Trevor Packer, the head of the Advanced Placement (AP) Program, streamed a live webinar to provide updates for spring 2020 AP testing. After a full semester of curriculum and a spring semester beginning with home learning, students will be able to test for APs at home and have the opportunity for college credit and to test their knowledge.
I encourage you to always go directly to the source, so do check out College Board’s AP testing page for the most up-to-date information. Packer stated that as of mid-day Friday, April 3, 2020, all of the information will be online and accessible.
AP College Board Exam Updates 2020
- After a nationwide survey conducted by College Board, 91% of students overwhelmingly said they do not cancel exams and that they wanted to test.
- AP testing dates, May 11 – May 22
- Makeup dates , June 1 – 5
- Students will be able to take exams on their laptop, desktop or cell-phone and they will be shorter exams
In order to proceed with AP testing, College Board needed to meet five criteria
- Could not offer tests unless they were still able to provide accommodations
- Delivery platform will automatically extend testing times for students who had it already approved
- Could not deliver exams in a way that would reduce likelihood of students who are low income have access to exams
- Students who need devices may go to cb.org/tech by April 24th and request laptops and support
- If schools re-opened, school counselors would need to spend time on valuable services rather than test prep coordinating, College Board wanted to provide an opportunity to do counseling rather than doing proctoring
- Ensure that colleges felt good and strong about the solution
- UC recognized the efforts that students have already applied and will award credit completed with scores of 3, 4 or 5 consistent with previous years
- Exams administered at home needs to be fair
- College Board cannot assume a student won’t look at a textbook or Google so each AP exam question is being screened so that there are no points available via Google or books
Challenges/changes of testing at home
- Exam will be shorter
- Question types will be familiar to the curriculum
- Students will need to keep track of times for themselves
- Students can shut off a timer and turn back on
- If material is not submitted within the time period they will NOT be able to score it
- Students can handwrite take a photo of response and upload or typed responses and upload a picture or paste in the word document. Student choice
How can exams be administered at homes in a secure way?
College Board has protocols in place to catch cheating. While they did not disclose all of them, Packer did share the following:
- To access exam, they will complete several steps to detect impersonation
- Student responses will be scanned for plagiarism
- Students caught for cheating will be reported to every college they have submitted SAT/testing scores to.
- Every AP teacher will receive copies no later than May 26 of the student responses
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