<p>The metropolitan Washington D.C. area has a very high ratio of Advanced Placement examination participants. Naturally, the snow apocalypse will have consequences on the time the students will have to prepare, particularly since the school calendar will have to be revised significantly to make up for lost days. However, according to a news report AP executive Susan Landers said that AP has not changed its schedule of exams before and it won't do so now. Should the administrators of AP make some accomodation for kids in Washington, D.C., suburban Maryland and Northern Virginia?</p>
<p>Well, IMHO the state of VA needs to change their ridiculous law that the schools cannot start before Labor Day. If they let the students start back in August then they would have more time to prep for the AP exams and this wouldn’t be an issue.</p>
<p>AP will not change. My kids missed 4 weeks of school with Ivan and 3 weeks with katrina, AP exams went on as scheduled. We’re not as smart down here in LA as they are in NOVA, so fewer kids take the exams, but the area disrupted covered 2 states with Ivan and 3 states with Katrina.</p>
<p>Luckily we start in mid-August.</p>
<p>In my school system, we have parents who fight efforts to start later (we generally start the second Monday in August) because of AP exams. Those of who think school should start later, consistently argue that the kids in the Northeast start later and do better on the exams than us early starter southerners!</p>
<p>I doubt they will be rescheduled.</p>
<p>I feel for you, LakeWashington, but they would have to be rescheduled nationwide. That would be pretty hard to do at this point.</p>
<p>Interesting point. One very few people in my state would ever even consider. In fact, in recent days two bills have been heard in our state legislature–1) making it state mandated that schools start after Labor Day (most now start ~ Aug. 13) and 2) making it mandated that all state public colleges accept AP exam grades of 3-4-5 for college credit.</p>
<p>Moot point for my school district–32 AP exams were taken last spring; 1 pass. Very typical and unfortunately, no administrators or parents seem to care.</p>
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<p>Schools are shut down in California for wild fires and mudslides (locusts?) every year. So, no, no delay for DC area is warranted, particularly since the exams are still three months away.</p>
<p>btw: what is stopping the AP students from studying while they are at home these days?</p>
<p>So how many hours of an AP class is one week? Somewhere around 4-7 hours? They could schedule a Saturday make-up class session or 5 before school sessions if the students really lobbied hard for this I bet many schools (and many teachers) would agree to something like this as a one-time event. Our district doesn’t start until after Labor Day. Class sessions are 70 minutes and there are at least 3 snow or tornado or fog events that add up to 3 days and they take the tests the same day as the rest of the country. If the need is there to make-up the hours I’m sure the students and school administrators in a 3-state area can figure it out without moving a test nationally.</p>
<p>I know I’m missing something here, but that would be because I live in SoCal where we have no need for snow days (although as noted above, schools sometimes close for wildfires and mudslides.)</p>
<p>Schools in snow zones schedule a certain number of snow days. I expect with the weather this year, the snows days will have been exceeded. Schools typically have spring breaks before the May AP exams. Aren’t these make up days going to be done by perhaps shortening the springs breaks, to ensure requisite number of school days are met? I suppose they could be added on the back end, but that’s wouldn’t help with AP exams in May and what senior wants to have days added at the end?</p>
<p>I cannot see the vast majority of the country wanting to delay the AP exams due to the snow event back east. If the College Board had different versions of the test, then maybe they could swing something different for the affected areas, but then there would be issues with the mass grading that occurs in June/July.</p>
<p>When I started reading this I thought you were talking about exams being given now - when the schools were closed. That would have been different. Should a student who is out sick with the flu for a week get an exception and take the exam a week later? Our schools also start after Labor Day and when there are too many snow days the calendar is indeed revised and class time is made up (and must be according to state law). It is not an uncommon occurrence and neither state exams or national exams are postponed unless an extraordinary event happens on the day of the exam. The exams are not next week. Most most high schools have hours set aside for 'extra help" and teacher consulting. Get real - AP classes are for the best and the brightest - and they are supposed to be college level courses. Just like college kids, these kids can study.</p>
<p>No, they should not. Due to overcrowding, our AP intensive high school was on a year-round high school for four years. A large percentage of our AP kids went to school from late August until December and then had a two month break until the beginning of March. There was never any adjustment made and those students and teachers had to work very hard during March and April to catch up. My own kid was on that schedule and took numerous AP tests with scores of 5. There is something to be said for adversity. Also, our school district (traditional schedule) starts in September, not August (it’s extremely hot here in August although there is talk of moving the start date up.) Our students are always at a disadvantage compared to kids who attend schools that start in August. I remember when we were on year-round and the kids were told to read and study 12 chapters on their own while they were off-track. Snowbound kids can study while they are home and use the time wisely. You might want to get the school to pay for teachers to do some after-school review sessions or one all-day Saturday to make up the time. It’s doable.</p>
