AP exams will be held online this year

AP exams will be held online this year(campusreform.org)

19 points by big_chungus 6 years ago | 12 comments

jedieaston 6 years ago |

College Board should have punted the tests back to the fall. The tests are missing quite a bit of content[0], for example, Calculus BC has little to no more required content than Calculus AB (no parametrics/polars, nothing much with series other than identification). Since the kids will most likely have to retake these classes once they get into college due to the content deficit, I don't really see the point of it this year.

If they moved them back to fall / late summer, kids would've had more time to prepare, and the full tests could've been administered so the credits would've been given fairly. I assume the reason they aren't doing this is because it would be impossible to schedule a traditional AP reading for the teachers to grade the tests, but they could do it remotely as they will be doing with this (schedule readings on the weekends to be done remotely? they are only a few days long anyway).

With that being said, if I was still in High School, i'd probably be pleading with my AP coordinator to let me take more tests because of the advantage... but I digress (and I doubt college board would have let me anyway). darn it. one year later and no physics in college.

0: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/about-ap/news-changes/cor...

tmpz22 6 years ago | |

We're going to have a full year of students who essentially get to take a mulligan, they're going to be able to cheat on every test, postpone tests, get extra study time etc.

It's about time we realize that education was never about merit in the first place.

parsimo2010 6 years ago | | |

While cheating may happen, it’s not like this will result in a whole class of college graduates being unqualified. You aren’t given an engineering degree just because you got a 5 on the BC calc exam. You still have pass your college classes.

The kids that couldn’t pass without cheating will fail their coursework (some will cheat all the way through college, but that has always happened). The kids that could have passed without cheating will have the same outcome as if they didn’t cheat, except they will have lost some integrity.

So there might be a few extra graduates that make it through because they were able to cheat an online exam in high school, but it’s not going to be a huge change.

thaumasiotes 6 years ago | |

> if I was still in High School, I'd probably be pleading with my AP coordinator to let me take more tests because of the advantage...

Why would you need permission to take more tests?

Spivak 6 years ago | | |

Because the school has to order them and proctor them for you. The school has to be certified to give the tests which is why some schools only have AP or IB.

Fun fact though. Your school doesn’t have to offer the AP class to take the AP test. I just straight up asked if I could take the AP CompSci tests despite having no computer programming classes. I sat in a room alone with my counselor for a day while he administered the tests, boom done, easy 5 since I had been programming since before HS. I tried to tell some of my friends who were also aiming at CS in college but they didn’t ask.

resfirestar 6 years ago |

If there are no in-person classes in many places I can't imagine all of these courses are going to work in the first place. When I was in high school, I had the misfortune of taking AP Chemistry during a year when the building that had chemistry labs was damaged in a storm and closed. No one passed the test that year.

skavi 6 years ago |

A better source is the College Board’s own announcement [0].

[0]: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/about-ap/news-changes/cor...

csense 6 years ago |

How in the world do they plan to be able to stop a student taking the test on their PC from Googling the answers on their phone, or vice versa? Or asking a friend instead of Google?

Spivak 6 years ago | |

I like how benign you think this is. This is roomy cheating. Advanced cheating is paying your AP tutor to be in the room with you.