<p>Actually research shows that an A correlates to 4.5 or above in equivalent college courses. As was pointed out other factors may affect the grade, labs homework etc. Changing a grade is beneficial to students who are in AP classes as a juniors or earleir. I have changed a grade from a C to a B if someone scored a 5. Also if there were boarder line cases. Fortunately, I have had about 90% of students who earn an a get a 5 on the test and the rest have gotten 4's, B students ,3 mostly 4 and a few 5, C sudents almost always 2,3,4</p>
<p>In our kids prep school, 5 on AP does not give you A in the class. Majority top student receive 5 on Ap exams. However top grade in the few classes still could be an B or A-. This is the the highest grade in the class as tecahers seems that techers i hard grader and A is given only once in a blue moon. However, most colleges are aware about that particular techarers grading and 25-35% class attend Ivy leauge.</p>
<p>D and a few of her science-nerd friends took AP Physics B last year, and were encouraged by the Physics teacher to go ahead and take the AP Physics C-Mechanics test last year, too. If they got a 5, he promised 2nd semester grades of A, 4=B....2nd semester is when they are covering all the material for the Physics C-Mechanics test. Of course, she's still doing all the homework and still being attentive, etc., but it sure is a relief for her to have that grade in the bag!</p>
<p>I've heard of grading like that, but it's not really accurate at all. You only have to get about 50% of the exam correct to get a 3, and something like 60% for a 4 and 70% for a 5. So, a 5 is really equivalent to a C, not an A. </p>
<p><em>hugs</em>LM</p>
<p>LM:</p>
<p>That is not the way to look at things. Even in college, because of curves, it is possible to get As with only a certain percentage of correct answers on the test. It depends on how the test is designed. It would seem that with the AP, test designers deliberately design a test that cannot be completed in the allotted time. So it is no shame to complete only 70% of such a test.
A similar situation may occur in some courses where a prof designs a test that is deliberately very hard and expects students not to get all correct answers or to be able only to answer some, not all. When it comes to grading, however, the prof will take the difficulty and length of the test into account. Often, my S has received emails with his numeric grade, and with the class median and standard deviation. But it is impossible for him to convert that numeric grade into a letter grade. It really depends on what the prof thought of the test.</p>
<p>I agree w/ marite. Another example, I've heard that AP Chem has one of the biggest "curves", because it is so insanely difficult. D's Chem class regularly takes practice tests in-class, and getting about 50% correct is usually the best score in the class.</p>
<p>The tests are designed to have an average of about 50% like most good test should be. Tests are then given at colleges to insure that indeed the numbers to correspond to the grades given in most colleges. Any teacher can make tests so hard as to fail every student. What good is it to make a course harder than the equivalent college course? (Call it super AP then)What does that prove?.Sure one particular private school that is known about by colleges will get an adjustment but in a big district consistency of curriculum is fair to the students. I remember a college class where the teacher held up a test from the pile and showed it to the class. The score was 3/120. Everybody laughed and he became livid and yelled out "That's not the low, it's the mean!" Kind of made us feel real good. He also did not believe in curving tests. Long semester it was.</p>
<p>Some teachers at our school (particularly in the social science areas) subscribe to this policy of raising grades for high AP scores. They obviously use this as a motivating tactic. This benefits the sophs and juniors as the senior scores are too late to be reflected in transcripts for college applications. It also rewards the slackers who don't meet the teacher's class requirements, but are bright and good test-takers. I do not change grades in my class based upon AP results. Each year when the students ask, my response is that I would be happy to award an A for a 5 if they will also accept a D for a 2. Since all of my students take the exam, and there is no gate-keeping for enrollment in my course, even with an 80% pass-rate there are still a few 2's and 3's for kids who worked very hard to meet my standards and earned grades of B's. They protest that this isn't fair as it should only <em>help</em> them. I believe that I have other successful ways to motivate my students.</p>
<p>The worst example of this policy happened in my D's sophomore AP World History course a few years ago. A student who had cheated on an exam earned a 0 on that exam and a subsequent semester grade of C. This student ultimately went on to earn a high enough score on the AP exam which resulted in the instructor changing the grade to an A.</p>
<p>Maize:Would never do that. It would have to be a situation where grade was maybe a mistake and never raise it more than one grade. Only 2's I had were kids with C's or lower in the class so I never had the reverse situation. But there will always be a first time...</p>
<p>(I do not do many favors for cheaters. I did have a parent who when told about kid cheating said to me "I do not care if my son cheats as long as he gets an 'A"--acorn does not fall far........)</p>
<p>o-o-dad: As I said, I never change grades. My reply to their question each year is to provide a logical alternative, which of course they don't find logical at all and refuse to even consider it (which I count on).</p>
<p>Unpredictable things do happen on AP Exams, in both directions. My D was one of 4 girls in AP Comp Sci A the first year they added Java to the syllabus. These girls performed at the top of the class and yet their scores were two 2's and two 1's. The boys' scores were fairly uniformly distributed 5's, 4's, and 3's. Gender bias on that particular exam? The teacher was incredibly perplexed, as were these four girls (each of whom carried unweighted 4.0's and had already taken AP Calculus).</p>
