The American High School and the Talented Student is a book for parents and educators that deals with the major problem of our time: how any ordinary high school, large or small, can better educate its superior students. For it is this group, and this group alone, properly identified and trained, that can produce the original and unconventional thinkers needed today. Advanced Placement is a program based on individual differences, manageable even by a single teacher, and particularly suited to that peculiarly American institution—the comprehensive high school.

How can you set up an advanced placement program in your high school? How can it be fitted into the regular high-school program? At what grade level should it be offered? What subjects should you begin with? What tests should be used in selecting students? How should the teachers be chosen? What should be done about grades? What chance does the student have of getting college credit for the work he has successfully completed? What is the cost?

Author Frank O. Copley, who served as high-school consultant for the Honors Council at the University of Michigan, draws upon extensive firsthand experience in the teaching field, including his own observation of schools that have had advanced placement in operation over the past five years. The result is a practical guide that enables parents, teachers, and principals to help guide today's academically talented youth to become the intellectual leaders of tomorrow.