<p>I think it would be impossible to do this fairly and consistently. In other parts of the country, there are snow days every year, and the kids take the exams as scheduled. Our schools have been closed the last 4 days. There were some snow days built into the schedule, but we will have to make some up, and at least one makeup day is after the AP exams. We usually only have 3 days for spring break, and one of them will probably be lost. School starts a week or two before labor day, which helps with AP classes. I never thought about that aspect of the timing of the beginning of the school year.</p>
<p>AP exams aren’t given until May! That is 3 months from now!There is plenty of time to make up missed class work. If a student is sick for a week are they given more time to prepare for AP tests? If one high school has 2 weeks of vacation time and another has only 1, are AP tests moved to give the students with fewer weeks of classes time more time to prepare? No!</p>
<p>Plenty of schools start after Labor Day and the students do well on AP exams. When the exam dates are set many months in advance, people plan their schedules around the exams and changing the dates would mess up a lot of people’s schedules. As menloparkmom stated, May is still three months away; there is plenty of time to study for AP exams. For those of us that started school in after Labor Day, we might like a June test date but AP has been pretty adamant about having AP tests only once a year.</p>
<p>The kids here in New England missed up to 2 weeks last year with the big ice storm and took the APs on time. There’s plenty of time to catch up before May.</p>
<p>No, if you are missing school you better be self-studying. (if you’re smart enough to get a 5 with a teacher you’re smart enough to get a 5 without a teacher)</p>
<p>The only caveat to this is that you will have to work harder (some harder than others, unfortunately.)</p>
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<p>syrstress–what state are you in?</p>
<p>I can’t believe the legislators want to “dumb down” the public university system like that. If they don’t want to accept a 3, they shouldn’t have to.</p>
<p>And 1 pass out of 32 tests??? Wow.</p>
<p>I agree with above posters–3 months is plenty of time to make up the work. There’s a syllabus…take the book home and read it.</p>
<p>(OTOH–if there is no syllabus and teachers don’t make an effort to get the class prepared in time, that is a problem the CollegeBoard needs to look into anyway.)</p>
<p>Or how about giving PA kids the AP’s in June because they will be using up at least 8 days for state wide testing in April? We also missed four days due to snow but our make up days are built into the schedule and school will now end in late June. Philadelphia has had 70 inches of snow and the kids haven’t been to school for a while.</p>
<p>The only Spring break our kids get is three days around Easter. The AP schedule is totally screwed up as far as I’m concerned. Our kids have an entire month of school after the test. Schools nationwide should start the last week in August and the AP’s should be given the first week in June.</p>
<p>kathiep –</p>
<p>There’s a 2 week AP testing period, plus some makeup dates after that for kids who are sick, have conflicts (2 APs scheduled at the same time), or are out of school on a school organized event.</p>
<p>So, it currently takes around 3 weeks to schedule AP tests. Also, they want the tests to be early enough so that they can be graded (the free response section grading is a very labor intensive thing) and the scores returned soon enough for kids who have to make schedule decisions (or schedule changes) for the next year.</p>
<p>Note that schools are controlled locally, not nationally. The number of required school days isn’t even the same from state to state. Our state just switched from mandating school days to mandating school hours, so some schools have switched to 4 day weeks. Others are making up snow days by adding minutes to each day.</p>
<p>The original schedule for my daughter’s school for this year had them starting August 13 and getting out May 20. Postponing the start date to August 24 (the last week of August) as you suggest, would have them getting out June 2, still not long enough to do APs the first week of June.</p>
<p>Besides, APs affect relatively few kids. The big thing in our state is the state-mandated core curriculum and end-of-instruction exams. Those exams are given in the second half of April/first half of May, with some tests (the writing tests for younger kids) given as early as the first week of March. These are the high stakes tests for the schools. It’s extremely important to get as much schooling in before those tests as possible. It’s so important that they just moved some of the state tests back a week because of the number of days we’ve missed due to snow.</p>
<p>mathinokc, I am aware of the AP testing schedule as well as the fact that schools are controlled locally, not nationally. I agree that the logistics are quite complicated but as long as I’m dreaming here, I would prefer May for testing instead of April. I already think it’s unfair that students in the Southwest that start school in August have two more weeks of classes plus don’t have to worry about snow days.</p>
<p>The results of AP tests has no bearing whatsoever in our school on what class is to be scheduled next and I doubt that’s the case in most schools. Our kids schedules are finalized by the end of June and the prerequisites are based on school grades, not AP test results.</p>