This book takes a fresh look at programs for advanced studies for high school students in the United States, with a particular focus on the Advanced Placement and the International Baccalaureate programs, and asks how advanced studies can be significantly improved in general. It also examines two of the core issues surrounding these programs: they can have a profound impact on other components of the education system and participation in the programs has become key to admission at selective institutions of higher education. By looking at what could enhance the quality of high school advanced study programs as well as what precedes and comes after these programs, this report provides teachers, parents, curriculum developers, administrators, college science and mathematics faculty, and the educational research community with a detailed assessment that can be used to guide change within advanced study programs.

PARENTING NEVER ENDS. From the founders of the #1 site for parents of teens and young adults comes an essential guide for building strong relationships with your teens and preparing them to successfully launch into adulthood The high school and college years: an extended roller coaster of academics, friends, first loves, first break-ups, driver’s ed, jobs, and everything in between. Kids are constantly changing and how we parent them must change, too. But how do we stay close as a family as our lives move apart? Enter the co-founders of Grown and Flown, Lisa Heffernan and Mary Dell Harrington. In the midst of guiding their own kids through this transition, they launched what has become the largest website and online community for parents of fifteen to twenty-five year olds. Now they’ve compiled new takeaways and fresh insights from all that they’ve learned into this handy, must-have guide. Grown and Flown is a one-stop resource for parenting teenagers, leading up to—and through—high school and those first years of independence. It covers everything from the monumental (how to let your kids go) to the mundane (how to shop for a dorm room). Organized by topic—such as academics, anxiety and mental health, college life—it features a combination of stories, advice from professionals, and practical sidebars. Consider this your parenting lifeline: an easy-to-use manual that offers support and perspective. Grown and Flown is required reading for anyone looking to raise an adult with whom you have an enduring, profound connection.

The Teaching Success Guide for the Advanced Placement Classroom series helps teachers motivate students above and beyond the norm by introducing investigative, hands-on activities, including debates, role-plays, experiments, projects, and more, all based on Advanced Placement and college-level standards for learning. Julius Caesar allows teachers to take a fresh approach to one of Shakespeare's most famous plays by moving beyond basic history and memorization of quotes. Students will engage in performance approaches to the text, recreate the story's events in a news show format, participate in collaborative literature workshop activities, and debate whether Caesar could have prevented his assassination. The author also provides easy-to-use discussions of Shakespeare's language and how Julius Caesar can be studied from different critical perspectives. Grades 7-12

"More than three million high-school students take five million Advanced Placement exams each May, yet remarkably little is known about how this sixty-year-old, privately-run program, has become one of U.S. education's greatest successes. From its mid-century origin as a tiny option for privileged kids from posh schools, AP has also emerged as a booster rocket into college for hundreds of thousands of disadvantaged youngsters. It challenges smart kids, affects school ratings, affords rewarding classroom challenges to great teachers, tunes up entire schools, and draws vast support from philanthropists, education reformers and policymakers. AP stands as America's foremost source of college-level academics for high school pupils. Praised for its rigor and integrity, more than 22,000 schools now offer some-or many-of its thirty-eight subjects, from Latin to calculus, art to computer science. But challenges abound today, as AP faces stiffening competition (especially dual credit), curriculum wars, charges of elitism, misgivings by elite schools and universities, and the arduous work of infusing rigor into schools that lack it and academic success into young people unaccustomed to it. In today's polarized climate, can Advanced Placement maintain its lofty standards and overcome the hostility, politics and despair that have sunk so many other bold education ventures? Advanced Placement: The Unsung Success Story of American Education is a unique account-richly documented and thoroughly readable-of the AP program in all its strengths and travails, written by two of America's most respected education analysts"--

Completely updated to cover critical new changes to FAFSA deadlines and college application procedures, this revised edition of Get It Together for College covers everything from how to look for colleges to what to take to the dorm. Checklists, timelines, and FAQs are presented in a practical, quick format that helps students relieve stress and take control of the process. Features: • complete junior-senior year calendar showing what to do and when to do it • tips on how to wisely use social media to research colleges • best ways to prepare for college admission tests, including the redesigned SAT • step-by-step walk-through of the new FAFSA financial aid form • how to put an art portfolio together, or prepare for a music audition • how to get recommendations • journal pages for campus visits and college fairs Students and parents recognize the College Board and its #1 college planning website, collegeboard.com, as providers of clear, easy-to-use tools for college planning. More than two million students visit collegeboard.com each month.

Cover all the essential content and prepare students for the AP English Language and Composition exam through a perfect blend of engaging nonfiction readings, written by both classic and contemporary writers, and practical writing instruction. Scaffolded activities develop student competence in close reading, rhetorical analysis, and critical composition and revision skills. Students learn to develop key rhetoric, argument, and synthesis skills and apply strategic stylistic choices at the college level. Track student progress with unit reviews, assessments, and a full-length AP practice exam modeled on the new course and exam description.