The first book to tell the story of the Advanced Placement program-the gold standard for academic rigor in U.S. high schools and beyondThe Advanced Placement program stands as the foremost source of college-level academics for millions of high school students in the United States and beyond. More than 22,000 schools now participate in it, across nearly forty subjects, from Latin and art to calculus and computer science. Yet remarkably little has been known about how this nongovernmental program became one of the greatest success stories in K-12 education-until now. In Learning in the Fast Lane, Chester Finn and Andrew Scanlan, two of America's most respected education analysts, offer a groundbreaking account of one of the most important educational initiatives of our time.