%. With 238,962 students taking the exam in 2013, the AP Psychology exam is the sixth largest exam, surpassing AP Biology and AP World…

In an effort to address severe budget deficits at both the state and local levels, schools and educational programs are being asked to trim budgets. The Advanced Placement Program is one program that will certainly be scrutinized. This article presents a general overview of AP social studies, a brief history of the AP social studies program, and…

The major purpose of this study is to examine the quality of ratings assigned to CR (constructed-response) questions in large-scale assessments from the perspective of Rasch Measurement Theory. Rasch Measurement Theory provides a framework for the examination of rating scale category structure that can yield useful information for interpreting the…

Development of benchtop, portable Fourier transform nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and infrared (IR) spectrometers has opened up opportunities for creating university-high school partnerships that provide high school students with hands-on experience with NMR and IR instruments. With recent changes to the international baccalaureate chemistry…

Students in the Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) Class of 2016 continued to outperform students in the state of Maryland on Advanced Placement (AP) examinations based on AP results released by the Maryland State Department of Education and the College Board. The number and percentage of AP exam participation and performance for the State of…

We describe the content and organization of a series of day-long field trips to a university for high school students that connect chemistry content to issues of sustainability. The seven laboratory activities are in the areas of environmental degradation, energy production, and green chemistry. The laboratory procedures have been modified from…

In the present study, I analyze ethnographic data from a year-long study of two Advanced Placement (AP) Biology classes that enrolled students with diverse racial, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds. Specifically, I consider participation, positioning, and learning of newcomer Korean students in the focal classes. Building on the notion of figured…

This paper considers why the International Baccalaureate--a prestigious international education program--is currently being incorporated into magnet schools in the United States. Since the mid-1980s, when school choice policy took root the number of magnet schools climbed and a growing number of them incorporated the International Baccalaureate…

In a 2010 address to the College Board, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan laid out a vision for high school that advances the Obama administration's goal of the U.S. once again leading the world in educational attainment. There is no grade in which the magnitude and complexity of this shift becomes clearer than in senior year. Historically,…