AP exams getting new tech safeguards after initial glitches
The College Board is introducing new safeguards for high school students submitting their athome Advanced Placement exams this week after widespread reports of technical problems.
In a message sent out to teenagers and their families on Sunday, the nonprofit organization that administers the exams expressed concern for the students who were unable to successfully submit their responses online for the highstakes tests last week and said it was rolling out a backup email option for those who run up against error messages, starting Monday.
The option will not apply to students who previously ran into glitches during the first week of testing. The exams began May 11 and run through May 22, with makeup dates scheduled for June 15.
“We share the deep disappointment of students who were unable to complete their exam — whether for technical issues or other reasons,” Jerome White, a College Board spokesman, said in a statement. “We’re working to understand these students’ unique circumstances in advance of the June make up exams.”
The College Board announced in March that for the first time ever it would digitally administer the exams, which help determine whether students earn college credit for high school coursework, in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
A large number of students last week complained about having problems submitting their finished work before being timed out of the system or getting an error message that said, “We did not receive your response.”
The College Board, which also runs the SATs, said students worldwide took 2.2 million of the online exams so far, with less than 1% of them unable to submit their responses. Each test costs $94 and lasts 45 minutes.
The organization posted a list of technical workarounds for students to check off before taking the exams in the middle of last week, including updating their web browsers and adjusting their iPhone camera settings.
Those fixes didn’t work for everyone.
“Many had updated recently, before the test, and others were able to submit part of the test, but not a last question,” Suzanne Eick, a parent at San Francisco’s Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, told The Chronicle. “It’s so disappointing and very frustrating — as well as unfair to our students who are already dealing with so much.”
Erin Strathmann of Oakland shared a video of her daughter attempting to submit a finished AP physics exam to an unresponsive website.
“It’s so inequitable to have tech be the barrier to getting the test graded,” she said.
The College Board did not respond on Sunday to a request for comment.
With the new system in place, students who cannot submit their responses through the browser will receive a personalized email address immediately after the exam to which they can send their finished work.
The email backup option will also be in place for the June retests.