Advanced Placement is a good way for many kids to get a head start on college. On episode 42, Andrew Scanlan and Chester E Finn, Jr. of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, answer questions about the history of AP, where it’s going, and where kids may encounter difficulties.

About the guests - Chester E. Finn, Jr. is Distinguished Senior Fellow and President Emeritus at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, and a Senior Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution. He served as Fordham’s President from 1997 to 2014, after many earlier roles in education, academe and government. Over the years he has served in various capacities, including Counselor to the Secretary at the U.S. Department of Education and Staff Assistant to the President of the United States.

Finn currently serves on the National Council on Teacher Quality, the Core Knowledge Foundation, and Maryland’s Commission on Innovation and Excellence in Education.

Author of over twenty books, Finn is co-author with Andrew Scanlan of Learning in the Fast Lane: The Past, Present & Future of Advanced Placement, which has just been released, and Failing Our Brightest Kids: The Global Challenge of Educating High-Ability Students, co-authored with Brandon L. Wright.

Andrew Scanlan is a research and policy associate at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Growing up in Ireland, he graduated from Trinity College Dublin with a B.A. in European Studies before spending two years living in Honduras as a second grade classroom teacher and school administrator for Bilingual Education for Central America (BECA).

He earned an M.A. in International Child Studies from King's College London, with a focus on children’s rights, education, and child migration. He is co-author, with Chester E. Finn, Jr., of Learning in the Fast Lane: The Past, Present, and Future of Advanced Placement.

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