Interdisciplinary Studies & A Thesis?

Actually, this depends on the individual school division's policies. In my school division, anyone can take an AP class. However, some students are "discouraged" from taking them, if the guidance folks do not believe they have the discipline to handle them. However, that's a completely different issue. Our AP courses, if anyone takes them, are offered through Virtual Virginia, which is an online consortium for Virginia schools. If schools do not have the faculty to teach the AP courses, such as my school, then the students can take the class online. However, this is absolutely horrible. Then again, it could be because the program is new.

When I interviewed for a position in Newport News, Virginia, the students were tracked. Of course, when you have 25 social studies teachers (as opposed to the 4 my school has) you can do that. Take World History, for example. They offered Remedial, College Bound, Honors and then AP. However, anyone could take AP if they wanted to. The department chair told me that mostly advanced kids took the courses, but they did have a few that ended up dropping out because they couldn't (or wouldn't) do the assignments.

I took both AP and Dual Enrollment courses in high school. Personally, I saw no difference. I took both AP Calculus and Dual Enrollment Calculus. With DE Calculus, we finished all of the stuff we did in AP in the first semester, which made it very easy.

-Matt