This case explores Crabapple Middle, a struggling urban school in the midst of a transition that seeks new leadership that can overcome the challenges of two sub-cultures that divide the school and community. In an effort to address issues of low academic performance and negative community perception, an International Baccalaureate magnet program…

Completing Advanced Placement (AP) coursework is an important part of the selective college admissions process, and access to AP coursework can be viewed as a measure of equal opportunity. Relatively little research has fully examined how access to AP coursework is mediated by school characteristics. Rural schools are at a particular disadvantage…

"Perspectives on Urban Geography" constitutes a major part of the AP Human Geography course outline. In this article, urban core revitalization and rising suburban poverty are considered as two challenges facing cities in developed countries; and industrialization and the growth of megacities as two challenges facing cities in developing…

International Mindedness is an overarching construct related to multilingualism, intercultural understanding and global engagement (Hill, 2012). The concept is central to the International Baccalaureate (IB) and sits at the heart of its education policies and programmes. The aim of this research study was to examine systematically how schools…

Oregon has invested resources to expand access to accelerated learning programs (i.e., educational experiences that allow students to earn college credit in high school), and education leaders are committed to ensuring they are sustainable, equitable, and effective. Conducted in partnership with practitioners from secondary and postsecondary…

Over the years, the nation's large urban school districts have consistently learned from the progress of their peer districts across the country. In 2002, the board of directors of the Council of the Great City Schools (Council) authorized what became known as the Performance Measurement and Benchmarking Project to develop and implement key…

Beginning in 2006, Maryland has led the nation as the state with the highest percentage of graduates who earned one or more Advanced Placement (AP) exam scores of 3 or higher. Students in the Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Schools (MCPS) Class of 2014 continued to outperform students in the state of Maryland on AP examinations based on AP…

Strong academic performance in college, as measured by first-year grades, is important for a host of reasons, but perhaps the most critical reason is that students who perform well in their first year of college are more likely to earn a bachelor's degree (Adelman, 2006). Research shows that Advanced Placement Program® (AP®) students, particularly…

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…

It was years after this author's AP Art History course in high school, and two years after college. She and some friends decided to fill a day during the Thanksgiving visits appreciating fine art. Prior to that AP course her senior year of high school, touring an art museum had seemed like the equivalent of going to the dentist. But after…

For a long time, Advanced Placement and other advanced-level U.S. history courses at the high school level were modeled after the collegiate survey course. However, the last two decades or more have seen some significant changes in the teaching of U.S. history at undergraduate and high school levels. Many of these changes at the high school level…

Although Advanced Placement (AP) courses are intended to promote rigorous, college-level instruction for high school students, AP tests have been criticized for privileging breadth over depth. In response to both this criticism and to the 2002 National Research Council (NRC) report on STEM education, AP Biology, Chemistry, and Physics curricula…

This chapter reviews youth mental health interventions that promote behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement among school-aged youth within a three-tier framework. We first summarize empirical relationships between positive indicators of student engagement (e.g., subjective well-being; SWB) and negative indicators (e.g., internalizing and…

This article explores the readiness and development for universities of students who have been educated through an international program in Turkey. It compares the academic performance and skills of students who attended the Ministry of National Education High School Program (MONEP) to students who attended both MONEP and the International…

The 2013 UN Human Development report predicts the middle classes of "The South" a five-fold increase by 2030. Globalisation has resulted in national conceptions of business: education and identity being in flux. Emerging middle classes of the South are already embracing international forms of education for instrumental reasons of…