Before 2024, students at Whiteland High School seeking advanced curriculum could already choose between Advanced Placement and dual credit courses.

So when school officials considered adding a new curriculum backed by the University of Cambridge in 2024, they wanted to address the needs of a specific subset of students: the community’s growing population of non-English speaking students, who represent around 14% of the district and speak 64 languages.

They found that the essay-based test in Cambridge courses allowed students to demonstrate their mastery of advanced content while they were still learning English, said assistant superintendent Cassandra Shipp.

“We don’t want to limit our students who we know are bright,” Shipp said. “Regardless of whether they’re taking AP or Cambridge, our students have to be global competitors.”

Indiana wants more schools to offer Cambridge STEM courses through $500,000 in grant funding earmarked in the latest state budget. The long-term goal is to create another way for students to earn an advanced diploma that leads to automatic college admission. Schools can apply for grant funding that will help pay for teacher training and program fees.

In February, the state’s department of education awarded six schools — including Whiteland — funds to introduce courses like Thinking Skills, Computer Science, Biology, and Chemistry. Now, it has opened another round of funding to allow up to 16 more public and private schools to start offering these classes.

What are Cambridge Courses?

Cambridge courses come from the University of Cambridge in England through its .

Though the courses are new to Indiana, and less common nationally than Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate classes, they’re offered in approximately two dozen other states and 160 countries.

The offerings from Cambridge are a little like both IB and AP programs: Like IB, Cambridge offers programs that begin in elementary school and go through high school; but like AP, it also offers standalone courses.

Passing an A-level Cambridge course in an Indiana high school is equivalent to passing one in the U.K. or Singapore and indicates that a student is ready for college-level coursework, said Mark Cavone, the North American regional director for international education at Cambridge University Press and Assessment. While not necessarily aimed at multilingual students, some features make the courses a particularly good fit for them, like the incorporation of , a neutral form of English.

While most Cambridge courses are aimed at students going to college, the organization also offers some career-oriented courses, such as in marine science and travel and tourism, Cavone said.

“The thing that keeps us up at night is that we want kids to be college and career ready by the time they graduate high school,” Cavone said.

How can Indiana students use Cambridge courses?

Through the expansion, more Indiana schools will be able to allow students to earn the Cambridge Advanced International Certificate of Education, or AICE, diploma, Cavone said.

The AICE diploma is one of the ways that students can earn an Honors Enrollment Seal in the state’s , which guarantees students admission to any of the state’s public universities. Students can also earn this seal by earning an associate degree, IB diploma, AP Scholar with Distinction, or other advanced pathway. And schools receive a $2,495 bonus for every student who earns an honors enrollment seal.

Cavone said Indiana’s diploma redesign and education choice policies made it a good fit for the organization’s expansion.

Currently, Cambridge courses are available mainly in traditional public high schools, Cavone said, along with some charter and private schools. The first round of grant funding from the Indiana Department of Education was awarded to four public high schools, one charter school, and one private school:

• Whiteland Community High School at the Clark Pleasant Community School Corporation. The district also offers Cambridge English courses in middle and high school that are not backed by the grant.
• North Central High School in the Metropolitan School District of Washington Township
• Terre Haute South Vigo High School at the Vigo County School Corporation
• East Chicago Central High School at the School City of East Chicago
• GEO Next Generation Academy
• Al-Haqq Foundation Academy

Schools interested in applying for the IDOE grant should fill out before July 17.

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Advanced coursework can include International Baccalaureate, dual high school-college enrollment, or Advanced Placement (AP) courses, with AP being the most popular and widely available mechanism. Taking such courses helps students gain college credits while still in high school, earn admission to top colleges, and flourish in the work world.

Yet a recently released report from the Center for American Progress  that Black, Indigenous, and rural students were far more likely to attend schools offering fewer AP courses than schools attended by their White, Asian, and suburban counterparts.

And even when students have similar access to AP courses, lower percentages of Black, Indigenous, and rural students enroll in the courses and pass them. In high schools offering 18 or more AP courses, White students taking at least one AP exam had an average passing rate of 72 percent. For Black students in these circumstances, the average passing rate was 42 percent. Latino students are not experiencing the same gaps in access as other ethnic and racial groups, but they do have lower enrollment and pass rates.

This speaks to what many educators and advocates already understand: Equitable access and success in advanced coursework requires more than availability and there are policy investments that schools and districts can leverage to help students succeed in advanced courses.

The first is creating a national database on student participation and performance in advanced coursework (including dual-enrollment courses offered at local universities), disaggregated by race. Currently, no comprehensive national dataset exists for multiple dual enrollment options, and individual state report cards vary greatly in what is publicly reported.

Much of the research on advanced coursework, by default, is limited to AP participation and performance because that is the only data that is easily aggregated, transparent, and comparable among all 50 states and Washington, D.C. Future iterations of the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection should also report on IB and dual-enrollment participation and performance.

Another crucial investment is to remove entry barriers to AP and other advanced courses.  and subjective gatekeeping measures have a way of creeping into the enrollment process for advanced courses through overreliance on teacher referrals or counselor recommendations. This often results in students being overlooked for enrollment in  at the elementary school level or  at the high school level.

Districts have succeeded in combating this through the use of universal screening for gifted-and-talented programs and automatic-enrollment or academic-acceleration policies for AP courses. Automatic-enrollment policies,  in several states, require that students who meet benchmark proficiency levels on statewide examinations be automatically enrolled in the next highest available class, including advanced courses, though they can opt out.

In addition to making sure students are properly identified for enrollment in advanced courses, it is important to ensure students are prepared to handle the content and demands of the coursework. That takes regular communication and lesson planning among elementary, middle, and high school educators to map out common instructional vocabulary and concepts, known as .

Moreover, supporting students and teachers during their experiences in advanced courses is critical. One strategy that many states and districts embrace is to  associated with taking an AP or IB exam. Additionally, some schools are experiencing success through creating , where junior and senior AP students advise and tutor younger high school students to make sure they are setting themselves up for success.

Finally, both teachers and students benefit immensely from the creation of regional and statewide . This can take different forms, but usually involve time outside the regular school day when students and teachers can refine their skills, learn from experts, and get real-time feedback on teaching and learning.

None of these strategies alone can surmount the stubborn and persistent inequities in participation and success in AP courses. But when done in concert and with dedicated leadership, they can help broaden access to and success in advanced coursework.

This article originally appeared .