From the Committee of Ten to the College Board

Background/Context Today we have moved from the debate of student opportunity to post-secondary educational setting to 100% access. That is, today's high school settings have been charged with preparing “college ready” graduates. Educational policy has leveraged mandates and sanctions as a mechanism to improve college placement rates, especially in high schools with a high percentage of low-income students. However, little empirical evidence exists to assist us in understanding how college readiness is actualized for low-income students. Focus of Study The purpose of this study was to identify specific strategies that schools employ to raise college application and attendance rates for low-income students. Research Design This study investigated 18 College Board Inspiration Award winning or honorable mention high schools across the United States. Phone interviews with all 18 schools informed the selection of five case study high schools. Data collection included interviews and observations with high school educators, parents, students, and other community members. Findings In this study, we describe evidence within and across the five case schools using a framework that was generated from the first phase of this study. These schools effectively improved college readiness by developing collaborative practices around: (1) Program Management, (2) External Partnerships, (3) Leadership, (4) College-focused Intervention Strategies, (5) Achievement-oriented School Culture, (6) Parental Outreach, (7) Systemic, Multileveled Intervention Strategies, (8) Use of Data, (9) Development and Implementation of Inclusive School Policies, and (10) Routinizing or Offloading Routine or Mundane Tasks. Conclusions/Implications This study operationalizes what effective practices look like in high schools with low-income students. The findings move beyond normative models to be implemented across sites to illustrations of exemplar practices that can guide collaborative efforts to enact the specific tasks necessary to improve college readiness for students.

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The Other Hall Effect: College Board Physics

The Physics Teacher ◽

10.1119/1.4818378 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 51 (6) ◽

pp. 364-367

Author(s):

Keith Sheppard ◽

Amanda M. Gunning

Keyword(s):

Hall Effect ◽

The Other ◽

College Board

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Growing AP in Gotham

Learning in the Fast Lane ◽

10.23943/princeton/9780691178721.003.0006 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 72-93

Author(s):

Chester E. Finn ◽

Andrew E. Scanlan

Keyword(s):

High School ◽

New York ◽

Advanced Placement ◽

Major Change ◽

Department Of Education ◽

School Reforms ◽

Fort Worth ◽

College Board ◽

Early Results ◽

Growth Initiative

This chapter assesses how the nation's largest school district, New York City, is tackling its own Advanced Placement (AP) challenge. In 2018, the city's Department of Education (DOE) housed more AP students than all but a dozen states. It is therefore not surprising that the challenge of effecting any major change in how AP works in Gotham is gargantuan when placed alongside a city like Fort Worth. Yet the story of AP in the Big Apple shares many of the same dynamics seen in Texas. As recently as 2015–16, more than a hundred of the city's four-hundred-plus high schools offered no AP courses at all—and many of those schools are located in poor neighborhoods full of African American, Hispanic, and immigrant youngsters. Over the years, municipal leaders sought in various ways to rectify this obvious inequity, even as they undertook myriad other high school reforms. One such growth initiative came in September of 2013, when the DOE joined forces with the College Board and the National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI) to launch an “AP Expansion” program meant to last three years. Two years later, Mayor Bill de Blasio declared—as part of his own ambitious education initiatives—that AP would be introduced into every high school that did not already have it. The chapter then analyzes in detail these two citywide initiatives, including their early results and some lessons that may be drawn from their experience to date.

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Growth Industry

Learning in the Fast Lane ◽

10.23943/princeton/9780691178721.003.0004 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 32-50

Author(s):

Chester E. Finn ◽

Andrew E. Scanlan

Keyword(s):

Advanced Placement ◽

Potential Contribution ◽

College Board ◽

Five Factors ◽

Multiple Dimensions ◽

Recent Developments ◽

Multiple Issues ◽

Best Teachers ◽

Admissions Process ◽

Middle Class Families

This chapter looks at more recent developments and the present state of Advanced Placement (AP). Advanced Placement's recent decades are notable for the program's stunning growth on multiple dimensions. Many more schools, students, and subjects joined in, and they did so at accelerating rates. At least five factors have fueled the AP program's expansion in recent years. First, the use of AP participation to rate and rank high schools has impelled more of them to increase their student numbers so as to boost their standings. Second, schools and districts were induced to add more AP courses because they wanted to challenge their students intellectually, tone up their curricula, hold on to their best teachers, attract and retain more middle-class families, draw more sophisticated employers to the area, and respond to demands from parents of gifted kids. Third, the country's mounting concern about equalizing opportunity for poor and minority youngsters and getting more of them into and through college inevitably drew greater attention to AP's potential contribution. Fourth, stiffening competition to enter top colleges and more scrambling by kids to advantage themselves in the admissions process also continued to pump air into the AP balloon. The fifth factor is the forceful marketing and lobbying activities of the College Board itself. As AP has expanded, it has done so unevenly, however, giving rise to multiple issues of fairness. The chapter then considers these inequalities.

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Writing-Across-the-IT/MIS Curriculum

Advances in Information and Communication Technology Education - Integrating Information & Communications Technologies Into the Classroom ◽

10.4018/978-1-59904-258-9.ch006 ◽

2011 ◽

pp. 83-98

Author(s):

Stephanie J. Etter ◽

Jeffrey W. Merhout

Keyword(s):

Information Systems ◽

College Graduates ◽

Information Source ◽

Writing Skills ◽

Public Information ◽

Popular Literature ◽

Web Pages ◽

Writing Assignments ◽

College Board ◽

Achievable Goal

Popular literature not only claims that college graduates are entering the workforce lacking sufficient writing skills but that companies must spend billions of dollars annually to train employees how to communicate effectively through writing (Canavor & Meirowitz, 2005; College Board, 2004). While writing-across-the-curriculum is not a new concept, it seems that only certain areas of the curriculum have adopted it. The integration of writing into the MIS/IT curriculum is an important and achievable goal necessary for the overall development of students in Information Technology or Management Information Systems degree programs. While traditional IT/MIS programs rely heavily on technology-based courses, we argue that these technology courses must also promote effective writing habits needed for career growth in the IT/MIS fields. As business proposals, newsletters, and reports are frequently being written by those in the Information Systems Department of a corporation, rather than by those in the Communication Department, it is increasingly important that we prepare IT/MIS students with the appropriate writing skills needed for their careers. For example, in many cases we prepare students to create web pages, a highly public information source, without providing any instruction on writing within the IT/MIS curriculum. This paper illustrates how writing assignments can be used in many MIS/IT classes.

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