I’m the OP. At DD’s HS they constantly remind the students that this is a college level experience and it’s nationally graded I.e. should be a standard of grading that’s equal across the country. I know in my college years pretty much every class was graded on 1-2 exams or papers and that’s it. Standard would be midterm 25% and final 75%. So in my mind if the AP exam is like the big final, and the kid shows she can get a 5 ( which I’m thinking of like getting an A in a college class), does that kid deserve an A? I do think AP teachers “teach to the test” in a very real sense because they are told by AP exactly what to teach. The syllabus is pretty much created by AP so they’ll know there’s some sense of a national standard. Anyway, JMO based on what we’ve been told by DD’s HS and the concept of “why AP classes?”
Also an update on what actually happened… DD’s AP Lang teacher changed one semester to A (for getting a 5) and Bio changed one semester to an A- (for getting a 4.)
Forgot to add…my DD grade of B was not based on missing assignments or not doing the work. In both classes it was the IMO subjective grading of papers/exams.
And getting a great score, even a perfect score, on my final doesn’t earn you a “grade bump” of any sort.
The grade you get on the exam is the grade you get on the exam: a snapshot of your work on one particular day.
Sure, it indicates what you know on the questions that were asked. But it doesn’t show your day to day work in my class, your scores on quizzes, your attention to detail on homework, none of the other components that make up the grade you get on your report card.
We’ve all been bemoaning the tendency to “teach to the test”-- it’s not too far off from “bumping because of the test.”
Your grade on the final, or the AP exam, speaks to your performance on one day. The grade you get on your report card, and shows up on your transcript, speaks to your day to day performance in my class for the other 179 days.
I don’t have a crystal ball. I don’t try to predict how you’ll do in a college math class. My grade reflects what you’ve done in my class.