AP exams standardized for colleges in New Mexico

The New Mexico Higher Education Department said Monday the credits that incoming students receive for passing high school Advanced Placement exams will be standardized across all state colleges and universities.

Students enrolled in the courses can pay $94 to take an optional exam at the end of the school year. Passing grades often earn students college credit, but until now in New Mexico, it fell to each college or university to decide which scores earned credits and which didn’t.

State leaders hope the new policy will help students finish degrees faster while smoothing the transition for transfer students and reducing course duplication.

“More kids than ever are taking and passing AP exams,” Barbara Damron, the state’s higher education secretary, said in a news release. “And now we’re giving them the tools they need to apply their hard work toward completing a college degree and saving their families money in tuition costs.”

This is the latest move by the Martinez administration to prioritize Advanced Placement classes, advanced high school courses offered nationwide by the College Board, a nonprofit New York-based organization.

Students earn a 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 on the Advanced Placement exam, with any grade above 2 considered passing.

Under Gov. Susana Martinez, the department offers training for Advanced Placement teachers and is expanding access to online Advanced Placement courses, a boon for rural students.

The state also provides waivers for low-

income families, helping to lower the cost of each test to $3, according to the news release. This past school year, 5,000 students benefited from the waivers.

Despite the new policy, students going out of state for college still are subject to individual schools’ policies, which vary widely. At Harvard University, for example, only a score of 5 on a handful of eligible exams will earn students credit.