Every year, millions of students take Advanced Placement (AP) exams hoping to score enough points to earn college credit and save on their tuition bill. But are they getting a real college education? The College Board says that AP classes and exams make the AP program more accessible and represent a step forward for educational justice. But the…

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…

After World War II there was a push to reinvigorate the economies and industries of Western Europe, and to find methods to avoid the outbreak of more wars in the region. As a result, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was founded in 1952 (European Coal and Steel Community, 2016) an important step towards the full European Union (EU), led…

Over the past fifteen years, AP Human Geography has grown in numbers and spread to almost every state. This article synopsizes the early history of the subject, summarizes the course and the exam, highlights positive impacts on the discipline of geography, and focuses on the following three issues: teachers who come to the course having majored in…

Morris Jeff Community School is a brand-new, ability-inclusive, intentionally diverse charter in the Mid-City area of New Orleans, Louisiana. In a city where the educational landscape is dominated by other charter schools, Morris Jeff stands out for its International Baccalaureate curriculum, dedication to ability inclusion and diversity,…

The International Baccalaureate[R] (IB) examination system has grown exponentially in the United States from 268 schools involved in 1999 to 1,090 schools in 2009. The fact that 49,100 students of a total of 87,800 students in 122 countries were from U.S. schools in 2009 has posed problems in strategic planning, assessment and training, the…

The International Baccalaureate (IB) Middle Years Programme (MYP) was first created in 1980. This article charts its historical origins and growth. It offers a critical overview of the operation of the MYP revealing both its geographical distribution disparities and the current picture in terms of external moderation of student work. There are…

The International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme provides an academically challenging curriculum that when combined with moral and religious formation prepares graduates of Catholic secondary schools to succeed in college and to live as Christian citizens in an interconnected global society. Although the financial cost of the program is high,…

Although institutional recognition of high school psychology is fairly recent, psychology and psychological subject matters have a history dating to at least the 1830s. By the middle of the twentieth century, high school psychology courses existed in nearly all U.S. states, and enrollments grew throughout the second half of the century. However,…

The global economy demands globally educated workers and citizens. About 1,300 schools in the United States--and a total of about 3,200 in 141 countries worldwide--have turned to the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum as their ticket to educating students who are worldly-wise. But only 25 or 30 percent of students in IB World Schools are…

The three main programmes of the Geneva-registered International Baccalaureate (IB) have grown enormously since the 1990s and have seemingly found their "home" in the United States. However, the IB has provoked opposition, initially from concerned parents, and lately by conservative agencies. This book charts the growth of the IB in America and…

One area in which the impact of globalisation can be seen is that of education. This article suggests that there are currently two main aspects of the growing internationalisation of education at school level: the internationalisation of national systems of education and the growth in numbers of international schools worldwide. It is the latter…

With an annual yearly growth rate of 9.3 percent over the last two decades, Advanced Placement courses have become a juggernaut in American high school education. AP courses are routinely perceived as an indicator of educational rigor, and many schools push to enroll low-income or minority students in these courses in the hope of preparing them…

A problem with the construction of an inclusive definition of international education is that the word 'international' has a variety of connotations. It is proposed that the term 'international education' is ambiguous because it appears to refer to contrasting usages in educational studies. International education is frequently discussed in the…

Reports on the history of the Advanced Placement (AP) program, considering such issues as the program's initiation, changes within the program, its various problems, growth in Advanced Placement, and the program's reach overseas. (CMK)