Highstakes exam to test students’ diligence at home
Over the next two weeks, millions of teenagers across the country will take Advanced Placement exams to determine whether they should earn college credit for high school coursework.
This year, those students will take those highstakes tests at kitchen tables or in bedrooms, perhaps in pajamas, and with full access to textbooks or the entire internet.
In the Bay Area, with some of the most prestigious public and private high schools in the country, students often take multiple exams during their four years of high school, giving many of them a year’s worth of college credit.
But this year, the coronavirus closures upended the administration of the exams, given in
38 different subjects. It turned a strictly proctored, inperson threehour ordeal to a doityourself online test that takes 45 minutes.
Nothing is normal right now. Students haven’t been in a classroom for two months, and learning has been limited to online assignments and maybe weekly video calls with teachers. Now, they have to take nerveracking AP exams at home and hope their computer doesn’t crash in the middle of it. California students will take nearly 500,000 tests this spring.
The whole situation is just weird, students and teachers said.
The switch to the online, abbreviated format has students especially worried. What if the WiFi dies midtest? Can they prove what they know in less than an hour? Will colleges really give course credit for a short exam? What if the neighbor starts mowing the lawn or hammering nails? Won’t it be easy for students to cheat?
Hayes Delezene, 17, was concerned about all that. The high school junior lives on a farm in a remote area of Castroville (Monterey County) and attends Kirby School in Santa Cruz.
“I’m worried about the distractions at home,” he said as sheep bleated in the background. “That, combined with the fact I live rurally and my internet is not the best.”
Students can write the answers on a computer or phone and upload them, or write them by hand and then submit a photo of their paper.
The College Board, which administers the test, will let students make up the exams in June if they have technical difficulties, but it would be crushing, Hayes and other students said, to take a test and then not be able to submit it because of computer failure.
Hayes is taking two exams this year, AP government and AP literature and composition. Like most of the other exams, there will be no multiplechoice items this year, just essays or freeresponse questions.
“For me, it means a little less studying, which is nice,” he said, but he questioned whether colleges will give credit based on two essays written in 45 minutes.
“I think the vast majority of universities have put out they will be accepting these,” Hayes said. “I’m a little skeptical.”
The University of California and California State University systems have confirmed they will continue to give college credit for passing the AP exams, which is a score of at least a 3 on a 5point scale.
Yet, can a 45minute exam taken at home really be a valid measure of achievement? It’s unclear, said Alexandra Toledo, AP chemistry teacher at Oakland’s Fremont High School.
“I understand why the College Board shortened the time on the exam, but it’s also really hard,” she said. “There’s so much content that’s covered in a year of college chemistry.”
Other teachers and students feared that the online format would disadvantage those with disabilities.
Normally the exams are in a paper format, which means blind students, for example, can get copies in Braille, including tactile graphics and pictures. Instead, they can use Braille writing software or screen reader software. There will be text descriptions of graphs or other illustrations.
“Many students, like myself, specifically requested hardcopy Braille earlier in the year when we registered for and paid to take the exams, and College Board agreed to fulfill that accommodation,” said Kaleigh Brendle, 17, of New Jersey, who has taken her complaints to social media. “Part of the reason why Braille is required for so many students is because it permits us to actually explore and derive information from images and graphs.”
Kaleigh is scheduled to take the AP exams in biology, United States history, psychology, and English language and composition.
College Board officials say they believe that all students with disabilities will be able to access the exams and noted that all students will take them online.
“It’s going to be different for a lot of students who are not used to taking a test in that manner,” said Jill Green, senior director of services for students with disabilities, adding the switch to online happened under a very tight timeline. “We were not able to provide any paper tests including Braille or Braille graphics.”
In addition to access issues, students also said they worried that the online version could lead to cheating and therefore a steeper curve in scoring, making it harder to pass the exams.
“If there’s going to be people cheating, you’re going to have higher scores,” said Lily Loftis, 17, a senior at Menlo School in Atherton taking the AP tests in Japanese, calculus and government. “You’re not supposed to be cheating or plagiarizing or anything like that, but I assume there are going to be a lot of Google searches surging.”
Normally, security for the inperson tests is strict, with identification or teachers confirming student identities. It would be relatively easy to have help on the online exam or have someone else take it, students said.
The College Board, which administers the test, said it will have security measures in place to prevent cheating and plagiarism — although details were not provided — and the student responses would be sent to their teachers to review for authenticity.
“It used to be really high security,” said Ligaya Chinn, a Berkeley High senior taking the AP literature and biology exams this year. “Now it’s just be online 30 minutes before the test starts and have a WiFi connection.”
For the most part, students like Chinn said they were happy to see the multiplechoice questions dumped from the online version and that they wouldn’t have to sit in a classroom for three hours to take each test.
But for students who are good at memorization and less proficient in longform tests, this version of AP exams will likely not fall in their favor.
Redwood City junior Jay Tipirneni can’t decide if he feels he’s going to do well or not on the AP calculus exam.
Typically, March and April are the months students and teachers spend reviewing and practicing for the exam. Doing all that remotely isn’t the same, said the 17yearold.
“I feel like the inclass setting and having peers around you to support your learning really has a profound impact on the way students learn,” said the Sequoia High School student. “Being isolated like this can cause procrastination.”
Teacher Kathy Melvin has been reviewing content with her AP environmental science students at San Francisco’s Lowell High and trying to calm their nerves about the upcoming exam. But she worries that the stress of sheltering in place and the impact of closures on their families has made studying for the exams difficult.
“This is a very, very traumatic time,” she said. “When I talk to my students, many have not left the house since the closure. That is a scary thing.”