Over the last year, the College Board fundamentally changed the way they administer their AP exams. In spring 2020, all students took their exams online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and this year things are looking even more out of the ordinary.
The College Board recently announced that there will be three testing dates students will be permitted to take their exams this year. Depending on the date, students will be expected to take their exams either at-school or at-home, or perhaps a combination of both.
The first round of testing will take place during the weeks of May 3 to 7, May 10 to 12 and May 14 to 17. The College Board has titled this testing group “Administration 1,” and for the schools that decide to test entirely in-person, these will be the dates that students take exams. However, if a school decides to either test students virtually or do a mix of in-person and virtual testing, they will need to carry out exams in Administrations 2 and 3, though most tests in Administration 3 will be entirely virtual.
Administration 2 will occur during the weeks of May 18 to 21 and May 24 to 28 while Administration 3 will be taking place on June 1 to 4 and on June 7 to 11.
This “block” type schedule was implemented to allow for a mixture of in-person and virtual testing as well as an increased number of make-up dates, which will be appreciated by those who cannot make a specific testing date. Some students, however, find this approach to be unfair as it would allow for certain schools to spend more time preparing their students, while others would be cut short of preparation by up to a month.
“This method is really unfair to those students who are going to be expected to take the test in early May. All tests should have been pushed back to June,” Walter Johnson High School sophomore Haley Minnick said. “This year has been a super challenging one for so many students, and I think that all students would have benefitted from more time to prepare with their teachers.”
On top of this modification, all digital exams will be taken on a new testing platform this year. Though the specificities of this platform have yet to be released, it appears that this change will require students to install an application on their computers. Unlike last year’s AP exam season, students will not be permitted to take their exams on their phones because of this new application, and if students are able to retrieve a computer from their school, their county will need to ensure that students can download the necessary application.
Cheating is also something that the College Board has made sure to heavily tackle this year. Though there were some precautions taken last year, the 2021 exam season has been specifically geared to prevent cheating.
According to the College Board, digital exams administered at home or in school will include a feature that does not allow students to move back-and-forth between unanswered questions or to return to answered questions. As well as this, all tests will be administered at the same time worldwide. This has been done to prevent students who might have taken the exam earlier from telling their peers about what they encountered on the exam.
All questions on the virtual exam have also been specifically designed so that students will not be able to easily find the answer with internet searches or any notes that they might have access to. Similar to last year, all virtual exams will include security features (that are largely hidden) to prevent students from collaborating during the test, and when tests are eventually submitted, there will be plagiarism monitors to detect any potential copying that might have occurred.
Though the College Board is clearly taking many precautions, some teachers are still concerned over the matter.
“I just don’t know how the College Board is going to prevent cheating … students can still text each other during the exam; it’s definitely a problem,” Walter Johnson High School AP history teacher Nathan Schwartz said.
Some students are concerned about virtual testing since it can produce so many unexpected difficulties.
“There are so many things that can happen that are out of your control. Your internet can crash, your computer can shut down, or your computer’s software can just be really laggy which wastes time,” Winston Churchill High School junior Meital Lurie said. “I think that the College Board should consider that kids will have technical difficulties and that being actively online for three hour exams will only enhance the risk of technical difficulties.”
Though the College Board is implementing this new software to potentially eliminate some of these technical difficulties, it is still a concern that will undoubtedly continue to affect students this year.
With only about three months until AP exam season officially starts, MCPS teachers are working at full capacity to ensure that their students are prepared to take their exams. Though testing will be different this year, it is nothing that MCPS students cannot handle and many teachers are confident that their students will perform well despite these changes, especially with the resources that the College Board has provided in AP Classroom.
“We have such a great group of teachers who are doing what they need to do to get students prepared. … I think that our students are going to be okay,” Schwartz said.
Article by Ruby Topalian of Walter Johnson High School
Photo courtesy of the College Board