Turning around an academic program - and turning young people on to tough academic subjects - takes time and effort, as the Ridley School District can attest.

"We wanted to see more opportunities for kids to be involved with higher-level math, and we've been able to do that. We've seen a real explosion in the number of kids taking higher-level math," said Nicholas Ignatuk Jr., superintendent of the Ridley district, which encompasses the blue- and white-collar communities of Ridley Township and Ridley Park and Eddystone Boroughs in Delaware County.

In both math and science, Ridley earlier this decade adopted a hands-on, integrated approach to teaching math, and a science program that presents big-picture ideas and begins with a physics course, Ignatuk said. The changes included intensive teacher training and upgrades to middle-school course offerings. "There's a lot more thinking about problems, more hands-on work and real-world applications to make it interesting. Our kids aren't asking, 'Why do we have to learn this?' It's clear why it's relevant to their lives."

The push to promote math and science has paid off: The number of students achieving math proficiency/advanced on the 11th-grade PSSAs climbed to 70 percent last year, compared with 40 percent in 2001. Students taking Advanced Placement science courses this year number 145, compared with 9 five years ago.

During the fall and winter, The Inquirer surveyed about 400 public, private, charter and technical high schools. The results describe the myriad ways schools are beefing up their curricula - from adding dual-credit courses by agreement with area colleges, to expanding language offerings, to boosting enrollment in math and science classes.

The push for more challenging material is coming, in part, from colleges that lament that students are coming to them unprepared to do college work.

Many incoming students "are in for a rude awakening," said Jerry Parker, president of Delaware County Community College (DCCC), which enrolls more than 7,000 full-time students and 3,000 part-time. Two thirds of them, he said, "are not college-ready" and need remedial instruction. Too many, he said, eventually drop out.

Poor showings by U.S. students on international exams have caused government and business leaders to take notice. Results from the 2006 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) released in December, for instance, show that U.S. teenagers lag behind their peers in a majority of industrialized nations in science - and fall far behind in math.

To push high schools to do better, the federal government uses a stick - No Child Left Behind (NCLB) - to impose sanctions on schools that fail to improve.

The states, on the other hand, dangle carrots:

Pennsylvania awards funding to upgrade technology ($200 million for Classrooms for the Future grants); to create ninth-grade academies, and to encourage students to take college courses while still in high school, an initiative known as Project 720.

New Jersey, with its $14 million-a-year STARS (Student Tuition Assistance Reward Scholarship) program, entices students to do better by offering free tuition to two-year state schools if they are in the top 20 percent of their graduating class. New Jersey requires students to pass the state's 11th-grade tests to graduate; Pennsylvania is mulling a similar plan amid concerns that too many students are graduating with an "empty" diploma.

To counter the problem of students matriculating unprepared, numerous area colleges, DCCC included, have established dual-credit agreements with area high schools, intended to give high school students a taste of college - and a few credits.

But the data tell a bleak story, one that recalls the warnings of "A Nation at Risk," the national policy report released 25 years ago this month: One in every four Pennsylvania ninth-graders drops out. Of the 11th-graders taking the state tests in 2007, only 54 percent passed math and 65 percent passed reading. New Jersey 11th-graders did better: 73 percent passed math and 85 percent passed language arts.

Increasingly, data are being used to track the academic growth of individual students - and to ask hard questions when a student, or a classroom of students, lags behind. Pennsylvania is one of a handful of states that uses data to tell districts whether schools have done what is expected, less than expected or more than expected for its students. The Web-based reporting is called the Pennsylvania Value-Added Assessment System.

Philadelphia, in an effort to combat an alarming dropout rate, is turning huge high schools into smaller ones. The district has added more than 20 small high schools in the last five years and plans to add a few more. Another small-school option is charters - 22 charter high schools have opened in the last decade.

Many of these new small schools have constructed their curricula around a theme - the arts, communications, culinary arts, business and the military among the public schools; literacy, folk arts, maritime studies, math, science and technology among the charters.

In the suburbs, many high schools already are small, reflecting the balkanized map of 164 districts in the Philadelphia suburbs - four counties in Southeastern Pennsylvania and three in South Jersey - covered by this report.

Like Ridley, many have embraced initiatives to add rigor to curriculum, ignite student involvement and inquiry, and enhance the chances that they will serve as springboards to success in college and career. Students join competitive robotic-technology teams, take notes on school-issued laptops, opt to take online courses, and study environmental issues.

Other suburban high schools are emulating the city's approach: creating "houses," or small learning academies, to improve the odds that students will find courses that interest them, mentors who encourage them, and a social network in which they'll thrive. Ninth-grade academies have opened in some schools to ease the transition to high school, sharpen basic skills and improve study habits.

It's not just about being small; it's about creating excellent learning opportunities. Just dropping a wall won't do it. It's a start, but it's not enough," said Carol Fixman, executive director of the Philadelphia Education Fund, a group that tracks public-education issues in the region.

"It's important to take advantage of that size so that the small schools are, in fact, high-performing, that they pique students' intellectual curiosity, that they train our children in the academic rigor that they will need in their post-secondary lives."

Like Fixman and Ridley's Ignatuk, Bill Michael, chair of the technology education department at North Penn High School in Lansdale, said students can master difficult coursework if they know why they are studying the topic. "Show them the real-world application to what they're learning," said Michael.

North Penn, in north-central Montgomery County, is one of the state's largest high schools, with 3,500 students in grades 10, 11 and 12. The school has established learning communities. One, with an enrollment of 120, has a special focus: engineering. The students share common interests with classmates and teachers, said Michael. "It's that unifying theme, that they all want to be engineers."

Still other schools, especially in Philadelphia, are adding Advanced Placement (AP) courses - college-level courses marketed by the College Board - although a few are dropping them, mirroring the national trend.

Two private schools, Haverford and Westtown, have stopped offering AP. Instead, teachers have developed their own advanced curricula, and their students can take the end-of-course AP tests for college credit.

And while five city schools now tout that they offer the International Baccalaureate curriculum - as do Lower Merion and the George School - the Cherry Hill district has begun to phase it out, citing its cost but also equity issues. Elements of the IB program, which is known for its challenging coursework, were being offered in some, but not all, Cherry Hill schools.

All districts are pressing the effort to move students onto a college-preparatory track, and a school that will open this fall in southern Chester County illustrates how the line between K-12 and college is being erased: The new Chester County Technical College High School will function as both a technical high school and a campus of Delaware County Community College, expanding the opportunities for the high school students to take college-credit coursework.