A Brief History of the Advanced Placement …（短暂的历史跳级生u2026）.pdfVIP

® A Brief History of the Advanced Placement Program ® ® From modest beginnings at the midpoint of the twentieth century, the Advanced Placement Program (AP ) has grown to be the premier program advancing educational excellence in secondary schools across the United States. AP courses offer rigorous college-level curricula and assessments to students in high school. The program sets the standard for academic achievement in 34 courses and offers extensive teacher professional development. An AP Chinese Language and Culture course will be added in 2006. This year, more than one million students took over 1.74 million end-of-course AP Exams. A Pilot Program Is Born In the early part of the twentieth century, the gap between secondary and higher education widened. Following World War II, many Americans realized that this trend had to be reversed. Responding to the need for a better-educated populace, the Ford Foundation created the Fund for the Advancement of Education. In two studies supported by the fund, educators recommended that secondary schools and colleges work together to avoid repetition in course work at the high school and college levels and to allow motivated students to work at the height of their capabilities and advance as quickly as possible. One study, conducted by educators from three elite prep schools—Andover, Exeter, and Lawrenceville—and three of the country’s most prestigious colleges—Harvard, Princeton, and Yale—urged schools and colleges to see themselves as “two halves of a common enterprise.” The report recommended that secondary schools recruit imaginative teachers, that they encourage high school seniors to engage in independent study and colle