2020 AP Exams & Scores: A Retrospective
Despite sensationalist headlines, the at-home 2020 AP exams were a success, and average scores fluctuated within expected ranges.
Dr. Nanette Thrush is a college instructor and chief scoring leader for Advanced Placement exams for The College Board.
Everyone, including me, was worried about this year’s AP exams. Students faced a variety of potential challenges, from pedagogical to technological. Exams contained fewer questions, which meant that students had fewer chances to prove themselves – although less material was covered. Finally, the potential complications of unproctored, online, at-home testing were intimidating.
SCORES & ANALYSIS
As a long-time AP “reader,” I was skeptical of how the process would play out. Would students successfully upload the correct documents, and would they be legible? Would there be technological errors that marred the process? To my pleasant surprise, none of these problems occurred. In fact, in my opinion students wrote more complete and more focused responses than ever before.
In terms of scores and results, this year’s experience was in keeping with previous years. Readers are given extensive training on each question they review, including background information, a thorough rubric, sample sets of answers, and sample sets for practice scoring. Additionally, there's a decent amount of oversight: readers are monitored for consistency regularly.
Based on independent analysis, overall AP test pass rates were up 3.3% over last year. Only a few fields – AP Calculus B/C, AP Art & Design portfolio, some AP Computer Science courses, and the AP Research Capstone – reported lower scores than last year.
Looking Ahead
It is difficult to know what colleges will decide to do with this year’s scores. While the College Board has strongly encouraged schools to accept these scores for college credit as usual, this may prove a difficult sell. Some websites have compiled statements from colleges committing to accept the 2020 exam scores, but no unified decision has been, or really can be, made. In theory, an AP course replaces a similar entry-level college course; however, since students weren’t required to complete all course material, their future success in future courses might feasibly be hampered. (For example, a student that didn’t get to finish their World History class may be unprepared to enroll in a 200- or 300-level college history course.)
On the other hand, the relative ease of this year’s online processes for both administering and scoring the tests bodes well for a digital future for other College Board products, like the SAT. ACT has widely administered its exam on a digital platform internationally, and the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic virtually ensures that both ACT and SAT will need to employ this technology in the US. At this point, 2020 SAT exams have been cancelled by the thousands, with no solution in sight.
CONCLUSION
Concerns have been raised over “fairness” in at-home exams – whether in terms of accessibility or cheating. Lawsuits against the College Board have made international news and fueled criticism of testing organizations at large. Perceived problems with this year’s AP exams administration will likely exacerbate the public perception of standardized exams.
On balance, these criticisms seem to each have a counter. For instance, teachers were given the opportunity to contest a student’s exam scores if the teacher felt they weren’t representative of the student’s ability or overall work, as demonstrated in the classroom. Additionally, claims that the AP exam software and procedure was “untested” may be unfair – the system has been used by ETS for other assessments, such as in distance education, for years. And anecdotally, the exams I scored this year were generally more complete and complex than prior years, with fewer instances of skipped questions or irrelevant content.
