Impending Significant Change in AP Tests

Parents Forum
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<p>I just saw this, and hadn't seen any discussion of it here. </p>

<p>Class</a> Struggle - New, deeper AP program</p>

<p>My reaction: Sure looks like a good thing to me, and shows how much the College Board folks are looking over their shoulders at IB. But any massive change like this is sure to provoke some pain and suffering.</p>

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<p>I don’t know what parents or students he’s talking about, but I wouldn’t assume this in the least! In fact, I don’t know too many quality programs that allow you to use AP credit against your major or in what they consider foundation courses (i.e. weeders).</p>

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<p>It would help the AP a lot if they graded it on a wider scale (0-100%, or like SAT 200-800), and included a range of difficulty in the questions such that a full score would be nearly impossible.</p>

<p>Then if you got say a 90% average on half a dozen APs, it could really mean something.</p>

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<p>Why is that appropriate? The competitive tests don’t grade on a 100-point scale, either. IB uses 7, and A-levels 6. Most colleges, for the equivalent courses, use at most 11.</p>

<p>The issue isn’t the grading scale. The issue is the curriculum. What gets taught and tested.</p>

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<p>This looks pretty interesting. Though I’ll be in college in 2011, I wonder how much this will affect the exams and their scores as well as other AP classes.</p>

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<p>Wow…very interesting…I wonder how you could revamp an AP like USH or something…I mean…History is facts driven…the only one that’s not is AP world, and it’s not popular at many colleges</p>

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<p>The changes to French & German are to make them more like the current Spanish Language exam. </p>

<p>The AP World teachers have talked a little about the world history changes on the AP World EDG. Many will continue using the same books, so I think they’re taking the College Board at face value: “The course content, which has not been substantially revised,…”</p>

<p>The Biology changes won’t take effect until the 2013 exam, so it’s still quite far out. No other science exam changes are scheduled until after biology, although there are talk about changes to Physics B – it’s the other science exam that’s currently drowning in content.</p>

<p>The changes are a slow process. The new curriculum is announced at least a year before it’s to be taught so that teachers have a chance to update their syllabus, attend training sessions, etc.</p>

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<p>Brilliant idea, that will be resisted. </p>

<p>As an aside Rocket, I don’t think of history as facts driven, unless one wants to teach and learn it that way. Everything can be taught or learned as memorized facts, or as relationships, and relations among concepts. And one need not change the testing format to capture more conceptual understanding: you can readily design MC questions to assess understanding of relationships and more conceptual material. </p>

<p>You know what i find curious? I’m looking at UK schools right now, and differences for admissions between Canadian and US students. I find it fascinating that they typically require US students to have APs with certain scores of 4 or 5…but Canadian students to just have grades in regular courses that are around 85%. I think it speaks volumes. </p>

<p>If you ask me, the whole system has largely become corrupt with college board. AP is simply HS now, with a new label.</p>

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<p>I’m curious what the difference is between the (current) AP French and/or German exam and the AP Spanish exam that they’re trying to use as a model? I would have thought that, if anything, they wouldn’t invest much in new German exam designs given the number of students who take it, and might if anything want to see languages go more in the direction of the Chinese exam, which is an on-line exam as I understand it.</p>

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<p>Look for another change several years down the road…where the kids get to express their feelings about the Civil War.</p>

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<p>Current French outline:

  1. Listening. Listen to a dialog, answer MC questions. Repeat.
  2. Reading. Read passages and answer MC questions.
  3. Writing. Fill in missing words and/or verb forms into paragraphs.
  4. Writing. Write an essay on a given topic.
  5. Speaking. View a picture or series of pictures. Listen to and read questions. Take 90 seconds to prepare answer and then speak for 60 seconds.
    Source:
    <a href=“http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/repository/ap-french-course-description.pdf[/url]”>Supporting Students from Day One to Exam Day – AP Central | College Board;

<p>Current Spanish Language outline:

  1. Listening. Listen to a series of dialogs or narratives. Listen to questions. Read MC answers and pick one.
  2. Listening. Listen to a longer selection. Room in test book to take notes. Read questions & choose MC answers. Repeat (there are 2 of the longer selections).
  3. Reading. Read passages and choose MC answer.
  4. Interpersonal Writing. 10 minutes to read a prompt and produce a response (could be e-mail, letter, postcard, etc.)
  5. Document-Based Question. Read documents, listen to audio material, and answer written prompt. 7 minutes to read, 3 minute audio, 5 minute planning and 40 minute writing.
  6. Role Play Conversation. Read a general conversation outline. Then, respond for 20 seconds 5-6 different times at the appropriate points of the recorded conversation.
  7. Oral (formal, academic) Presentation. Read document and listen to a recording. 2 minutes to prepare and 2 minutes to orally answer a question about the sources, referencing the sources.
    Source:
    <a href=“Supporting Students from Day One to Exam Day – AP Central | College Board”>Supporting Students from Day One to Exam Day – AP Central | College Board;

<p>The Spanish exam tends to integrate reading, listening, and speaking a lot more than the current French exam, which tries to test each of those skills separately.</p>

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<p>I think the new AP Bio test sounds great! Its questions present real situations that apply to the real world. </p>

<p>And yes, the Spanish Language test is difficult to earn a 5 on if you’re not a native speaker. You definitely need to know the language in order to do well on the test.</p>

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<p>So when will the AP Bio test change? Son is taking AP Bio this year and I see no difference in how it is being taught than when my son took it four years ago.</p>

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<p>This will be a huge benefit to the students’ thinking capabilities in the long-term. The myriad of facts and details that they cram to learn for a test are forgotten within a week, let alone a year. Conceptual, theme and framework-based thinking will stick with a person for a lot longer and provide the best foundation for future learning.</p>

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<p>One of the best arguments for the need to change these tests is rocket6louise’s certainty that “history is facts driven”. Not really.</p>

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<p>I was also curious about why rocket6Louise thinks History is fact-driven but not AP World History. Interesting comment anyway, in light of Howard Zinn’s passing.</p>

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<p>I hadn’t thought about that, but, yes, Howard Zinn was perhaps uniquely free of factual influence.</p>

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<p>Since I did not go to high school in the US, I was fascinated to hear an African-American teacher in a southern state explain how he got his APUSH class to debate what “We, the people” meant in the 18th century.</p>

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<p>LOL! Funny stuff there!</p>

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Funny you should choose that. The Civil War is taught in vastly different ways depending on where you are in the country. My kids were lucky as they were exposed to multiple interpretations of the causes, but I certainly wasn’t as a kid. Ever heard of “The War of Northern Aggression”?</p>