On October 8th, Country Day’s Upper School Division Director James Joseph announced that a new set of classes will be incorporated into the Country Day Upper School curriculum starting Fall 2026. Advanced Studies (AS) classes will replace the College Board’s Advanced Placement (AP) courses at LJCDS in order to offer “even deeper, more engaging opportunities.”
The nature of AS classes will represent the highest degree of rigor, akin to the AP classes and will similarly be placed on a 5.0 scale when calculating a student’s grade point average.
AP classes have been present at Country Day and among over 80% of American public high schools for decades. However, since 2018, independent schools across the nation have begun shifting away from AP courses toward non-standardized courses. Private schools in southern California such as Harvard Westlake and Country Day’s neighbor The Bishop’s School have already made the change to remove AP courses from their curriculum. Here at Country Day, the faculty and administration have been discussing the shift for over a decade.
Some students have voiced optimism mixed with tentativeness about this impactful change in the curriculum.“Getting rid of AP’s is a new change, and this new change makes me feel both excited and nervous for the new school year,” said Alice Chen ‘28 in an interview on October 20th. “[AS classes] have a lot of advantages but the transition from AP will certainly pose challenges to a lot of students,” says an anonymous LJCDS Upper Schooler who sat with Alice during the interview.
In The College Perspective, a webinar hosted by Associate Head of School Colleen O’Boyle on the LJCDS website, Senior Associate Director of Admissions at Cornell University Marina Fried reassures LJCDS parents that “the administration, teachers, staff always have [the] children’s best interests in mind.”
“When we know that a school has made a really conscious choice to [move to an] advanced studies curriculum, it’s because you have teachers who are… ready to teach at the college level, who probably have taught at the college level in many cases,” adds Grace James of Washington University in St. Louis during the webinar.
“My role was to create an environment in which we were eager to be curriculum designers, but also ensure that there is rigor in place,” says Ms. O’Boyle. “We had a lot of questions come up in the process and we had to work on developing answers to those questions that would be consistent… it made us make sure that we hadn’t missed anything that would make students not feel fully confident [in the shift].”
Dr. Halloran adds onto Ms. O’Boyle’s remarks: “It’s natural to want to feel confident that your school is setting you up for the best possible opportunities. But I think that an essential part of our community is our faith in each other… the benefit of [having that faith] is that you have a better, more loving, more compassionate, and more united community.”
She adds, “My role in [making the shift to AS classes] was to get the ball rolling. The teachers will pick up those skeletal frameworks and flesh them out in ways that will make them reflective of who the teacher is… what I gave [history teachers] was the breakdown that allows them to move through time using [their area of expertise] as the backbone.”
Officially, course lists and teaching assignments have not been finalized, but a sample catalog of offerings are available on the school website. Both the History and English departments will offer Advanced Studies (to replace AP and honors courses) and college preparatory options.
History educator Mr. Prychun has created an AS seminar to replace AP European History, titled From the Guillotine to the Bomb. This will still be a European History class, but Mr. Prychun intends to “look at the modern era more closely” by starting with the French Revolution in the late 18th century rather than the Black Death of 1346. Like other teachers interviewed for this article, Mr. Prychun anticipates a high level of flexibility in his teaching to accommodate students’ interests as well as his own. The absence of a standardized test at the end of the year allows him to “hone in on” topics in which students display a genuine interest, along with the ability to depart from some standard AP essay formats such as the Document-Based Questions.
Mr. Kullens, who teaches AP World History and Honors United States History, has planned two AS courses. Eastern Roots of Western History, a world history seminar, is designed to replace AP World, and American Remix: Historical Change and Cultural Expression is intended as the new AS United States history course for sophomores.
While the shift to AS brings many changes to how courses will be taught, Mr. Kullens points out that some aspects of his classes will stay the same. “I already bring a lot of culture into my classes now,” he adds, “so getting to build a full course around that lens will be a perfect fit.” Mr. Kullens adds that he looks forward to “slowing the pace enough to let more of that discussion happen” in order to provide students with an environment where they can think aloud alongside taking notes.
The catalog of sample AS courses contains two additional United States history seminars available to juniors and seniors: United States Civil Rights Seminar and The United States Supreme Court. Like From the Guillotine to the Bomb and Eastern Roots of Western History, these two courses include some material which aligns with AP history exams, and students may choose to independently prepare and take those exams.
All current honors and AP-level English courses will be redesigned into proposed AS offerings. Currently, several AS English courses are listed in the sample course catalog. Advanced Studies: Dystopian Fiction will replace the Honors Dystopian Fiction class taught by Mrs. Shaul. Readings include 1984 by George Orwell, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, and other seminal texts. Mr. Peritz, who has designed a new Female Protagonists in Literature AS course, expresses readiness to shift away from AP due to the already flexible nature of AP Literature and Composition, which he currently teaches.
“[The AP Literature test] works more like a sight read for a musician. There’s no textbook involved,” he says, emphasizing the fact that the change to his English class is the lack of a standardized test rather than the happenings in a literature classroom.
Other new Advanced Studies English courses include Making It New – Modernist Literature and Ethnography as Literature, taught to grades 11 or 12, featuring an analysis of modernist writing paired with art and music of the same era. Also on the list, Advanced Studies: Native American Studies features investigations of the cultural histories of First Peoples using literature, primary source documents, and contemporary media.
Like the AS history courses, the descriptions for Dystopian Fiction, Ethnography as Literature, and Modernist Literature state that students may choose to take the AP Language and Composition exam and are encouraged to prepare independently should they wish. The Native American Studies description makes the same assertions for the AP Literature and Composition exam.
Further details regarding AS courses will be shared with the LJCDS community well in advance of 2026-2027 school year course selections.
