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The Advanced Placement (AP) program has undergone two major reforms in recent decades: the first aimed at increasing access and the second at increasing relevance. Both initiatives are partially designed to increase the number of high school students from low-income backgrounds who have access to college-level coursework. Yet critics argue that schools in less-resourced communities are unable to implement AP at the level expected by its founders. We offer the first model of the components inherent in a well-implemented AP science course and the first evaluation of AP implementation with a focus on public schools newly offering the inquiry-based version of AP Biology and Chemistry courses. We find that these frontier schools were able to implement most, but not all, of the key components of an AP science course.

The academic performance of foreign-born youth in the United States is well studied, yet little is known about whether and how foreign-born students influence their classmates. In this article, I develop a set of expectations regarding the potential consequences of immigrant integration across schools, with a distinction between the effects of sharing schools with immigrants who are designated as English language learners (ELL) and those who are not. I then use administrative data on multiple cohorts of Florida public high school students to estimate the effect of immigrant shares on immigrant and native-born students' academic performance. The identification strategy pays careful attention to the selection problem by estimating the effect of foreign-born peers from deviations in the share foreign-born across cohorts of students attending the same school in different years. The assumption underlying this approach is that students choose schools based on the composition of the entire school, not on the composition of each entering cohort. The results of the analysis, which hold under several robustness checks, indicate that foreign-born peers (both those who are ELL and those who are non-ELL) have no effect on their high school classmates' academic performance.

Using panel data from a census of public school students in the state of Florida, the authors examine the associations between students' high school course-taking in various subjects and their 10th-grade test scores, high school graduation, entry into postsecondary institutions, and postsecondary performance. The authors use propensity score matching (based on 8thgrade test scores, other student characteristics, and school effects) within groups of students matched on the composition of the students' course-taking in other subjects to estimate the differences in outcomes for students who take rigorous courses in a variety of subjects. The authors find substantial significant differences in outcomes for those who take rigorous courses, and these estimated effects are often larger for disadvantaged youth and students attending disadvantaged schools.

University administrators often strive for racial, socioeconomic, and geographic diversity in their student populations. Today, administrators face a new demographic challenge as women increasingly outnumber men in applications, enrollments, and graduation rates. This article discusses the causes and potential consequences of the growing gender imbalance and the legality of admissions policies that attempt to restore balance by giving preference to males. Using multiple analytic approaches, we test whether a public institution with increasing female enrollments responded by giving preferences in admissions to males. We conclude with insights for administrators and researchers.

This paper explores the effect of the human capital characteristics of co-ethnic immigrant communities on foreign-born students’ math achievement. We use data on New York City public school foreign-born students from 39 countries merged with census data on the characteristics of the immigrant household heads in the city from each nation of origin and estimate regressions of student achievement on co-ethnic immigrant community characteristics, controlling for student and school attributes. We find that the income and size of the co-ethnic immigrant community has no effect on immigrant student achievement, while the percent of college graduates may have a small positive effect. In addition, children in highly English proficient immigrant communities test slightly lower than children from less proficient communities. The results suggest that there may be some protective factors associated with immigrant community members’ education levels and use of native languages.

Many English Language Learners (ELLs) migrate to the United States at older ages and administrators must choose a grade in which to place these new entrants as soon as they register for school. In this study, I estimate the effect of grade placement on the short-term academic performance of ELLs who enroll in the Miami-Dade County Public School system between the ages of 7 and 12 using a district policy that determines grade placement decisions for newcomers by their birthdate relative to September 1. The results suggest some benefits to being placed in the lower of the two grades for students' achievement in mathematics, but no signs of benefits on other academic outcomes, including reading achievement, grade promotion, and exit from ELL status.

Objective. In 1975, the Puerto Rican community successfully sued the New York City Department of Education, mandating the city to provide bilingual education to its Spanish-speaking English learner (EL) students. The settlement, known as the \"Aspira Consent Decree,\" has been amended over time to include EL students of all language groups and now requires public schools that have at least 15 students of the same language group in two contiguous grades to offer bilingual education. Yet observational studies of bilingual education classrooms in the city document that Spanish-speaking EL students may be the only language group that receives nativelanguage instruction, while students from other language groups who are enrolled in bilingual education primarily receive English instruction. Method. I use this difference in treatment dosage to estimate the effect of bilingual education on the time that it takes students to learn English. Results and Conclusions. Students who enroll in bilingual education classrooms learn English less quickly, but the effect of bilingual education is the same for Spanish-speaking and other students, implying that negative selection mechanisms are at work.

This article examines the male disadvantage in grade point average, credits earned, and persistence in college. Using data on enrollees in Florida and Texas fouryear colleges to decompose gender differentials in the first semester, changes in the differentials between semesters, and persistence through college, we find that males earn lower GPAs and credits in their first semester of college largely because they arrive with lower high school grades. After the first semester, males fall further behind their female counterparts in grades and credits. Females' better high school grades explain some of the widened gender disparity in performance but differences in college course-taking and majors also explain gender gaps in credits, grades, persistence, and graduation.

This article examines the factors that determine a high school's probability of offering Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) courses. The likelihood that a school offers advanced courses, and the number of sections that it offers, is largely driven by having a critical mass of students who enter high school with eighth-grade test scores that are far above average. The number and qualifications of the instructional staff, in contrast, play a very small role. The results suggest that the willingness of schools to offer advanced courses is driven by real, perceived, or created student demand and that there may be few resource constraints that prevent schools from supplying advanced courses.

Using the literature on achievement differences as a framework and motivation, along with data on New York City students, we examine nativity differences in students' rates of attendance, school mobility, school system exit, and special education participation. The results indicate that, holding demographic and school characteristics constant, foreign-born have higher attendance rates and lower rates of participation in special education than native-born. Among first graders, immigrants are also more likely to transfer schools and exit the school system between years than native-born, yet the patterns are different among older students. We also identify large variation according to birth region.