<p>I remeber that year. I know our AP Comp Sc teacher had a tough year. But again in that situation something may be correct "but it sure ain't right" . But I tend to error on the side of the positive if it is close and it is usually never cut and dried. But I know I am not "inflammable" as they say when it comes to grades. I like like your policy as it is stated up front.</p>
<p>I got a 2 on the BC Calculus exam way back when. I'm glad my high school "A" didn't get turned into a "D"! I have no idea what happened on that AP. I took Calculus a few years later in college and thought it was an easy A. Our highschool doesn't change grades. So far my son's AP grades have looked just like his classroom grades. Both were excellent. He hasn't had time issues on any APs, but I realize he is exceptionally bright.</p>
<p>This sort of thing is a regular practice at my son's high school, but it varys from class to class. From what I've heard, if you get a 5 your grade is increased by 1 full point (from a B to and A for example). For a 4 it would go from a B to an A-. It only applies to AP's taken in 9th-11th grade, of course. Seniors will have graduated by the time AP scores come back.</p>
<p>I think that's just a practice of some teachers, probably to help motivate their students to try to do well on the exams. My son's APUSH history teacher did that -- I think it was something like, if the kid did all their homework in class, and got a 4 or 5 on the AP exam, then they would get an A for the course (their grade would retroactively be changed to an A if it were lower). So my son had a B that was raised to an A. None of my son's teachers did anything like that- and my daughter ended up with some conflict with an AP English teacher who was so obsessed with trying to get the kids to score well that she tried to require kids to come in outside of school hours for extra exam prep. (My d. had enough on her plate without more hours of unneeded study time).</p>
<p>"my daughter ended up with some conflict with an AP English teacher who was so obsessed with trying to get the kids to score well that she tried to require kids to come in outside of school hours for extra exam prep."</p>
<p>This is a regular thing at my D's school. I don't know of a single AP class that does not involve extra exam prep, often at the teacher's home, occasionally on the weekend, on campus. If often starts mid-year, and follows with mock AP trial-run tests periodically. By late April they're into the off-campus prep, major.</p>
<p>^^
Im taking a full practice Calc BC exam on a half-day at my school.</p>
<p>We have to sign up for it, and we sit in the auditorium a take the full 3-hour exam. Plus, we come in before and after school the weeks prior to the exam to help prepare. </p>
<p>That's normal.</p>
<p>At my kids HS the AP class grade is completely independent of the AP test grade. In fact, the AP kids are encouraged to take the AP test but they do not have to.
I'm glad it works this way as some teachers are better than others. If the class grade were dependent on the AP test grade, I would see that as a major disadvantage to those students who were in a class where either the teacher didn't "teach to the test" or the teacher was not a good teacher.<br>
The AP teachers at my kids HS run the full gamut. The best one actually helps grade AP tests in her subject...</p>
<p>At my school, you must take (not even pass) the AP exam to receive any weighting; they will retroactively remove the AP designation if you say you'll pay, but don't, or pay, but don't take the test. Most of the people who are in AP classes at my school should not be, and the teachers (except for Calc) place little emphasis on test prep. The other AP courses are essentially taught as if there were no exams and the instructors teach to the bottom. I did my first DBQ for APUSH last year the week before the exam, outside of class, when I found out about them here on CC. Everything turned out all right for me, but the school administrators always seem puzzled when the majority of students score 1's.....</p>
<p>This does happen rarely at my school. The only teacher that I had who did it was my APUSH teacher--if you got a 5, he would retroactively change your first semester grade to an A. (2nd semester was easy because pretty much everyone got an A on the final (a project--finals are 20% of our semester grades), so he only offered to change 1st semester. I already had an A, so I was out of luck :(. I wished my BC teacher would have done it, because I got a B+ first semester, but oh well. </p>
<p>We have a pretty good AP program--I think most of the teachers are qualified and are teaching the subject both for academic gain and to prepare for the test, not just one or the other. Kids are not forced to take the AP exam, but many do, especially in the bread and butter courses (history, calc, english) where the teachers lean on you pretty heavily to take the exam.</p>
<p>I understand that Stanford has or is changing its admissions policy to give no more weight to AP courses than to regular HS courses. Perhaps this will start a trend. Also of interest is this study from UC Berkeley:</p>
<p>
[quote]
THE ROLE OF ADVANCED PLACEMENT AND HONORS COURSES
IN COLLEGE ADMISSIONS </p>
<p>ABSTRACT
This study examines the role of Advanced Placement (AP) and other honors-level courses as a criterion for admission at a leading public university, the University of California, and finds that the number of AP and honors courses taken in high school bears little or no relationship to students’ later performance in college. AP is increasingly emphasized as a factor in admissions, particularly at selective colleges and universities. </p>
<p>But while student performance on AP examinations is strongly related to college performance, merely taking AP or other honors-level courses in high school is not a valid indicator of the likelihood that students will perform well in college. These findings suggest that institutions may need to reconsider the use of AP as a criterion in “high stakes” admissions, particularly given the marked disparity in access to AP and honors courses among disadvantaged and underrepresented minority students.
[/quote]