AP tests shorter, taken at home
Most students welcome opportunity despite some technical glitches
Maya Anderson has taken AP exams for the past two years. But when the 11th grader at Winter Park High School sits for her exams this year, her test, her surroundings and even some of her worries will be very different.
This year’s Advanced Placement exams have been shortened to 45 minutes and are being done online, from students’ homes, because schools are closed to help stop the spread of the coronavirus. Testing began Monday and runs through May 22.
AP exams typically are given at school, with students tackling multiple-choice questions and writing essays by hand. The full tests usually last two or three hours.
Maya, 16, will take her two AP exams today and next Thursday, using her laptop in her bedroom and hoping she can ignore any in-home distractions and issues.
“I am a little worried my Wi-Fi will go out,” she said.
Still, she’s happy the College Board, which runs the AP program, didn’t cancel the exams, which provide a route for high school students to earn college credit.
“I would have been very upset,” she said, if that opportunity was
lost “for a class I’ve worked so hard in for so long.”
The College Board said it surveyed 18,000 AP students nationwide after schools started closing, and more than 90 percent shared that view, saying they still wanted a chance to take their AP exams, even if from home in a different format.
After testing started Monday, the organization reported that nearly all students, more than 99%, were able to submit their online tests.
But on Twitter, some upset parents and students said glitches left them frustrated and angry, as did the College Board’s solution that those with technical problems could take retakes in June. Those exams will also be at home and online.
“I think it is completely unfair that students are being forced to retake tests that they have studied for tirelessly because of a problem that they can not control,” tweeted one.
Mike Geoffrion, who teaches AP U.S. history and AP world history at Eustis High School in Lake County, said he’s glad his students can take their AP exams, even if under unusual circumstances.
But that doesn’t mean he isn’t nervous about how some will fare this year.
Keeping up with the challenging material has been hard for some teenagers once in-person classes stopped in midMarch. “They might fall off, if I’m not there to cheer them on the whole time,” he said.
Some students could run into technology problems testing at their homes, Geoffrion added, or forget to log in at the correct time, or even decide not to take the test. He plans to send his students reminder texts ahead of the exam.
Others, he knows, are struggling with the hardships the nation’s health crisis has thrown at their families, which could make studying and testing more difficult. Still most of his students want the chance to take their AP exams.
“I think this was the best course of action,” he added.
The AP program offers courses in 38 subjects, from calculus to Spanish to world history, aiming to provide an equivalent to introductory college classes to high school students. Each spring, students take the national AP exams, and those who earn at least a 3 on the 5-level exams can earn college credit, though some universities require 4s or 5s before they’ll give credit.
Florida has pushed its high schools to offer AP classes to lots of students, and the state is ranked third nationally based on the percentage of its high school graduates (31.7%) who passed at least one AP exam.
But taking the class doesn’t mean students will pass the exam. Last year,
Florida students took more than 394,000 AP exams, passing about 54% of them.
Thousands will take AP exams again under the new 2020 format, including more than 22,600 in Orange County alone.
This year, the College Board eliminated the multiple choice questions and made most exams one or two short essays. Students can use their notes and textbooks but the limited time means there is not much to be gained by spending too many minutes looking something up, teachers said.
The traditional AP tests provided a “nice balance,” that allowed students to show they knew facts but could also analyze documents and write logically about what they’d learned, said Dali Stires, who teaches AP U.S. history at Hagerty High School in Seminole County.
The new essay-based test could prove more challenging, especially with a 45-minute time limit. The 2020 AP tests cover about 70 percent of the typical material — what the College Board said most teachers had taught before the pandemic started closing schools nationwide.
Stires said her students are ready for the exam, and they want the chance to earn college credit. They finished reviewing last week online, and she’s been reminding them the test is “very doable and very conquerable for them.”
And if they have questions, or need a pep talk, she added, “all this week, I’m sitting by my computer.”
To protect test security, everyone taking a particular AP exam does so at the same time.
That means Stires’ students, and all those in the eastern time zone, will tackle U.S. history at 2 p.m. Friday. But students in California will take the test at 11 a.m. their time, and those in Hawaii sit for it at 8 a.m. Students in Japan will have to take it at 3 a.m.. Yes, in the the middle of the night.
The College Board said it picked testing times that meant most AP students can take exams during daylight hours. But some students oversees have to test late at night or very early in the morning.
“We hope that for most students, having the chance to test outweighs the unusual timing,” the College Board website says.
Maya, the Winter Park student, she feels lucky that her tests — U.S. history and English language and composition — are midday and that, while she feels more distracted at home, she has a quiet room and reliable technology.
Others, she said, likely face more hurdles at exam time.
But whatever their circumstances, most students are nervous, as they always are for AP exams. “It is so stressful to do testing,” she said.