For being such a pivotal test in one’s high school career, the Advanced Placement (AP) Exam is remarkably dynamic. Or so it feels as of the last few years, as College Board, the test distributor, has updated the tests to reflect students’ complaints and teachers’ worries.
The most significant change of the May 2011 test was the removal of guessing penalties that, as its name implies, removed one-fourth of a point from every incorrect answer, in order to discourage students from arbitrarily guessing. This penalty was removed, to initial approval, but this measure may have served to in fact make the tests more difficult.
Moreover, as of the 2012 AP Exams, College Board has announced that it will used a standardized answer sheet for all AP exams and that there will be more than one version of the exams. These measures are meant to increase efficiency in the process of score-grading and to discourage cheating, respectively.
In addition, College Board is planning to entirely change certain AP Exams to better fit the standards of the class. As of the 2012-2013 school year, College Board has announced that it will entirely revamp the AP Biology Exam.
“They want to make sure that the class is less about memorization and more about critical thinking,” Marlon Shows, AP Biology teacher at LA Center for Enriched Studies, said. “So they’ll remove much of the rote memorization content.”
Of course, College Board is planning to implement changes in not only the AP Biology test, but also in the AP Latin and AP Spanish Literature and Culture test.
As of the 2011-2012 year, however, a number of tests have already been impacted: the AP World History, AP German Language and Culture and AP French and Culture Exams will be significantly different. These changes can run from different contextual information to the substitution of five answer choices to four answer choices, as both are the case with the AP World exam.
These test changes have reputedly had a high impact on students’ passing rates and their methods of studying for the exams. But even so, these changes are rarely spoken of by most AP teachers and many students are unaware of these test changes, when in fact these changes significantly impacts their performances on the tests.
Teachers and students are preparing for tests earlier in a majority of schools across the U.S. and are making significant changes to their class agendas and study plans. But until the May tests, a template study guide cannot be established, as could be for prior years and no established opinion about the effectiveness of these test changes can yet be set.
Nice article! I can relate because I was caught unawares by the changes the Collegeboard made, and many of my teachers were also surprised.
It might be just my quirk, but you mention that many students are not aware of the changes. Could you interview a student and show with an example of how students are caught unawares and how that person thinks it will affect the future of AP tests? You have an interview from a teacher, but not from students.
Great. It is very informative and useful. Like Chiyoung Kim said, it’s very relatable. To allow your community to relate to this, you might want to get interviews or polls from students to see how they respond to this.