I found the 2014 statistics so I can now do a direct comparison to the results for the last year Physics B and the first year of Physics 1. They look terrible for the College Board. (Note I don’t know the actual number of Physics 1 test takers, but Trevor Packer said “nearly double” so I just doubled 2014.)
Course (year)…Total Tests…5’s (%)…5’s (#)…Failed (%)…Failed (#)…Avg Score
Physics B (2014)…93,574…15.8%…14,759…39.3%…32,075…2.89
Physics 1 (2015)…187,148…4.1%…7,673…63.1%…118,090…2.25
Most striking is that, despite the number of testtakers doubling, the number of students earning a five actually dropped in half!
Second most striking is the increase of the total number of students who failed (perhaps as many as 86 thousand more kids)! I can only imagine the amount of resources school districts invested in these classes only to have so many more students fail than before.
The fact that this is a transition year may have something to do with this, so my next step will be to look at the results when they revamped AP Bio (when I have a moment). However, my sense is that transition went much more smoothly than this one.